It seems like yesterday when we launched our first official release (we’re no longer Beta!) including the long awaited Flex Layout. Of course, we didn’t stop there and we’ve already improved it significantly.
On this 1.18 release we make Flex Layout even more powerful with smart spacing, absolute position and z-index management. We also continued implementing accessibility improvements to make Penpot more inclusive and published stability and performance enhancements. Let’s break down our featured highlights:
Flex layout spacing management
Managing Flex Layout spacing is even more intuitive now! Visualize paddings, margins and gaps and drag to resize them. Even better! When creating Flex layouts, the spacing is predicted by Penpot, speeding-up your design composition.
Absolute position in flex layout
Sometimes you need to freely position an element in a specific place regardless of the size of the layout where it belongs. Now you can exclude elements from the Flex layout flow using absolute position.
More on flex layout: z-index
With the new z-index option you can decide the order of overlapping elements while keeping the layers’ order. This is yet another capability that brings the power of CSS standards to your Penpot designs.
Scale content proportionally
Activate the scale tool by pressing K and scale your elements, maintaining their aspect ratio. Strokes, shadows, blurs and corners will merrily follow your orders 
And this post can not be finished without giving special kudos to @ondrejkonec, who restyled Penpot’s Help Center to follow the Public site’s new look & feel. Another great community contribution 
How did you like all of this? You can take a look at them and the rest of the changes at our Dev Diaries.
