I think it's really great to see people pushing design tools in new directions. So many recent advances in design tools have been minor - just reduced UIs or slightly more powerful iterations of the same old features. It's refreshing to see a completely new take, especially with a solid implementation.

Good work guys, keep it coming.

Wow, this is very cool. Looking at the example GIFs, I suddenly feel that this is the way we should have been interacting with paths all along. Can you say "killer feature"?! ... but Figma has so many killer features that it's nearly becoming the holy grail of design tools.

I'll be really interested to test it out when I finally make it into the beta, but until then I have a tangential question about hotkeys. Well-thought out hotkeys are obviously a really important part of designing an efficient design tool, but since Figma is web-based, there will naturally be conflicts between browser shortcuts and Figma ones. What are you doing at Figma to mitigate this problem?

This is awesome work.

I love seeing the user experiences/needs driving the tool. Thats the way that feels natural and thus it makes the tool so much easier to use.

Looks very promising! I have been working with 3D tools like Rhino and Solid Works back in the day and I've felt 2D vector tools have a long way to go with these corner stone features. One thing I'm still missing from SW is the ability to make paths dependent on each other. Keeping an angle, orientation or distance (in % or fixed) is immensely useful. Consider looking into that, and you have a fan.

Hi Evan, any chance to get an invite? I would love to test Figma. I have registered yesterday.

I hear you Marc. Having used tools like Illustrator for years and Sketch for about a year and a half, I think what Figma has done is made the experience of working with vectors much more intuitive and approachable for users.

I didn't know about these features in Illustrator and the way Figma works is seamless and easy. For lack of a better phrase "it just works". That's why they are saying that have reinvented it. Maybe that's overkill but the experience of using it is truly original and groundbreaker from a user's point of view.

I was hoping you show up in the thread! You have a point, not all is new, but the ability to attach more than 2 lines to a single point is the killer here. But I sense a bit of defensiveness in your post which reinforces my feeling that what these guys are up to is big. Anyways, I can't wait to see what Skala has to offer. Truly exciting times ahead!

But be fair, even if it IS there, no one outside Adobe's (and other vectors tools) product team has the slightest idea what "use non-zero winding fill rule" means or how it works.

There's a little more to Figma in terms of the Filling capacity. The node nature of vertices in a vector network allow for arbitrary region inclusion or exclusion. Any region defined by more than 3 points can be included in the fill and stroke behavior.

In the above example I've toggled the stroke setting as labeled. It's a little odd especially how when Outside stroke is selected what happens to the fill. However I think with enough intentionality while designing (and some tweaks to behavior), the tools allows for some amazing capacities.

Being a former W3C Member having worked on the first SVG-Spec and taken that Macromedia Freehand was the first one that had this features (that's why we copied it in Gravit as we liked it so much), calling a concept called "Compound Pathes" something like "Reinventing" is quite incorrect and more buzzing than anything else. Oh and of course, the bending tool which Freehand (and thus Gravit ;)) also have...

I agree. Re-inventing is a very strong term. Even when you consider that doing this on the web vs doing it on a native software. This is not new on the web either. In fact, even we have options like this in Gravit and we had it for a long time. There are other vector based tools on the web that can also do similar things. As for even/odd and non-zero fill mode, another feature we've had for some time. Here's a screencast of it in action: http://quick.as/zpBaCXm3x

Nothing has been reinvented here, agreed. Still, 2D software manufacturers (Adobe being #1 offender) need a solid kick in the nuts for not improving decades-old tools. Here are Figma's 'inventions' done in SketchUp: https://youtu.be/ejIIvrQk2tw

It's performance in the browser is far better than Sketch. Honestly, why is a browser-based tool bad when it works better and faster.

They definitely should have an "offline" mode, but other than that there is no reason for a "native" app.