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Figma 2.0: Now with Prototyping and Developer Handoff (blog.figma.com)
almost 6 years ago from Jonathan Suh, Designer at Planning Center
75 comments
Thomas Lowry, almost 6 years ago No Invision subscription. No Zeplin subscription. No developers requiring a Figma subscription...my Figma subscription seems like better value every day.
This team is doing fantastic work!
Rolando Murillo, almost 6 years ago
Couldn't agree more. The prototyping is so simple and I love that. No transitions or anything like that--they'll add them later I'm sure but for now I think that's all I need. I wish the hand off allowed for annotations, which we have been doing manually on my team.
Ali Zendaki, almost 6 years ago Request this feature. I think it would be easy for them to implement (relatively). Would be super duper useful.
Taurean Bryant, almost 6 years ago
I've requested this before in the past, it would be great if it was just a varying type of comment to show that its redline spec instead of a normal comment.
Jon Myers, almost 6 years ago
The Kool-Aid is strong and the smoke thick, up in here.
I’ve tried Figma and recently, I had to work with a team’s project that was in Figma, in a production environment.
That they moved back to Sketch.
I find all this to be one big yawn and don’t understand the fanfare for things we’re already doing.
It's like a trophy for coming in fifth place.
From the initial launch and focus on differentiation, “teams” and “collaboration”. And, here in the present, I find Figma’s product releases are very stakeholder/ handover focused, not designer focused, and not focused on improving the design process for designers.
Yes, these are features, which are needed to make it a production worthy product, but nothing is being done better, in my opinion.
Now the pivot is centralization because Abstract is launching - and version control is hot for a minute - “All in one place” doing what you’re already doing, but not as quite as good is not compelling.
As a designer, I have no problems prototyping with Sketch + Craft. I have no problems handing off designs to developers.
Is Figma better than Sketch? No, Sketch has a better ecosystem, plugins/ functions that are now “necessary” and it has a superior symbols system, which is at the core of modern design and creating component based design systems.
Look at the systems and frameworks between Sketch (design) and development at organizations like Airbnb for maintaining design systems. Are you going to see things like this emerge from Figma? https://airbnb.design/painting-with-code/ - doubt it, anytime soon. Surprise us.
Is Sketch an unstable product and company that is run like a GarageBand? Yes. Though, the trade offs are worth it, for now.
Is Figma a more stable product than Sketch? Probably, it seems like it, is the zoom to canvas smoother, yes, is the text handling superior, yes, but that’s not compelling enough.
Is Figma better than Invision and Craft? No, not even close. Though Figma is designer founded, I don’t feel like they “get” or are listening to designers. It feels like following the herd and a race to Frankenstein feature parity to satisfy an initial investment thesis and investment milestone. Invision “GETS” designers and leads.
Is Figma better than Zeplin? No.
Figma is incrementally moving towards feature parity with some core platforms that are part of the design process, but - they are not innovating, meaning they are not doing anything better or solving any of the multitudes of problems that are sitting on designer's plates waiting to be solved.
And, I know, it sounds like I’m trashing the product. It’s just tough love. I would love to see Figma succeed.
This is very hard work, which I can appreciate. It’s not a bad product, it’s just an average product, with no clear business case, which I’m still trying to understand why this product should exist or is it looking for a reason to exist.
All this, especially given the amount of capital raised. With nearly $18 million in capital raised, I would expect a lot more, a lot faster, a lot better 4 years in.
Thomas Lowry, almost 6 years ago You raise some points worth considering but I think it is unfair to say that Figma is not innovating. Is there someone else I am unaware of that is offering integrated team libraries, and multiplayer collaboration comparable to Figma?
Reasons to exist: Do all of the things you listed in one cross-platform product, instead of requiring Sketch (annual fee for updates) + Zeplin (monthly subscription) + Invision (another monthly subscription) + Abstract (another monthly subscription) + a whole slew of third party plugins of varying quality (why do I need a special Sketch plugin to swap the border and fill colour....the same plugin that just stopped working for me two Sketch releases ago). At this point in time, the prototyping and handoff isn’t as robust or fully featured as their competitors but at the rate they have been evolving the product I wouldn’t be ready to discount them based on their first iteration of new features.
Not everyone is on OSX either. Same goes for developers. It gives people another option.
If you are serious about helping Figma succeed, I suggest emailing them about the multitude of problems the current tools aren’t solving for you so they can add it to their roadmap. Everything from bugs to features I’ve mentioned to them they have been very receptive to.
That’s a fair critique and commentary and certainly most points considered.
The stand out point I failed to acknowledge, works on Windows.
Over the years, as with most designers, I’ve grown increasingly frustrated with Apple. I was eyeing the Surface Studio Pro with great envy, but at the end of the day, personally, could not justify a move back to Windows given my existing software lock-ins.
Though, it’s good there are alternatives. No complaints there.
As designers move into more unknown territory with what’s coming next, there’s value in having tools that support both/ all platforms.
So, the more the merrier.
On “multi-player” I can see the value, yet, the examples I’ve seen rang gimmicky at best. I’m sure teams have adapted, and developed workflows and systems to leverage the feature.
However, most multi-player examples seemed childish, and looked like a bad graffiti battle using a live version of MS Paint, lacking any real business practicality.
Again, I’m sure some have made it work, and I’m sure having a cross-platform solution has been a god send for some organizations, but I’d love to see the data on usage attrition/ engagement for this feature.
And, if the feature is that successful, where are the case studies, and why aren’t they betting the farm on it versus being the everything design tool going after a land grab.
Further, my anecdotal experience briefly using/ jumping in on Figma in a production environment confirmed a suspicion I had regarding this feature.
There’s noise, pass interference.
Most designers and product teams need space, head space and the ability to drop into flow state to perform quality work.
Design needs some breathing room.
The Figma design/ collaboration environment amongst all stakeholders has the potential to create lots of noise, where all the inmates are banging around the asylum too fast, too soon.
And finally, on this multi-player point - it is (in my opinion) a very business stakeholder versus designer driven feature.
I agree, the update cycle with Sketch, and the subsequent update cycle with respective supporting platforms and plugins being a royal pain in the ass.
It sucks when MagicMirror breaks. When SketchRunner breaks. And, when Craft breaks, but it’s better than nothing.
I prefer the constant, on-going improvements created by that ecosystem versus crickets.
Ecosystems tend to move and adapt faster than solo actors trying to do it all, say like Adobe.
And, Sketch lucked into being a centralizing force in an ecosystem.
On paying separately for things. It’s not enough to worry about - though, I can appreciate how costs do pile up for larger teams.
Then again, what are the alternatives - marking up PNG files, writing on cave walls, lol, etc., etc., the value created is clear.
I'll take best of breed any day by well-capitalized companies focused on - that problem - over a Swiss-Army knife that works, ok.
I do disagree on the nebulous point of innovation.
There is a wide-open playing field, sitting right there, begging for innovation in the race to be THE design tool. Particularly in the way many design, and particularly in the way many are now approaching design.
Sketch’s symbol system is superior - yet, it’s not “that” great. It’s just better than what’s out there now.
I found Figma’s approach to symbols/ components to be, me too, shallow and leaving an opportunity on the table.
In the race to win, there’s a battle for people and business. In that battle, there’s one heuristic that typically prevails.
Does it solve pain (entertain or both) to the point where people will pay attention, invest their time and pay for it?
Other than Windows, I’m racking my brain trying to understand what’s better, and what problem is being solved.
Further, I don’t find the product (as is) to be compelling when there are superior alternatives.
That could of course change, I love being wrong. These things take time, I hope to see them evolve.
Further, there is another business heuristic that must be considered in this equation.
In most cases, businesses aim to capture market share or create a new market.
The reason I’m calling failure to innovate here is that I see Figma as a play to capture existing market share, which everyone and their brother is fighting over.
It’s an exciting time to be a designer and have all these toys to play with.
There is an admission of a market share grab in Figma’s approach to market.
The product was not compelling enough to enter the market on its own merit, it had to support the integration of Sketch files.
I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, I’m just saying that’s the reality. I would have done the same.
I'm just saying it shows a huge weakness that needs to be quickly addressed with - something - that is superior.
Additionally, I can appreciate the race to feature parity (that’s how it works) - but again, I see a failure to innovate and present a compelling business case.
Maybe there are some McKinsey guys hidden in the midst steering this direction with some hockey stick and pie charts, maybe they need to show them the door and start listening to designers.
In contrast, Sketch had fortuitous, unicorn timing to market due to the lack of design tools that specialized in digital product design.
At that time, Adobe abandoned Fireworks, at that time Sketch Forest Gumped into a new market, and emerged as a key central player in the modern design ecosystem.
It’s easy (in retrospect) to say Sketch was innovative. Yet, the fact remains, the tool has proved to be incredibly useful, transformative and innovative due to the good fortune of market timing and ecosystem percolating up.
I see Figma doing a lot of things, I don’t see Figma doing one thing well - that’s the best, that’s compelling, which will stop most designers in their tracks to explore.
I want them to succeed, Sketch is an irresponsibly managed product and business that would benefit from the professionalism that exudes from Figma.
Figma’s communications team is killing it with what they have, their product team is delivering, their operations team appears to be on point, and the company appears to be being ran as a business.
Sketch has a lot to learn in this respect.
Yet, in terms Figma's product vision, I just don’t see it. Sketch clumsily wins here stabbing into the dark as their reliance on the ecosystem shapes their path, leaving massive holes in their game.
And, as designers - all this activity is obviously beneficial. Tension is good, tension creates drive and a constant push for excellence.
I hope Figma and supporters do not take all this criticism as mean-spirited, I come in peace.
This is just one entrepreneur/ designer’s point of view. And by unloading my thoughts, I hope it's useful.
It’s just well, again, other than Windows, what’s so great, which I’m missing?
Lubos Kmetko, almost 6 years ago You cannot see the reason for Figma to exists because you live in your "designer on Mac" bubble. Figma is available on Windows/Linux while Sketch + Craft is not. I know for someone on Mac it's hard to understand what difference it makes, just check the comments under some Adobe XD blog posts from the time when it wasn't available on Mac yet.
Figma has been out as a public release only for 10 months. They have added a lot of new features in such short time - components, constraints, prototyping, etc.
The most important is that they have the basics done right - the frames system where everything can be wrapped in a frame which sets constraints for the child elements. Plus they are not limited to one platform like Sketch and they don't have to develop for 2 different platforms like Adobe XD. This is a huge competitive advantage which allows Figma to focus on features development and significantly expands their potential customer base.
Cristian Moisei, almost 6 years ago
I'm glad to see not everyone is jumping on the bandwagon without questioning the value. Also, damn $18M in funding, I would have thought they are a small and broke team trying things out.
Andrew Richardson, almost 6 years ago Is $18m really that much for 4 years of development? Admittedly I know very little about the startup world but 18m stretched over 4 years seems like very little to work with considering the scope of what they did.
Maybe I'm disillusioned by a corporate world but I feel like it's a sizable accomplishment.
I don't know a lot about development either so I could be wrong, but what have they really achieved? A browser based vector editor? You can find free and open source browser based vector editors made by single people as side projects.
It's not the technical side I find lacking with Figma though, it's the ideas it brings to the table. What does it really do that the more established, well supported, feature rich and native alternatives are not offering?
Andrew Richardson, almost 6 years ago For me personally it's Team Libraries and the presentation utility that sets Figma apart. Team Libraries are unmatched currently, as my company relies heavily on design systems for our interactive side of things it's invaluable to have an always up-to-date version of our design system highly accessible.
Presentation is a big one and the prototype feature adds more on this. Being able to simply give someone a link to view the latest version of a design is a huge boon to accessibility and transparency. There's no issue of Mac/Windows for accessing files or exporting to a PDF and combining art boards to create a presentation every time someone needs to see a design.
Otherwise there is almost near parity with Sketch which is great because it made the switch very easy.
That's interesting. Would you be willing to share more details about how design works at bluebeam? How many designers, how are they organised and how do they collaborate with the rest of the company / each other, what does the design process look like from concept to release and testing.
I'd very much appreciate it.
Mark Calvin, almost 6 years ago Here's how I feel about this:
Typical flow:
Dropbox / Something else used for collaboration > Sketch + random unmaintained/broken plugins > Airbnb's design to code ( to keep your styleguide in check ) > Craft / Invision / other prototype tools > Zeplin / other handoff targeted software > Code
Figma flow:
Figma > Code
Hm, I don't use Sketch, I use Photoshop, so I wouldn't know your pains of relying on deprecated plugins (cause PS doesn't have any good ones), but I do understand the frustration of having to maintain the same design once in Dropbox, once in Avocode / Zeplin, once in an InVision prototype. Would you have a Figma file with a ready built prototype you can share so I can try it out - see what it can do? If you do, give me the most complex one you have. I wanna see what Figma can do.
Mark Calvin, almost 6 years ago Performance, real time collaboration, synchronized assets, better color management, better font rendering, better pixel snapping, better components support, better font management, better text handling, prototyping, cross-platform compatibility, better project management, handoff support, tidie&clearner interface, better mobile-preview app, better pricing, that's all I could think of, but they are all valid reasons.
Give it a try, and bring a friend with you, it's fun :)
Alright. Real time collaboration does sound great, but can you name one use case for it? Collaboration is indeed great, but have you ever worked on the same document at the same time with another person? What would be the benefits of that?
Better colour management, better font rendering than Adobe? Being better at colour management than Sketch's non existent solution is easy.
What do you mean by better project management? What features / tools does Figma offer to help us stay more organised? This is one of the areas where a lot of time gets wasted so I'd be curious to know what they bring to the table.
Cleaner interface - maybe, but it's also far less efficient: in the 10 minutes I spent with it I was annoyed at having to loose a ton of screen real estate because of Chrome's bars and the layers panel has a lot of indent, meaning when you go 2/3 groups deep, you'll stop being able to read the names.
Better pricing, really? It costs the same as Adobe and more than Sketch (albeit you have to pay for a handoff solution like Avocode with those two).
I don't mean to sound rude - I know my tone is not always the friendliest, but I think these are important questions to ask and we should hold our tools to the highest standards.
Thomas Lowry, almost 6 years ago I think on the management side, a big plus is that the commenting takes place within the tool, right on the artboards, not in a third party tool like Zeplin or Invision. And the file exists in one place, there is one instance of the document with version control built in. No overwriting issues.
I think the collaboration thing is interesting because designers haven't been able to work on the same artboard before. Does it fit into existing workflows..maybe not…but there are a lot of possibilities for new ones. Where I work we have a remote team, it can be really handy. I can now have those conversations at my desk where we shift some elements around to see what works best, with someone in another office or time zone. If you build out reusable components, say for wire framing, you could do a lot of exercises with multiple designers all in one file. The collaboration/multiplayer features work great even if there is only one designer. Having the devs, and stakeholders on a call while everyone is in the same file (even as a viewer), and being able to see what people are pointing at, whilst making changes right in the document is very handy.
Re: pricing with Sketch. The difference is pretty marginal when you factor in Sketch's annual licensing fee + other tools.
Mark Calvin, almost 6 years ago I'm working on my start-up right now, and I'm collaborating in real time to set up the design direction with my co-founder, it's a lot better. It's amazing.
I'll send a more detailed answer later, but for now, I just wanna say this: I design on a 15' Retina MacBook Pro, so I know the pain of not having real-estate. There's a shortcut to hide the UI in Figma, on Mac it's CMD + " , and it's your best friend! Get a configurable buttons mouse and bind that shortcut to a mouse button, it's amazing ;)
Dino Paravandis, almost 6 years ago
Figma has a web app which gives you more real estate to play.
Mark Calvin, almost 6 years ago I'm not sure how much you know about start-up funding, but $18mil for a 4year runway is crazy low, especially considering the product they've built.
Look at InVision's funding and then take a ride in their product, see who has a broke team trying things out by building a shitty product and monetizing the hell out of it.
Mark Calvin, almost 6 years ago - Is Figma better than Sketch?
I'd say it is way better. It has better performance, a better built components (symbols) systems, REAL-TIME collaboration (good luck getting there, sketch), and now even prototyping (hell yeah!)... Give Figma a try before you roast it and you'll ditch Sketch in a second.
Yes, it has drawbacks, like hotkeys and no way of creating plugins, as of now. But to be honest it only takes a tiny amount of time until you get used to the shortcuts, and I have yet to see a properly built Sketch plugin. Even Craft, from InVision ,feels like a mammoth Frankenstein, with 80% of its functionality being useless.
- Look at the systems and frameworks between Sketch
Did you try the Airbnb Design System in practice or you're just jumping in the hype train? It solves absolutely no problems except the designing with code part, which guess what, it's been done since CSS was invented.
The only thing the Airbnb team has solved with it is that they've gotten their name up in the design community once again after Lottie. It's a broken solution and will get lost in the darkness of time unless it will be rebuilt for something more popular than React Native.
- *Is Sketch an unstable product and company *
I think the Sketch Team does a great job. They've made a product that probably became the top reason for designers to switch to macOS. Kudos to them!
But please, "the trade off are worth it" is a completely biased statement, Figma is the next big thing, just give it a try and look for the arguments I added here, there are big chances you'll change your mind
- Is Figma a more stable product than Sketch?
You're saying the most important features like real-time collaboration, a properly built-in components system, better performance and prototyping are features that "not compelling enough"? I really don't see your point...
I would never go back to a software whose only "compelling" features is a bunch of unmaintained plugins and... and what? The most useful plugin I've used is "Replace Colors" and guess what... even that one suffered from glitches. You should try Figma's color management, it just works.. Flawlessly.
- *Is Figma better than Invision and Craft? *
The only top InVision leads is the top of software that makes no sense paying for. They got at least twice (maybe 4x...or more?) the amount of funding Figma has and they've built a crappier software with limited functionality, that doesn't even work in Safari.
The only thing I appreciate about InVision is their Brandon Grotesque + Open Sans combination, which looks sick. But it's easy to judge a book by its cover and I guess that's the only reason why top designers love them.
And Craft.. :) if I've had a menu bar icon for every plugin I've used with Sketch my Bartender would break.
- Is Figma better than Zeplin?
You're comparing apples to pears, but fine, I'm just wondering, how do the devs that are using Linux use Zeplin? ( a bunch of kickass devs use linux builds ), I bet they'd prefer Figma.
I'm sorry if I sounded harsh, but I felt bad seeing that you're trying to drag Figma down by comparing it to Invision, Sketch and Zeplin and breaking it apart, when it has some aspects that are WAY, WAY ahead of others and that all of them combined couldn't match.
Oh and by the way, Invision raised at least $60mil afaik, they monetize the app much harder than Figma and still manage to have a shittier product offering a broken experience.
The truth is, from a product standpoint, the top for design tools is pretty much like this, and this is just my opinion, not a general truth:
Figma > Sketch > Gravit.io > Zeplin > Apple Keynote > Adobe PS/AI/FW > Invision
Affinity Products (from Serif) have a special place in my heart so I excluded them, their performance is amazing and I would probably rank them first, along with Figma, just because of that.
You should at least create a Designer News account a few weeks ahead of a Figma release and "build it up" versus the day of a big release.
Rookie mistake.
Mark Calvin, almost 6 years ago So what does that say about me?
It’s funny, but I created this account just to upvote this thread. Glad you noticed.
And yes, that means I’m a Figma fan.
Ali Zendaki, almost 6 years ago oh boy. sketch is closer and closer to getting ditched every day....
Ryan Carter, almost 6 years ago
I feel like the last major missing piece is third party plugin support.
Fabricio Rosa Marques, almost 6 years ago
They started working on this already
Ali Zendaki, almost 6 years ago joy. figmas app just seems to be so much better coded, refined, and polished. i have given sketch a lot of time and patience, but the persistent bugs are just starting to make me not enjoy working in it any more. i am hoping for global colors (similiar to illustrator) soon....and text styles, based component system. where you can override any facet of the text stye.
Mark Calvin, almost 6 years ago You should mention this "global colors" thing to the guys below bragging about Sketch's amazing plugin ecosystem.
I feel there are people in here who haven't designed a real product before. Being a designer is much harder than submitting cool looking dribbble shots on a daily basis.
Ali Zendaki, almost 6 years ago I noticed this as well. It's these 'real world' use cases where Sketch really falls flat. Using hacky plugins to streamline team efforts and attempt to promote consistency is a major fail. The plugins brake, go out of date, and act sporadically most of the time. I am a huge Sketch fan, don't get me wrong guys. We just need to get some bread and butter business features hard-coded natively into the app asap....and a fix for the nasty color profile bug. That thing is made of nightmares.
It's really amazing, a simple yet necessary features like global colors/color variables has not been integrated in 5-6 years or however long Sketch has been in development. Heck, you can't even pick from your solid color palette when defining gradients yet. It really makes me wonder if Sketch puts their UX and UI to the test in real world conditions before releasing.
Lucas Lazaro, almost 6 years ago
I don't know about that, we've recently started using the Airbnb React Sketch.app to keep our design systems updated, and it works remarkably well and as I'm positive the Figma team will keep working on service integrations I don't see a way for a web based application to integrate with such functionalities.
Mark Calvin, almost 6 years ago Nothing stops them from implementing a functionality like that. Figma has been contributing to Electron, and this shows they've got the knowledge and the will to push into the native territory.
I can see Airbnb's solution making a lot of sense as long as you're using React Native (not ReactJS) on your website, but the truth is most businesses are not, and this limit only makes keeping the design-system/website synchronization just as broken as it has always been.
I'd rather see a solution that takes LESS/PUG files and spits out Sketch files. LESS/PUG files which can be used just as easy on a real website deployment. That'd be cool.
Edit: The truth is the Sketch plugin ecosystem is like the Windows App Store in the early days, I have yet to see a plugin that works like a nice & tidy piece of software.
Hi Mark, you make a valid point. I wasn't suggesting that sketch will keep on living solely on it's dependency to one plugin created by Airbnb, my argument is that Sketch, as any tool and company, is also evolving, perhaps it is apparently slowly than Figma and it does have some structural problems, but they've made some groundbreaking changes to the way design tools are made and that's an awesome achievement to take for granted.
Just because Figma launched a cool new feature, some folks are like "Yeah! Fuck Sketch!", but in fact what makes the design tool scenario so exciting is that nowadays there is a lot of competition. We don't depend anymore on Adobe alone to solve all our design needs, more companies are targeting more specific problems in the design realm and in my honest opinion everyone benefits from that.
And don't get me wrong, I've given Figma a try and it is surprisingly polished and responsive, it is a wonder to watch a company working so hard to create a design tool. :D
Cheers! PS: It would be awesome to see a Pug/Less -> Sketch/Figma converter.
Mark Calvin, almost 6 years ago These guys deserve it all. When a web-app beats native in terms of scrolling and drag and drop... you have to love it. #straightOuttaCanvas
Topher Hammond, almost 6 years ago +1 for the creative hashtag :)
Tyson Kingsbury, almost 6 years ago
i am straight up loving this :)
Been working on a UI/UX client for the past 2 months, and the developers i'm working with have all gone crazy for the Figma workflow.... hand-off has never been easier :) and now with this prototyping, it's gotten even better :) wonder how long it'll take to get some simple animations added to figma ;)
Thomas Lowry, almost 6 years ago This has been my experience as well. Even from a presentation standpoint. Consider this (which happens a lot):
I am working in Figma on a design.
Impromptu meeting about the design comes up, don't need to worry about screen sharing, we can just get on a call and I can distribute the link directly from Figma.
Everyone can launch it without any special software. They can follow me around the comp in presentation mode, or break off and investigate an area on their own if they want to refer to another frame, etc.
People can make comments/suggestions. Hey look, I am presenting from the software I am designing in and they can see my cursor. I can shift things around based on feedback. No PDF’s to export and distribute. Less notes to take and some of them can be accomplished right in the meeting. If its more complex I can leave notes (or others can) right inside Figma.
Then the same link works for dev hand-off. Couldn’t be simpler and I’ve never left Figma. Being able to prototype within it is going to be next-level and one less tool I will need. I can only imagine, based on how awesome their release schedule is, they are probably already thinking about basic things like fixed footers, and transitions.
The future is bright for Figma!
I know this may not be popular but thanks to Figma I was finally able to switch to Windows. I'm so glad that their product is only getting better now.
Not to mention you can finally access team library from within the library itself. This wasn't possible before.
(I love macOS, but I love building my own computer and being able to play proper games all in one OS more. That means Windows. Transition was easier than I thought it would.)
Account deleted almost 6 years ago Geez. How can I buy stock in Figma?
Sacha Greif, almost 6 years ago
I've switched to Figma as my main design app for a couple months now and it's been great. It feels a lot less buggy than Sketch, is super fast, and the built-in sharing is a killer feature.
Sure, it may lack some features compared to older design apps, but it feels like it has really strong fundamentals. Everything that Figma does, it does really well.
We've been evaluating since last week wether we might be able to switch from Abstract / Sketch+Craft / Invision to Figma. We actually already came to the conclusion that we want to switch, although the viewer mode wasn't good enough yet for devs + simple prototyping still needed to be done via Invision. Wrote an inquiry, they said they'd delivers something this week as they were working on it anyways already, and there it is. Pure love for those guys ❤️
View mode already outperforms Invision Inspect which has been around much longer, as a viewer you can select elements from the layer list and the inspector also relates color values of any selected element to colors you defined in your library which is really handy for devs.
Really excited what comes next in regards of prototyping, as of now it's basic and they only integrate with Framer for more advanced capabilities. Flinto/Principle export would
Luan Gjokaj, almost 6 years ago
Sketch is my main tool. I would like to have Figma on the iPad Pro.
Mark Calvin, almost 6 years ago Wait for Affinity Designer. There has been a teaser floating around for iPad Pro and it's sick!
Norm Sheeran, almost 6 years ago Things are getting pretty competitive in this space!
Andrew Richardson, almost 6 years ago Incredible... I didn't think they'd introduce functionality like this for a while.
Christopher Alan, almost 6 years ago Can Figma work offline yet or will it ever? Probably a small use case but sometimes internet connections suck...
Julian H, almost 6 years ago Due to confidential work, for us this is the main reason not using Figma. :/
I carry the same doubt as you and I'm not sure if it's a small use case if you think globally. Designing in Brazil is a pain in the ass to upload big assets and have to wait to make the next move, internet can get quite unstable over here and perhaps India, Indonesia and other heavily populated countries suffer from the same condition.
Tim Silva, almost 6 years ago
While I'm personally still using Adobe CC and code above all else, I am so grateful for all of the competition in this space. Lots of innovative ideas here which all of the major players with eventually support in their own way sooner or later. :)
Miha Mlakar, almost 6 years ago Better handoff was the only thing that I was missing from my Sketch/Zeplin days. I'm so happy now.
Norbert Godány, almost 6 years ago Subscribed.
We love Figma and was actually talking with our head frontend regarding handoff - this is a godsend. The component system that Figma has is groundbreaking when it comes to designs systems.
Account deleted almost 6 years ago And here I am, sitting by myself, wondering if Affinity will ever do an update which will render Sketch, Figma and similar apps obsolete.
Greg Warner, almost 6 years ago I'm an Affinity lover, so hoping they push some awesome new UI features, but it may be awhile. They'll have to work on shared libraries and open up for a plugin ecosystem and really push it to gain on Sketch + Figma. But the use cases will still probably be slightly different.
Account deleted almost 6 years ago They already have a superior symbol system. If they would extract UI tools and put them in Affinity UI Designer (stupid name, but yeah) and make a killer app that would be so neat.
Jacob J, almost 6 years ago
Did they get the dude from Level Up Tuts to do their videos?
Topher Hammond, almost 6 years ago We sure did :)
Scott Tolinski, almost 6 years ago
That's me!
lol thats awesome. I thoroughly enjoy your tutorials :D
Bevan Stephens, almost 6 years ago
Looks very promising. However I'm really tired of evaluating (and re-evaluating) prototyping tools.
Paul Heger, almost 6 years ago
And here I am, sitting by myself, working still in Photoshop. Because i need to retouch so much images in my process, that it would be always a back and forth between PS and any other tool. :/
John P, almost 6 years ago
This is pretty much the reality of any creative work outside of screen design.
E.g if you work in AE, 3D, ID you always have to jump between apps because you can't do everything photoshop can in those apps.
Greg Warner, almost 6 years ago I jump between Sketch + Affinity Designer/Photo and other apps on a regular basis, and it's really not a bad life. ;) You'll gain in spades pairing traditional retouching/drawing tools with apps that garner a time savings.
Tim Höfer, almost 6 years ago My team uses Sketch and Invision/Marvel so far, but we are going to switch to Figma for our next Sprint. I am super impressed by Figma. The only thing missing for me are transitions between screens so the prototype looks a little bit more real, but otherwise I am thrilled to do the switch…
Marc Olivier Lapierre, almost 6 years ago
Figma is definitely entering the ring of strong contenders for design tools and collaboration. We're seeing a boom in these softwares lately and I can see them taking the lead if they keep the rythm and continue to release well done features like that.
I mean... we're still waiting for complex animations in InVision, something they teased almost 2 years ago. At this pace, Figma will be lightyears ahead once InVision finally decide to release it, if they ever do.
Although I was skeptical during the beta, Figma is pulling me closer with every release and I can safely see myself ditch Sketch/InVision/... in a couple months. Especially once they add plugins support.
Kevin Yun, almost 6 years ago
Really rooting for Figma here, but have a few concerns as I tried Figma in the past but found these to be big issues to slow down my productivity, and ultimately wouldn't be worth a switch.
- Lack of keyboard shortcuts, or not as much as a Mac desktop app (e.g., Sketch) -- keeping a lot of hands on the keyboard, etc.
- Plugin community. Sketch has a tremendous 3rd-party tool library, as well as a ton of people in the community. Are there equivalent tools available in Figma?
- JS performance. What's the technology that allows my browser to be faster than native? I do a lot of nested Symbol work, and even Sketch gives me a hard sometimes in processing changes -- speaking of which, is Figma the same level as Sketch when it comes to the Symbol design flow?
Have things changed? Sketch was a game changer from Illustrator, and if the consensus is that Figma > other tools, may be persuaded to give it another go.
Topher Hammond, almost 6 years ago Hey Kevin,
Thanks for voicing your concerns. In regards to keyboard shortcuts, would love to learn what shortcuts aren't currently available, that you use regularly in your workflow.
In regards to building a plugin community – this is something that we have in the works and is one of our next focuses. We hope to have some great integration partners down the road. What are some that you would hope to see?
In regards to browser performance, I'm not certain of the reality that a web app can hands down outperform a native app. There are a number of complex pieces running under the hood that has made performance across the app better within the last few months. One we're very excited about is the future of Web Assembly(https://blog.figma.com/webassembly-cut-figmas-load-time-by-3x-76f3f2395164). In terms of what this looks like for complex symbol work, we're always making regular adjustments. I'd say give it a test run and if you run into some trouble, give our support team a holler and we'd be happy to take a look.
Joe Flory, almost 6 years ago - Lack of keyboard shortcuts, or not as much as a Mac desktop app (e.g., Sketch) -- keeping a lot of hands on the keyboard, etc.
You can assign as many keyboard shortcuts as you want using Mac's system preferences keyboard settings. They added that recently in a release.
Im aware of setting Mac shortcuts, but what application is the shortcut for? Application layer or specific http page with Figma
Michael G, almost 6 years ago Figma is pretty amazing, especially for a web app, but I really would like to see component overrides like Sketch does symbol overrides. I use a ton of icons and having to manually place each one isn't ideal.
Thomas Lowry, almost 6 years ago I just wrote a quick article, after having the same question, that may be helpful: https://medium.com/@nspace/building-flexible-components-in-figma-41113aa69493
Michael G, almost 6 years ago This is really smart! Thanks for the tip.
Account deleted almost 6 years ago If anybody from Figma is reading: I tried it and I am happy with the stuff I've seen but I still can't abandon Sketch (and I would love to do so). Why is that? In my work, I rely heavily on symbols and nested symbols. So far Figma is not keeping up with Sketch in that field. There are plugins I use to make my work easier and faster, third-party plugins are great, please do something about that! Speed is my last concern. I hate Sketch because it is bulky and slow. I tested Figma with Chrome using MacBook Pro from 2016 and big ass external monitor - it was disappointing.
Cody Iddings, almost 6 years ago
Hmm, I like Atomic's ability to do element level prototypes.
Taylor Palmer, almost 6 years ago I added Figma here to compare, if you're looking to make the jump. uxtools.co/tools
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