Thanks Fredo. I probably will!

I am at this fork in the road as well. My instincts are to move toward leadership as I am getting older, but after more consideration of my longer term goals I'm not so sure. Perhaps remaining an IC might be a better move.

IC Upsides - Generally more options for senior ICs, especially with early stage work - possibility of remote work for ICs - Not sure but IC roles seem to be more recession proof than Mgt

Downsides - possible that ICs have a 'shelf life'? How old is too old? (Ageism) - ceiling on pay - ceiling on strategic work

I am 1 day into learning Protopie and I think I agree with you. Some of the best functionalities don't seem to be always available (for example, I can't seem to use functions when mapping), but overall the use of variables, functions, custom bezier curves, a solid preview app, and access to system level interactions (KEYBOARD ENTRY!) makes Protopie seem like it's standing taller than the other options out there right now. It's no Framer, but it also isn't going to give me a headache when I need to design a prototype with state dependencies.

Just checked it out. It seems like a great, simple, snappy little tool.

TBH the reason I loved Framer was because I knew there'd be almost no chance that my design ran into a functional limit... the only limitation was my own ability to write functions and set variables in an efficient manner. I could crank out simple things quickly and very complex things when necessary. These days there's an abundance of the quick strike, easy tools (seems like Drama is in this realm), but I see nothing that lets me build out something robust the way Framer once did.

Great advice. Web is my least common platform, which is one of the reasons why there are no advantages for me to learn React in Framer. Might as well go learn to tinker in Swift!

I remember this survey too. I think it was a classic mistake of asking the consumer what they wanted. Nobody expected that transitioning to React would come at such a cost in flexibility and speed.

I'm doubly confused-- why do you think Framer was geared towards mobile? React is not very relevant to mobile at all (React Native ≠ React), and if Framer X is going to be a game changer for anyone, it's web designers who work on a team that uses React in their tech stack.

Update: My visual designer did his early explorations in Ai and when the time was right we moved everything into Sketch. I've found the Sketch2AE plugin to be highly useful for this project. We've used Overlord, Flow and Bodymovin plugins for AE and the process has been flawless.

If anyone comes across this thread and wants to pick my brain, DM me and I'm happy to help.

Hijacking is encouraged.

I am a Sketch native and Im pretty good at icon design using its terrible vector tools and Booleans, and even still, I've gone back to Illustrator for icon work. So at this point I'm designing vector art in Ai, layout in Sketch, porting SVG back to Ai so I can prep for AE so I can export to JSON and prototype everything in Framer.

Wow, I've never written this out before, but things have really changed in the past several years. [edit] Also, we have to buy a lot more licenses these days!

Off the top of my head most UI animations are in the 100k range. I don't bother checking because they're so small. A gif at a frame rate you'd find acceptable for production work would be... well... the size of the img x 24 fps (at min) x duration. And even still, it won't look as good as a Lottie animation.