[dcchuck]

Congratulations to the Figma team! Well earned. It was such an exciting product when it hit the scene. It became the standard so fast, and it was easy to see why. When there were talks of them being bought for $20 billion I thought it was a great deal for Adobe - and that was before seeing these impressive financials.

I will admit I have waned enthusiasm a on Figma over the past couple of years. I find the UI churn confusing. The new features, i.e. dev mode and variables, feel out of place. I find the plugin ecosystem cumbersome. Doing simple things has become complex. I'm putting out real "who moved my cheese?" energy here I know. I suppose I'm wondering if others feel the same.

[trollbridge]

Others do, and an IPO and the resultant financial pressure means we’ll be looking for a different platform to migrate to. Products simply never get better at this point from a customer’s perspective.

[avgDev]

This is tale as old as time honestly.

Create a product sell or IPO. Revenue pressure increases. Product cost is increased or staff is cut. New software takes crown. Rinse and repeat.

[jacob_rezi]

It seems so risk adverse right? I couldnt imagine telling my team to explore a new way to design as a result of the coming IPO

[The5thElephant]

I actually have the opposite problem with Figma. It is way too basic and simple, targeting every kind of design and the average designer skill level.

I work in complex SAAS product design. Basic things I can do in CSS I can't do in Figma. Things like a table? Yeah it is entirely faked and awful in Figma. Don't even get me started on anything more complicated than flex rows and columns.

Half the debate over designer/dev handoff in the industry right now is simply because of Figma's limitations and the refusal of designers and front-end devs alike to learn HTML and CSS.

We need a Blender-like tool for web and app product design. Highly capable and advanced, you aren't expected to know all of it, and it can do anything you want it to.

I need a tool that is more than just a fancy rectangle drawer.

[asoneth]

I agree with many of your statements but draw the opposite conclusion.

HTML and CSS are expressive, have a vast selection of libraries and tools, and can actually result in shippable code. Designers and front-end devs should learn and use it.

But I don't see the point in creating a design tool unless it's meaningfully simpler than HTML/CSS. I reach for Figma when I need to quickly mock up a dozen iterations using our design system and fancy rectangles. It's fast enough that I can make mockups in realtime during discussions with developers and subject matter experts. But if I'm actually going to take the time to set constraints to make things flex properly or make a real table then why not use HTML and CSS directly?

[trinix912]

There are also Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop, both of which were used for UI design until Sketch/Figma appeared. Both harder to learn and more expensive.

The problem then was that the designs could be too cumbersome to implement (and also that you couldn't share files with developers as easily, but Sketch has the same problem). You can really do just about anything in PS/AI, whereas with Figma and Sketch it's almost like they limit you to what an average developer can implement with CSS.

That being said, we're in the age where you can do pretty much anything with CSS, and I totally agree with you that Figma's controls are very basic (especially for typography, there's just not enough options).

[andrewmcwatters]

That sounds awful and after your comment, I'm glad I've stuck with Sketch.

[soseng]

As a dev who only really uses the read-only version of Figma for the most part, I really like what they do. I can't speak for designers but having the Figma diagrams match the libraries and the design system we use is very very nice. no guessing about colors, typography, spacing. I can just copy and paste into my CSS for front end work. The interface is smooth and fast for us non-design focused devs

[The5thElephant]

What about variables that don't use pixel units? Often values appear as hardcoded in dev-mode when they are actually meant to be a % unit or something else Figma doesn't support because Figma doesn't actually use CSS for rendering.

When my devs just copy whats in Figma dev-mode they get so much stuff wrong.

[swyx]

as someone whos worked in a bad figma before, dont forget to give credit to your designers for setting up the design system that well that you can copy and paste like that. there are many designers who do not give two shits about how it looks in the dev handoff - figma tries but often fails to put them on guardrails to keep consistency to THEIR OWN designs lol

[whymsicalburito]

I'm a little surprised by this comment because both dev mode and variables are the main ways I use Figma. Our design team creates the design and then the Devs use dev mode to implement what they designed. Dev mode has been great for our team!

Is this an uncommon use case?