
Figma 1.0 – Collaborative interface design tool - bpierre
https://www.figma.com/
======
webwielder2
As a designer, I find it genuinely perplexing and distressing that UI design
apps continue to get created that don't support automatic layouts. Dragging
and nudging things around is horrendously inefficient. The one app that does
this – Antetype – has been almost entirely ignored by the design community.

Here's an example:
[http://bendansby.com/antetype.gif](http://bendansby.com/antetype.gif)

~~~
gavinpc
Absolutely. I can't stand precision mousing (or "pointing"). Just watching
that demo makes me tense.

There will always be a place for people who want pixel perfection. I think
that place is called print. Eventually, we're going to let go of the idea that
we control layouts at the concrete level (as opposed to a more semantic level,
i.e. describing relationships and constraints), but that future is harder to
see.

~~~
barryhoodlum
I've thought about this - the existing method of designers coming up with a
couple of static designs ("small" and "large" \- "medium" if you're lucky)
means the developer is burdened with interpreting these static designs and
deriving a set of relationships and constraints between them. It seems obvious
that the designer should be considering how the design responsively "breaths"
at all sizes, rather than putting this on the developer. It's still design,
just an added dimension that isn't present in print.

But how do you give the designer the opportunity to "sketch" but also describe
relationships and constraints? You could use code, but then the designer is
then also a de-facto developer. And having to consider relationships and
constraints too much can lead to those considerations dictating the design,
rather than the other way around.

~~~
pvorb
New CSS technologies like formulas (calc) and variables (or Sass, PostCSS)
will allow designers to do this without programming.

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endergen
Calc is programming.

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pvorb
No, it's just basic maths.

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pavlov
And writing HTML isn't programming either, it's just markup.

To the average designer (and almost anyone else) these distinctions don't
exist - if you write "code" or something that looks like math, its
programming.

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vladdanilov
I want to like Figma but they've chosen a rather limiting way for a
professional design tool, cloud-first and based on web technologies.

Surely, Figma beats Sketch for modern interface design by using retained mode
rendering (although sacrificed some quality [1]) and being superior at science
and engineering.

But it's such an inefficient use of resources that it will die quickly on
complex projects or illustrations. Raster graphics and any processing on CPU
is also a huge pain [2].

Yet it's in their power to make a proper offline app [3]. I hope they'll
eventually choose this route. I also hope they won't be as greedy as Adobe.

[1] [http://i.imgur.com/xWLoTWg.png](http://i.imgur.com/xWLoTWg.png)

[2]
[https://twitter.com/evanwallace/status/673978171180474370](https://twitter.com/evanwallace/status/673978171180474370)

[3]
[https://twitter.com/evanwallace/status/673959396104273921](https://twitter.com/evanwallace/status/673959396104273921)

~~~
ricardobeat
This is what "correct" rendering looks like on my screen:
[http://m.imgur.com/q2BtHnc](http://m.imgur.com/q2BtHnc)

~~~
vladdanilov
Needs to be zoomed out to 50% on retina screens. Better?

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abalone
So you have to store your data in their cloud? How secure is their cloud? I'm
not sure that model works for some companies. Visual prototypes can be really
sensitive data, and each new proprietary cloud inevitably has bugs and
security holes that need to be discovered and patched.

If you could plug in something vetted and thoroughly pen-tested like Dropbox
that might work better. But a brand new cloud is almost guaranteed to have
security holes, and I wonder how laser focused a design tool company can be on
staying ahead of threats.

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ryanSrich
I have to hand it to Figma. They've managed to make this about as usable as
possible. The issue though is that it's still in the browser, and aliasing is
very difficult[1]. I eagerly await a macOS release.

1\. [http://i.imgur.com/C37gGox.png](http://i.imgur.com/C37gGox.png)

~~~
citruspi
[https://www.figma.com/downloads](https://www.figma.com/downloads)

~~~
abalone
Explain? This sounds like a native wrapper on a browser. Does that solve the
aliasing problem?

How about performance and battery life? I recall a blog post from the Figma
team bragging about how they closed the gap to _only_ 2X slower than a native
app. [1]

[1] [https://medium.com/figma-design/building-a-professional-
desi...](https://medium.com/figma-design/building-a-professional-design-tool-
on-the-web-6332ed4f1fcc#.6sh7f5slz)

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josephpmay
Figma is by far the best vector tool I've used in my life. What takes me an
hour in Illustrator I can do in 20 minutes with Figma. (I'm sure if you'be
been using Illustrator for 20 years and have all the keyboard shortcuts
memorized you'd disagree, but I'm coming from the perspective of someone who
uses this type of tool once every couple of weeks.)

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mmanfrin
That is a fantastic landing page. Immediately shows what it is and how it's
used without being an over-the-top display of CSS like half of all the
app/service landing pages out there.

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sdegutis
Realtime collaborative app for designers? Neat! Also glad to see that it does
more than just mobile designs. I just feel bad for the designers who are going
to try to use this with their non-designer customers.

Off topic, I wish I could have scrolled through the page without it causing my
anxiety to flare up with the _constant_ scroll-stuttering. This isn't a slow
computer either, 24GB RAM and 3.2 GHz quad core Mac Pro.

~~~
rasmusfabbe
Is this on the "landing page" (figma.com/) or somewhere in the tool itself?
We're really dedicated to performance and take this seriously.

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sdegutis
The landing page, in Chrome.

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rasmusfabbe
Thanks. We'll look into it.

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sandGorgon
I really hope this gains traction. Linux users are horribly crippled because
Photoshop and Sketch dont work on it.

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dharma1
I wish there was an open standard for layered vector/bitmap files, so it
wouldn't matter what tool you use, and you could pass design source files
around to people using whatever software they like.

Not an end delivery format, but a source file format.

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foxylad
Does SVG not provide that open standard? I'm not a graphics guru, so please
put me right gently...

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bobwaycott
I believe the parent was sarcastically referring to SVG.

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slantview
Historically, collaborative design is the best kind of design. Designers love
when others go into their files and "fix" their work. /s

~~~
intoverflow2
This doesn't seem as bad as a lot of tools touting that as a benefit. Always
have to cringe when I see collaborative design tools pitched where you upload
your work for the whole team to start sticking their oars in as if that is
_ever_ a good workflow.

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Zyst
Naming is pretty poor, a super popular Japanese figure company has that name,
so SEO is spotty. The main site is at 4th ranked in search from what I see,
but every single other result in Google is related to the toy company.

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bijection
What search engine are you using? I see figma at #1 at
[https://www.google.com/search?q=figma](https://www.google.com/search?q=figma)
.

~~~
disposablename
Google shows me [http://www.figma.jp/en/figma/](http://www.figma.jp/en/figma/)

~~~
rasmusfabbe
Try using an "incognito" browser window (without any state about your previous
browsing history.) Google ranks results based on your search history etc.

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drusepth
#1 result for me in the Netherlands in Incognito is also
[http://www.figma.jp/en/figma/](http://www.figma.jp/en/figma/), fwiw. Though
figma.com is second.

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eknight15
"Figma is free through the end of 2016."

Wonder if they will follow the same model as Sketch.

~~~
JonathonW
Would be nice to know what their pricing plans are before I commit data to
their product.

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nnain
Built using React, Redux!

~~~
nnain
Of course there's a lot more tech used in building it -
[https://medium.com/figma-design/building-a-professional-
desi...](https://medium.com/figma-design/building-a-professional-design-tool-
on-the-web-6332ed4f1fcc)

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CommanderData
I wonder how long it took to develop this tool, how many devs working on it
and man hours. Any info from the developers?

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jrcii
Great work! This looks very sophisticated and polished. I hesitate to detract
at all from their good work so I don't know why I'm even saying this, maybe
just looking for commiseration, but in my career I've found that collaborating
on any kind of design work is a guaranteed way to ruin it.

