
Drama – Draw user interfaces and create interactive prototypes - robenkleene
https://www.drama.app/beta
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mortenjorck
Surprisingly not mentioned until the bottom of the page is that this is by an
established boutique Mac software company, PixelCut (makers of PaintCode).
This is not an overburdened Electron app dependent on a SaaS subscription, but
an actual, honest-to-goodness Mac application for prototyping interactions.

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littlestymaar
> This is not an overburdened Electron app

And instead this is a Mac-only app. I'd take the “bloated”-but-portable
version any day.

Many people actually like electron because portability matters more to them
than the _purity_ of a “truly native” app.

~~~
rudi-c
I upvoted you because it's easy to forget that, outside the US and a few
western countries, most people use Windows (even design professionals). In
some of those countries, the price point of Macs make them a non-option. As a
result, it's been harder for them to have access to design tools which have
often been Mac-only.

Furthermore, with modern Javascript JITs, performance issues are generally not
easily summarized as "it's Electron". VSCode is the typical example of an
Electron app with good performance.

Performance issues often have to do with specific operations needing to be
optimized rather than some general multiplier. At times, it's been faster than
Sublime for me, because Sublime happened to do something inefficient (e.g.
trying to syntax-highlight a very large log file, whereas VSCode preferred to
bail). I'm sure with infinite resources, native apps can be faster than
Electron ones, but almost never do application developers have the resources
to invest to get that far.

Disclaimer: I work on design tools

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seanmcdirmid
That definitely isn’t true in China, or even in Japan. Mac has a pretty good
market penetration rate for the design field in Asia at least.

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erklik
Asia isn't just China or Japan. India, and other peripheral countries don't
have high Mac penetration.

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seanmcdirmid
But in the design industry? I don’t know many Indian designers, but the few
I’ve met in Bangalore have all had Macs.

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erklik
Even the design teams use Windows. I am sure bigger companies provide macs but
the vast majority will use Windows simply because its cheap and easy to get.

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MPetitt
I usually hate the lazy and dismissive "what's the difference between this and
x" comments, but as a UX/Design focused UI developer, I think I'm part of the
target market for this. But this looks very similar to FramerX without some of
the things I love most about FramerX.

It looks like all the input/output is proprietary Drama stuff. Framer lets me
paste in content designed in Sketch, or import production components we've
already built in React. The end result of a FramerX project can be exported as
a static webpage you can do whatever you want with (host, A/B test, embed).

A designer can start designing a component in FramerX, and I can later add the
logic while retaining their styles/animations/interactions. Then we can pull
that completed component into our component library, which can then be used in
production and imported into other FramerX projects.

I can't critique anything they show on their website, and the results look
great (any attempt to make interaction design easier is a godsend), but right
out the gate as a web guy it seems like a big disadvantage even if it
outshined FramerX as a general interactive prototyper.

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meerita
I celebrate these apps. I wish there were more apps that takes us out of Adobe
world. I'm using Sketch + Pixelmator and I am planning on learning Affinity
Designer too. I will give this one a shot.

~~~
tenaciousDaniel
Same. I'm actually working on my own app in this space, although what I'm
doing is radically different. My app focuses on describing visual
requirements, and the "canvas" is just a rendered simulation. Ditching wysiwyg
entirely.

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ezequiel-garzon
Any previews?!

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tenaciousDaniel
Not yet, still in the prototyping phase, nailing down the core functionality.
But just think "basically chrome dev tools but made for designers".

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philote
How is this better than or different from InVision?

Also, it is Mac only but does not say that anywhere on the site.

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jason-festa
Do you mean Studio? Also, is Studio still being supported? Is it live?

I feel like a lot people felt it was half done? Maybe I need a new build.

~~~
partlysean
Studio is still being developed and is live, though it’s not reliable enough
for mission critical work. Still very buggy and quirky.

I wish apps like InVision Studio and Framer X would focus less on being a
place to do all your designing and more on being a really powerful prototyping
tool. I don’t want a half-baked Sketch replacement.

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flixic
This looks extremely similar to Principle app, even down to how some concepts
are called (Driver for gesture-driven transitions). I’m a big fan of PaintCode
and the quality seems pretty high, but it seems to lack a couple of features
that make Principle a phenomenal app: masks and components.

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PixelCut
Masks are available: [https://www.drama.app/documentation/inspector#opacity-
and-ma...](https://www.drama.app/documentation/inspector#opacity-and-masking)

Components are coming in future updates.

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alexhamon
This app looks like Kite Compositor
([https://kiteapp.co/](https://kiteapp.co/)) and Principal
([https://principleformac.com/](https://principleformac.com/)) melded into one
(both native Mac apps). Nice work!

~~~
jg23
Got to say that Kite is amazing, and it generates Swift code as well!

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tenaciousDaniel
Honest question - do you find generated code to be useful? I've always had a
very strong bias against it, due to the fact that implementation details can
vary so widely.

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gmueckl
How is this app different from Adobe XD?

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WrtCdEvrydy
It has an epic feature: It isn't an adobe product.

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simlevesque
yup. I boycott them since they leaked my best password.

~~~
WrtCdEvrydy
E0F4^DDu2hX&8Hk4

Here's a new one.

~~~
saagarjha
Congrats, you just made that password unusable…

~~~
littlestymaar
Pro tip: add _2_ in the end and it's fine again ;)

~~~
tobr
And now that one is wasted too :(

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tobr
This looks very nice. There’s a _lot_ of competitors in the space now, though.
One thing that makes me think twice is the proprietary output. It’s extremely
valuable for a design process if you can share the prototypes with people
regardless of what platform they use. Arguably that’s one of the purposes of a
prototype, to bring a design to life for everyone involved in the project.
Very useful for user testing (the other purpose) over video, too.

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blorenz
I have played around with it the past day and the product is fairly efficient
with excellent tutorials. I think it would be a capable product to create
presentations with. I haven't had experience with Adobe XD or FramerX
therefore I cannot compare and contrast.

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skelet
I'm not sure if its frowned upon or not, but I have a questionnaire for
designers/developers using such tools.

[https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/2CVHGL2](https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/2CVHGL2)

~~~
rememberlenny
Please share the results too.

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skelet
will do. thanks

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peternicky
Is this strictly for building iOS/mobile UIs? From a quick look at the
documentation and website I was left with the impression this is not for
desktop or web applications.

If those platforms are not supported, is it on the roadmap?

