[HN Gopher] Figma Alternatives
___________________________________________________________________
Figma Alternatives
Author : skilled
Score : 353 points
Date : 2022-09-16 13:27 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (stackdiary.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (stackdiary.com)
| astonfred wrote:
| Nice opportunistic post ;-) Well done. I must admit: I still love
| Figma, even if they've joined the Adobe family (I've just
| cancelled my Photoshop subscription btw, an unrelated move).
| ssharp wrote:
| People rave about Figma but I never really "got" it, compared to
| Sketch. Granted, I'm on a Mac, am only in Sketch for 2-3 hours a
| week, typically work alone and generally use it to re-arrange
| website items and hack up what a new element on a site might look
| like in the current site structure.
|
| The few times I've tried to use Figma, I walk away frustrated by
| the fact that I can't easily cut things out of an image that I've
| imported/pasted in. I thought I was insane at first for not being
| able to figure this out but after searching around, it sounded
| like this is a feature that is missing. The workaround is
| spending way too much effort making multiple copies of your image
| and then cropping each individual element you want control over
| moving. Pretty absurd but this my need here has to be an edge
| case, even though it doesn't seem like one. I suppose if 99% of
| people are designing interfaces natively in Figma and aren't
| using screenshots as a starting point, this isn't an issue.
| goldenchrome wrote:
| With regards to editing an imported image, you're looking for a
| bitmap editor like Photoshop. Figma is vector based and
| definitely made for digital experience designers who need to
| collaborate with large cross-functional teams.
| wly_cdgr wrote:
| Missing both of my favorites....Framer and Justinmind
| unnamed76ri wrote:
| I only recently started learning Figma and it was for the express
| reason of wanting to build apps via Bravo Studio because I'm also
| not a programmer.
|
| Do any of these alternatives have integration with Bravo Studio?
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| Miro is a good FigJam alternative, though not as disigner
| oriented as Figma, more for whiteboarding / diagramming.
| pen2l wrote:
| I like this list, I like that Sketch is #2, and #1 is an OSS
| self-hostable solution, https://penpot.app/ --
| https://github.com/penpot so we can't quite get burned like we
| did with Figma.
|
| From some cursory review, it seems pretty good! And there's now
| effort underway to be able to import Figma files.
|
| edit: okay, I've gotten signed up with penpot, made rudimentary
| sketches, it seems solid and promising. I'm now a fan and I think
| this seals the deal for me, I'm glad that it was an easy
| decision. And I will give them the benefit of the doubt when it's
| not exactly up to par because 1) they seem to be new and
| characterize themselves as still being in beta and 2) it's self-
| hostable OSS and the inherent security of this offering is
| something I value deeply.
| davidjgraph wrote:
| I'm not quite sure why everyone feels OS means you'll have the
| app forever. This isn't true in my experience.
|
| Adobe can buy the company that is supplying the devs for penpot
| the same way it bought Figma.
|
| Sure the source can be reused, but you think another collection
| of individuals will come along and host the project in the same
| way?
|
| You think the codebase would be developed/maintained at all if
| all the original devs left? History says otherwise, from the
| examples I've seen.
| that_guy_iain wrote:
| It just feels like one of those things people want to believe
| no matter if it's true or not. For example, when New York
| shutdown a recycling plant because it was worse for the
| environment than not recycling and everyone protested to have
| it reopened because no matter what anyone told them they
| believed that recycling is good therefore, the recycling
| plant was good for the environment.
|
| Most people here need open source tools to do their job in
| one way or another. They love the fact they don't need to pay
| for it and they can just use it. They've been sold on the
| free software ideogly that it's possible to fork means that
| someone will or they even they will do it. No matter how much
| their employers refuse to open source their code, refuse to
| pay for open source contributors they fully believe that
| using an open source library or tool means there is less risk
| for their company because they can make the changes
| themselves. However, the risk is often greater. Almost
| certainly their employer won't pay for it and they will have
| to look for a replacement. They won't have any support
| contracts that can enforce how much notice they get given to
| find a replacement. The open source tool will most often just
| be abandoned.
| fny wrote:
| I've said this before elsewhere and was downvoted to hell.
| We're about to enter the golden age of bitrot. Software, due
| to its immense chain of dependencies, requires constant
| maintenance. There is _no guarantee_ * _any software*_
| --proprietary or FOSS--will survive unless some human gives a
| shit.
|
| So penpot is a great alternative to Figma for as long as
| you're damn sure someone will be willing to keep it alive.
|
| Everyone has become so used to pulling or downloading
| whatever random software and have it work and creating forks
| like wildfire (just look at how many ubuntu flavors there
| are) without considering what will happen if the devs just
| don't have the time anymore or don't care. And if something
| massive upstream changes like CPU architecture (hello M1) or
| some browser change or some migration to Oauth5, everything
| gets borked in one shot.
|
| Also, what's going to happen when a package creator _dies_?
| The first generation of FOSS devs are still alive and well.
| Will the second generation decide to maintain their work or
| is it easier to rewrite things?
|
| Personally this is why I started only pushing packages that
| have _extremely_ small surface areas (a single function call)
| that I know I 'm willing to maintain indefinitely.
|
| This is also why I became so married to plain text.
| alexvoda wrote:
| The difference is that for FLOSS it is sufficient for
| anyone to care enough (time and money) but for proprietary
| software it is NECESSARY for the copyright holder to care
| and to be alligned or at least not in direct conflict with
| the users.
| zegl wrote:
| Oh, tell me about it! I've spent this week trying to
| reproduce the results of a paper from 2019.
|
| Out of the box, the referenced sources doesn't even compile
| or run. I've been fighting random Python/Java/Scala
| dependencies, using whatever version was the "latest" at
| time of publishing usually works, unless of course, it
| doesn't support M1...
| mrits wrote:
| Having a bunch of small packages instead of a few larger
| ones would be considered increasing surface area in most
| security software. You could do it safely but I wouldn't be
| evangelizing this as a sound idea.
| jchw wrote:
| Honestly, I don't think this is fair. If software is useful
| enough, there are people and other _companies_ that are often
| willing to put in money and resources. For a pure community
| example, consider the story of Jellyfin, a fork of Emby.
|
| Open source is not a panacea. But just because keeping the
| door open doesn't guarantee anyone will bother to use it
| doesn't mean having the door open is not ridiculously useful.
|
| I think there _Is_ a way to tell if an open source project is
| robust against shenanigans:
|
| - The more stakeholders investing, the better.
|
| - Projects with governance and copyright not assigned to a
| single company have a lot less chance of needing a fork to
| begin with.
| mekoka wrote:
| _> why everyone feels OS means you 'll have the app forever._
|
| Your hyperboles aside, I don't think there's much to prove.
| Maintained and long lasting forks abound. Enough to instill
| confidence in the principle.
|
| If Figma was open source, there would be a fork right now and
| a team of contributors forming around it as we speak. That
| and a migration of a substantial part of its community.
|
| _> This isn 't true in my experience._
|
| Could you share, so that the naive optimist could at least
| have some context?
| [deleted]
| orbital-decay wrote:
| With a non-gatekept solution you have two options typically
| unavailable for proprietary software:
|
| - freeze the versions, keeping using it until you find a
| better one. Practice shows it can be done for quite a while
| in many cases (years if needed)
|
| - migrate to the different similar software, or hire an
| expert to do it for you
|
| There were too many cases of wonderful proprietary products
| suddenly becoming ransomware overnight, holding your data
| hostage.
| btown wrote:
| Bryan Cantrill's LISA11 talk on this history of OpenSolaris
| provides a great anecdote for this, and it largely tracks
| your fears here.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc&t=1680s
|
| It also, a couple minutes later, devolves into a hilariously
| entertaining rant about Oracle and Larry Ellison and the
| perils of anthropomorphizing lawnmowers, and it's one of my
| favorite things ever.
| jsrcout wrote:
| That was wondrously great.
| [deleted]
| afavour wrote:
| > Sure the source can be reused, but you think another
| collection of individuals will come along and host the
| project in the same way?
|
| Look at OpenOffice vs LibreOffice. MySQL vs MariaDB. It can
| happen. At the very least it's more likely than if you're
| using commercial software.
| davidjgraph wrote:
| As I recall the majority of the OpenOffice team went to
| Libre, that isn't the point I'm making here.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| The team can take their buy out, work for ~two years then
| quit. And be more likely to work on the still floss
| version after that.
|
| VMs are a thing as well. These are not insurmountable
| issues.
| happimess wrote:
| I think the difference is that if Figma's website goes
| offline, you lose all of your figma stuff. If penpot gets
| acqui-killed, then you can just clone a version that you were
| comfortable with and keep going.
| davidjgraph wrote:
| Yes, just like you can clone draw.io and run that forever.
| Except, until you can't.
|
| Like last week when Safari 16 broke any use of the command
| key on Macs and we received 5+ reports per hour until it
| was fixed.
| KMnO4 wrote:
| The way that I like to view it is this: if I put my
| laptop in a vault for 15 years and then open it back up,
| can I use the software?
|
| Of course, I'll be on a 15 year old OS but the answer
| appears to be "yes".
|
| Not the case with Figma or other hosted tools. Not even
| the case with Photoshop or tools that require license
| checks / internet connectivity.
| throw10920 wrote:
| If you use something like Nix or Guix, then you might be
| able to continue to _install_ and run that very old
| software, even decades into the future, until the old
| repos vanish and the hardware becomes physically
| incompatible - at which point, if it 's important enough
| to you, you may have put in the work to port the software
| forward to new (web) API revisions and browser behaviors.
| Lariscus wrote:
| I don't think that is a good example, nothing is stopping
| you from using a different browser or operating system to
| keep using your preferred application after development
| is shutdown. If you are self-hosting these avenues are
| still open to you; a discontinued online service is just
| gone.
| [deleted]
| specialist wrote:
| Would you prefer FOSS or commercial abandonware?
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| Only solution is a spite company.
| worble wrote:
| >I'm not quite sure why everyone feels OS means you'll have
| the app forever. This isn't true in my experience.
|
| It at least gives it a chance, unlike closed source where
| once it dies it most definitely is gone forever (barring some
| very dedicated and helpful people reverse engineering the
| code, this seems to largely happen with video games).
|
| Meanwhile I'm running Strawberry, a fork of Clementime, which
| is a fork of Amarok, which probably has code from other
| projects older than me in it.
|
| Will FOSS software always live on after the original
| maintainers move on? Of course not, but not only does it
| stand a much better chance, you'll still always have the
| source available to compile it yourself on newer systems,
| given the will.
| iudqnolq wrote:
| Anecdotally it looks like it's impossible to write good graphic
| design software without serious money for multiple employees.
|
| Penpot seems to be funded by an interesting and unusual Spanish
| incubator. That's better than I expected, but still not great
| given there isn't a clear good path to profitability.
|
| Sure it's open source, but there's no way I'm taking over
| development if they stop. That means them stopping their
| subsidy of the open source software is as bad for me as Adobe
| raising Figma prices.
|
| https://kaleidos.net/what-we-do
| that_guy_iain wrote:
| How did you get burned by Figma? What has Figma done since it
| announced it's getting acquired by Adobe that has burnt you?
| djbusby wrote:
| Adobe is the Burn.
| worble wrote:
| Adobe acquiring Figma is like suddenly realising you're
| living on a floodplain. Sure your house might not be flooded
| _right now_ but you better sure have plans in place for when
| it does, and honestly you 're probably better just looking
| for a new house so you no longer have the stress of wondering
| when it will flood.
| HelloNurse wrote:
| Are you waiting for Figma to get an Adobe-style pricing plan?
| The general sentiment is that it was a nice house, but now it
| is burning. Run while you can!
| bin_bash wrote:
| What does this mean? They're both based on subscriptions.
| Don't most designers already have CC subscriptions?
|
| Is it the lack of a free tier that's the problem?
| tonybeltramelli wrote:
| We've been building this design tool (https://uizard.io/) for
| developers and non-designers alike. Defo not meant to replace
| Figma -- it's built as an easier / quicker alternative for folks
| that need to iterate fast.
| d_rc wrote:
| Hehe, is anyone still using InVision? (honest interest)
| greencore wrote:
| I don't understand business model of the company behind Penpot
| (Kaleidos). Their products doesn't offer anything paid but I see
| a button "Invest in us". For me this tells that their products
| will eventually become non-free and only open-source in a way
| that it can export SVG.
| yellowapple wrote:
| > First and foremost, at this time - Figma will remain an
| independent (separate from Creative Cloud) company. That much was
| said in the announcement from the CEO, Dylan Field.
|
| lol yeah right.
| [deleted]
| notjustanymike wrote:
| The number of feature areas where Figma succeeded and Adobe
| failed is astounding. The closest analogue I can think of is
| SpaceX and Boeing.
|
| Figma solved online tooling, collaboration, interaction
| protoyping, design systems, and stakeholder review with a single
| product. Their renderer can handle hundreds of frames in the same
| screen with no performance degradation.
|
| Meanwhile Adobe continues to struggle putting together version of
| photoshop or lightroom on a tablet that people like.
| wly_cdgr wrote:
| Photoshop is a VASTLY more complicated, sophisticated, and
| feature rich product than Figma. It's not fair or relevant to
| compare them directly
| VyseofArcadia wrote:
| > Meanwhile Adobe continues to struggle putting together
| version of photoshop or lightroom on a tablet that people like.
|
| I'm sure there's more to it than this, but Figma started with a
| clean slate. Having a legacy codebase means a few things, and
| one that doesn't get talked about very often is that there is a
| lot of pressure to re-use code even if it would be more
| difficult than a re-implementation.
|
| I've worked on legacy codebases, and it goes something like:
| you start working on a new feature. You realize you need to
| implement some extra detail you didn't think of. You mention
| this in standup, and your manager says something like, "oh, no
| problem, Steve implemented a function that does that back in
| '97. You should use that because the old code already handles
| all these edge cases." So then you spend the next 2-3 sprints
| struggling to get Steve's code working, because his code and
| your code both made some assumptions about the data model that
| are incompatible. It doesn't really help that Steve's code has
| some subtle reliance on global state, so you have to worry
| about saving that global state, changing it, calling Steve's
| code, restoring the saved state, all while praying to various
| gods that it doesn't break anything on another thread you
| didn't know about.
|
| Or it would have taken just a couple of days to reimplement it
| in a way that already plays ball with your data model. Sure,
| it's not DRY, but dogmatic DRY can be a big source of pain in
| legacy codebase.
| kyriakos wrote:
| Adobe XD started with a clean slate but ended up being
| inferior to Figma. Even simple XD shared prototypes on the
| web are multiple times slower and less responsive than
| figmas.
| aikinai wrote:
| Lightroom and Photoshop for iPad are brand new and nowhere
| close to their legacy versions.
| oangemangut wrote:
| that doesn't mean they haven't relied heavily on either re-
| using Ps code or making an effort to shim between the
| various OSs and what they already have for Ps.
| adrianomartins wrote:
| Adobe it's a classic case of Sales-led-development, which
| started to generate a huge organisation that is very slow and
| far away from it's users.
|
| On the other hand you have a Figma, product-led, figuring out
| what's best for users, and kicking ass with a web-based
| solution that IS what designers/devs need. Legends!
| redocecin wrote:
| We can try https://www.visily.ai
| [deleted]
| johnla wrote:
| I've been using Framer.
| anotherrandom wrote:
| Well, there's still Gimp and Inkscape if you aren't afraid of
| working outside of a browser
| pelagicAustral wrote:
| Are we already abandoning ship? I wouldn't think Adobe is going
| to pull the plug or anything too drastic, Right?
|
| Btw, I've been a happy Affinity [Designer, Photo, Publisher] user
| for many years now. Can't even believe I'm still getting updates
| with my years old licences. +1
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| It's the principle, this was the first time in 17 years
| anything threatened Adobe and honestly Figma could have
| destroyed Adobe within 3 years with the right focus.
|
| Figma threw every single artist and designer in the world that
| does 2D work under the bus when they could have saved us all
| and built better tools.
|
| Actually I'd go beyond saying it's the principle, actually now
| it's personal all the money I spent on Figma, all the hours I
| spent pushing Figma in organizations and building our workflows
| around it has just gone to strengthen Adobe's grip on my
| livelihood.
|
| This might sound dramatic but imagine for a moment how you'd
| feel if you could only work within your industry if you used
| VSCode, it was closed source and it cost $60 a month and the
| only chance of fighting against that had sided with the enemy.
| draw_down wrote:
| parasubvert wrote:
| But this is the thing, it's not healthy to see Adobe as the
| permanent enemy. They are a reflection of their people and
| leadership and this is arguably a sign they are a changing
| company.
|
| Your analogy once was true with Microsoft and Visual Studio
| in the 90s. It was the main IDE for Windows development
| (there was no Linux, not really). And it was expensive. There
| wasn't much competition until Java took off.
|
| These days Microsoft isn't seen as the enemy as often. Github
| is doing fine for example. Companies can change.
| ReptileMan wrote:
| Microsoft actually cared about the developers. They also
| cared about the right things from business point of view.
| Their backwards compatibility is and was always insane.
|
| The irony is that Microsoft gave us freedom, Apple gave us
| lockdowns.
| HelloNurse wrote:
| Enemies are permanent until they die, not until you get
| tired.
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| > But this is the thing, it's not healthy to see Adobe as
| the permanent enemy
|
| - I used Fireworks every day in my job, they killed it.
|
| - After Effects was a top 3 digital creative tool ever
| made, they let it rot till it's a janky shadow of its
| former self, it can't even the timeline without audio
| glitches making ANY audio work to animation impossible,
| same can be said for Photoshop, can't even save an image
| without it trying to force you onto their dropbox
| competitor.
|
| - They had the perfect entry point tool for multimedia
| creation with Flash that a whole generation of teens learnt
| how to express themselves online with and they let parts of
| it rot because they saw it as nothing more than a
| videoplayer and enterprise app Java competitor.
|
| How are they not my enemy, we're talking decades of attacks
| on my workflow at this point.
| oangemangut wrote:
| didn't Apple kill flash by never supporting it on iOS?
| maybe there is more to the story.
| nemothekid wrote:
| > _Apple kill flash by never supporting it on iOS_
|
| Apple tried very hard to support Flash on the iPhone.
| Apple flew out Adobe engineers to help them get it work
| on mobile. It was a tire fire and that's why Apple killed
| it. The dysfunction with Flash started before the iPhone,
| and arguably started with the acquisition of Macromedia.
| klabb3 wrote:
| It was already dying. Every web dev in the world hated
| it, and so did most of the users. But the worst offense
| was having proprietary closed source binary that couldn't
| be audited, running untrusted code on end devices. For
| instance, if you're on any OS other than Mac or Windows,
| you'd have a bad time, and often have no option to use
| flash sites (at the time, it was common to build flash
| sites even for simple document-style web pages). It was a
| security nightmare, but it was also a stability
| nightmare. When I saw Steve Jobs announcement I was so
| relieved. It was a bold move at the time, iPhone was
| nowhere near as dominant as it is today.
| BurnerBotje wrote:
| Maybe the difference between Adobe and Microsoft is that
| the latter has kind of proven itself now. In the meantime
| is Adobe very busy trying to separate the Open Source
| version of Magento from the paid version, called Adobe
| Commerce now. There is only one mention of Magento left on
| the homepage, about the name change. And is a link to the
| free version now where to be found.
| eagsalazar2 wrote:
| They will almost certainly experience a mass exodus of their
| top engineering, design, and leadership talent. They'll never
| come back from that. So it isn't that figma will turn to crap
| overnight, but over years it is guaranteed to rot, terrible
| features will start adding up, and adobe will start doing
| everything they can to pull you into and trap you in their
| expensive and crappy ecosystem.
|
| So yeah it's sort of like climate change. Probably ok for now,
| but you should definitely start making moves to live somewhere
| else in the next few years.
| strict9 wrote:
| Just about any time a competitive product is swallowed up by a
| large company that product is left to wither for a year or so
| before riding off into the sunset.
| parasubvert wrote:
| That's just not true. Slack is doing fine. Github is doing
| fine. Red Hat is also doing fine. Etc.
| parasubvert wrote:
| It's mostly independent designers that feel they can't afford
| Adobe level subscriptions.
| detritus wrote:
| Or "Don't want to pay for", which includes me. The feature
| set that I use in my daily driver - Illustrator - has pretty
| much remained constant since CS2 or thereabouts, but I have
| to maintain a subscription solely to ensure that I can load
| files from clients without any concern about incompatability
| or breakage.
|
| It's quite annoying paying good money for old rope for years
| and years on end.
| GlacierFox wrote:
| You'll hate to admit it but I know for a fact that a lot of
| the tools introduced after CS2 have become indispensable
| and allow you to get work done faster and more efficiently
| than back in the day.
| the_mar wrote:
| Like what?
| detritus wrote:
| "For a fact"? Only if you presume to know what I do and
| how I work, I suppose.
|
| I'd not be so bold, personally.
|
| - ed: I wondered perhaps if Smart Guides were newer than
| I remembered, but nup, having checked - they were there
| in CS2.
| cosmodisk wrote:
| From western world perspective, $85/month for a whole suite
| of powerful apps is absolute peanuts if they are used in a
| professional setting. An average carpenter probably spends
| more on tool upgrades each year.
| webwielder2 wrote:
| Since 2012, through the eras of Photoshop, Sketch, InVision, XD,
| Figma, and whatever else, I've been using Antetype:
| https://www.antetype.com
|
| For me, it's been a 10x tool since it was always the only piece
| of software that was designed from the ground up as a UI design
| tool, rather than being some other kind of app that was pressed
| into service for UI design. Auto-layout, responsiveness, and
| flexible components that can be edited per instance without
| breaking their link to the master component are all features that
| were present from day one rather than being awkwardly bolted on.
| lucideer wrote:
| Looks great but seems to be competing with Sketch. Figma's
| appeal was being cross-platform; that's hard to beat.
| yesimahuman wrote:
| I took this opportunity to look at Sketch again and I'm
| shocked they still don't have a desktop version for Windows.
| They are stubbornly wed to their focus on a "truly native"
| mac app despite Figma proving over and over that cross-
| platform is what users actually want and need. Seems like
| another huge opportunity missed with Figma users scrambling
| for alternatives.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Better, Figma proves how Web apps can be good enough on the
| browser by itself, no need for Electron garbage.
| sygma wrote:
| Not to mention multi-player editing [1]. They nailed the
| execution and no competitor comes close
|
| [1]: https://www.figma.com/blog/how-figmas-multiplayer-
| technology...
| gffrd wrote:
| > it was always the only piece of software that was designed
| from the ground up as a UI design tool
|
| You sure about this? What about UXPin? XD? Axure?
| [deleted]
| bottlepalm wrote:
| Do these tools provide the css/js to the developer so they can
| implement the style these tools generate?
| mrcus wrote:
| Genuinely asking: Do developers look at these styles as more
| than helpful tips? Surely these CSS/JS blobs that Figma
| outputs have to be correctly and carefully merged into the
| codebase?
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| I've personally only used the generated code as a starting
| point or guideline at most, because I usually have an
| implementation in mind already and it's more work to
| reorient myself around the generated code.
| psygn89 wrote:
| I've never heard of them but they seem to host a solid set of
| features, and being around since is 2012 is impressive. I think
| part of a products success is its availability on different
| platforms, I wonder how long they have hosted this page for?
| https://www.antetype.com/antetype-for-windows-web/
| alistairjallan wrote:
| Icons8 Lunacy is also quite an impressive and free Figma
| Alternative. https://icons8.com/lunacy
| geesejuggler wrote:
| It opens (and saves) Sketch files as well
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| Might be worth pointing out that this is thanks to Sketch
| publishing specs[0] for their format, making it easy to write
| importers/exporters for. As far as I know Figma has yet to do
| this, so anything that reads Figma files is likely reverse
| engineered and prone to breakage when Figma inevitably
| changes their undocumented format.
|
| If I were searching for a Figma alternative, its file format
| being documented would be a priority because otherwise, one
| is subjecting themselves to some degree of lock-in.
|
| [0]: https://developer.sketch.com/file-format/
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| hadn't heard of it before but looks pretty sweet, esp since
| it's free
| AltruisticGapHN wrote:
| My first thought is... how is this free if it's similar to
| FIGMA?
|
| It sounds like they have basically bundled in a lot of their
| own icons/svg stuff and that's their business model? But even
| then building such an app seems like a huge investment if it's
| just a platform to sell your icons. So I must be missing
| something.
|
| And how does it compare to Penpot?
| mattkevan wrote:
| I have it installed, and while it's handy for opening Sketch
| files if you don't have a subscription, basic things like
| text handling and typography are rough. It's useful, but I
| wouldn't try and actually design in it.
| silent_cal wrote:
| This is insane in my opinion. People are acting like Figma is now
| "unclean" for being associated with Adobe.
| marban wrote:
| Typical HN -- Anything that goes under the umbrella of big corp
| gets thrown under the bus, while everyone dreams of selling out
| one day.
| behnamoh wrote:
| Agreed. Remember HN's reaction to "I don't care about
| cookies" extension being bought by Avast? or BitWarden's sale
| and the many alternatives that people started sharing on HN?
| These kinda of reactions by HN are actually hypocritical tbh.
| exodust wrote:
| > Remember HN's reaction
|
| Who is HN? Is you HN?
|
| Did you add your thoughts about Avast and the acquisition
| of the browser extension?
|
| If you found a common opinion on that topic, perhaps it's
| because data harvesting and selling user data is a common
| pattern associated with similar acquisitions. It's not like
| people latch onto gloomy conspiracies pulled from the
| nearest echo chamber, repeating them in unison, swaying to
| the beat of an HN drum. Is that what you're suggesting?
| behnamoh wrote:
| I'm only part of HN. No I did not write about Avast
| takeover of the extension; I simply deleted the extension
| on my own machine.
|
| At the end of the day, "data harvesting and selling user
| data" is done by programmers. I find it unacceptable that
| some do it and then come to HN to complain about other
| people's work.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| It's almost like there's more than one person on this site,
| with differing opinions. :-D
| parasubvert wrote:
| The classic HN crowd is the one that dreams of building and
| IPO'ing or selling.
|
| The balance seems to be the "government should own/regulate
| all businesses I need or hate" crowd. Which feels like
| younger folks that haven't thought through that endgame.
| mszcz wrote:
| As an argument for what you're saying can you please offer
| some examples of small software companies / products that
| flourished under big corp umbrellas?
| bin_bash wrote:
| YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, GitHub, Pixar, NeXT, Siri,
| Android
| mszcz wrote:
| Thanks!
| strangeattractr wrote:
| This is true, but in this case it's somewhat warranted. Part
| of what I like about Figma is that it's browser based and
| pretty simple. This is in stark contrast to Adobe's products.
| I really hope this isn't absorbed into some bloated CC
| subscription package.
|
| The reason this anti-corporate stuff appears is because the
| point of sale is also the best moment Figma competitors who
| no doubt lurk on here have to throw their name out there and
| convert users.
| chenmike wrote:
| I haven't seen anyone saying the founders shouldn't have done
| this or that they wouldn't have done the same in their shoes.
| I'm allowed to be happy for the founders and also hate Adobe
| and worry about the future of a product I use at the same
| time
| parasubvert wrote:
| Yes of course, but that's very different from "I am so
| traumatized that I'm giving up design as a professional
| interest" which I've seen in a few comments and tweets.
| edgyquant wrote:
| I don't understand why people pretend a few
| radical/obscure internet comments is proof of a belief
| system.
|
| No one is traumatized by this and no one is giving up
| their profession.
| scarface74 wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32850848
| bin_bash wrote:
| It may be the case that _some_ individuals on HN dream of
| selling out but I 'm not convinced those are the _same_
| individuals that have an issue with products being purchased
| by big tech.
|
| Is there a logical fallacy for this? I see it a lot online
| and it drives me nuts. Just because you can point out that
| the general viewpoint of a group might be hypocritical, that
| doesn't mean the individuals themselves are necessarily
| hypocritical.
|
| (personally I have no opinion on figma/adobe, but this class
| of comment drives me nuts)
| jlokier wrote:
| _> Is there a logical fallacy for this?_
|
| I call it the "fallacy of the crowd" and I agree it is very
| common.
|
| I first noticed it enough to give it a name (and then see
| it everywhere!) about 12 years ago.
|
| Not just online, and it's not always talking about a
| negative, i.e. apparent hypocrisy or contradiction. It is
| also used to talk about apparent consequence or
| implication.
|
| E.g. political campaign speeches often use it. "They" this
| so "they" that; "they" this and then "they" that; "they"
| say this yet "they" do that: Different subsets of people
| referred to by "they" in the same sentence or train of
| thought.
|
| It's a great rhetorical trick for persuading large numbers
| of people of something rousing yet wrong.
| resonious wrote:
| Right. Reminds me of a Dan Luu tweet where he mentioned
| people who used to be idealogically opposed to Amazon
| eventually joining Amazon with a nice cushy salary.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Since I am a bit older, I came to realize this is no
| different from the hippie movement in the 70's, whose
| plenty of people ended up joining Wall Street during the
| 1980's.
| parasubvert wrote:
| It is a bit extreme. However they have a history of jacking up
| prices, bundling things that independent users don't want
| bundled, and slowing improvements.
|
| That said, changing doesn't really make much sense at the
| moment, it does make sense to think through the point you will
| change.
| depingus wrote:
| Changing may not make sense, but those getting started might
| want to plant roots elsewhere.
| scarface74 wrote:
| Opposite anecdote. I used CoolEdit before it was acquired by
| Adobe and became Adobe Audition. It's a much better product
| now and is not bundled with anything else.
| vagrantJin wrote:
| If MBAs really are for the intelligent, they'd leave Figma well
| alone and maybe put an Adobe logo somewhere and keep the team
| doing as they did, making money and keeping customers genuinely
| happy.
|
| ...But I have a better chance of finding the 'z' in 'Susan'
| klabb3 wrote:
| You don't pay $20B for a $400M revenue product with 1200
| employees to pay if you're planning to keep things as they
| are. Best case scenario is that they accept that figma is
| superior and let Xd die instead. That said, they'll
| definitely change pricing and spend eng resources on
| integrations with their other crap. Oh, and you'll need an
| Adobe account for sure.
| moomoo11 wrote:
| Not at all. Maybe if adobe didn't have such a terrible
| reputation it would be different.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| Creative Cloud -- need I say more?
| silent_cal wrote:
| The only thing wrong with Creative Cloud is the cancellation
| fees. Other than that it's an awesome software bundle, and
| the pricing is really fair for what it is, I think. For
| example, Adobe After Effects is so powerful that just
| learning it well can be the start of a career.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| The individual Adobe products themselves are quite good;
| it's CC and all the processes it insists on running that
| you can't get rid of that I don't like.
| the_mar wrote:
| For real. Although I do remember how much i hated that
| "flip horizontally" meant exactly the opposite thing in
| Ps and Ai
| kmos17 wrote:
| Adobe has a long history of increased prices with stagnating
| products, the entire creative suite subscription pricing model
| is just so user hostile. I am not necessarily against
| subscriptions, but the complexity of the packages and dark
| patterns of hiding cancelation fees on monthly plans and
| offering reductions when someone tries to cancel is just a bad
| experience. For the vast majority of users core products like
| photoshop or lightroom have not really added any major new
| feature justifying ongoing subscription pricing being the only
| option.
| shabbatt wrote:
| I believe this attitude is local to HN. I don't see employers
| ditching Figma, they are locked in.
| 9935c101ab17a66 wrote:
| On more than one occasion, I've had Adobe customer service reps
| _outright lie_ in attempts to convince me not to cancel
| creative cloud.
|
| For example, I wanted to cancel my CC subscription, and when I
| contacted their terrible chat support (fuck Adobe for not
| letting me cancel it on my own? and they offered me two months
| free. I said no. They upped it to four months free, and I
| specially asked if I could cancel after the four free months if
| I wanted. The Adobe customer service person said "of course, no
| proven". Four months later, I try to cancel and guess what?
| They are saying I agreed to a yearly subscription and I have
| eight months left. I explain that I specifically asked about
| that four months ago, and ask him to consult the conversation
| logs. They insist they don't keep logs and there is nothing
| they can do. After some back and forth, the rep SENDS ME a
| excerpt that supports their argument (the excerpt was taken out
| of context and was meaningless on its own of course).
|
| I immediately pointed out that they had just confirmed the chat
| log of the previous conversation did exist, that they were
| lying, and I wanted to speak to a supervisor. The service
| person quickly agreed to cancel my sub without penalty, said
| their supervisor wasn't available and disconnected.
|
| Single-handedly one of the most under-handed CS experiences
| I've ever had, and I've come across countless other stories
| similar to my own. Adobe is scum.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| Looking around for a life raft is just common sense when a big
| tech company acquires a product you use. Even if you don't
| necessarily jump on it immediately. Odds are _pretty good_ it
| will one or more of: 1) Stagnate, 2) Be closed down, 3) Become
| much worse.
| dual_dingo wrote:
| Adobe has a long, well documented history of screwing their
| users, e.g. with their switch to this stupid Creative Cloud
| bullshit.
|
| It's just natural and common sense to look for alternatives if
| you rely on Figma and don't trust them to be a viable product
| in the hands of Adobe.
| marban wrote:
| Adobe changed/is going to change a lot for the better under
| Scott Belsky.
| psygn89 wrote:
| Any supporting articles that would ease minds?
| panzagl wrote:
| So Adobe screwed their users by making them switch to a
| subscription model like Figma has used from day one?
| the_mar wrote:
| What? Figma is free for personal use.
|
| I have no problem paying a subscription fee for a corporate
| account. Having to fork over $100 a month to adobe for
| personal use is ridiculous. Problem with adobe there was
| never a free tier
| panzagl wrote:
| If you're not the customer you're the product. Figma just
| cashed you out.
| the_mar wrote:
| Ok cool. Still better than forking over 100s of dollars a
| month for CC
| TylerE wrote:
| If you're paying hundreds, you're getting ripped off. The
| full CC suite is $55/month
| skyyler wrote:
| But that's not the point.
|
| The point is that we dislike Adobe and we don't want to
| deal with them in any context.
| psweber wrote:
| Until you need a team, Figma is free.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| For now.
| behnamoh wrote:
| This is HN, where developers diss companies' decisions
| while they would do the same. It's actually kinda
| hypocritical tbh.
| aikinai wrote:
| It's not hypocritical. Most of the comments I saw in the
| initial thread clearly supported both angles. "Wow that
| sucks, but huge congrats to the team!"
|
| Looks to me like most people acknowledge that it's great
| and natural for the company but just feel distraught by
| the implication for users.
| scelerat wrote:
| I really wish OmniGroup had the vision and resources to bring
| OmniGraffle into some kind of shared collaborative editing world,
| whether by developing a web app, or incorporating some kind of
| collaborative, versioned backend for "corporate" users.
|
| It has one of the best overall general diagramming/graph layout
| engines and UI of anything I've used on the desktop and web. My
| experience in the diagramming, layout and technical-ish drawing
| realm includes Figma, as well as Illustrator, Photoshop,
| Pagemaker, Freehand, Deneba Canvas, Mac Draw Pro.
|
| I still love Omnigraffle for flow charts, presentations, UML
| diagrams, and UI wireframes. It's not a 1:1 replacement for
| Figma, but it suits many of the same problems.
|
| But its existence as a solo, mac-only, desktop-only app relegates
| it to my personal projects and I can never use it fully at work.
| vxNsr wrote:
| > _mac-only_
|
| I was trying to figure out why I'd never heard of Omnigraffle
| and then saw this. Makes sense. It's interesting that there are
| so many Mac-only design tools
| xapata wrote:
| Maybe it's time to switch to 1.0?
|
| https://0ver.org/
| parasubvert wrote:
| Not a designer but an engineer that reads designs, and Figma
| really is a game changer. High quality collaborative designs,
| great UX, and rather inexpensive to users.
|
| Exactly what Adobe would need to stay relevant because they're
| usually the opposite on these fronts :-)
|
| I can't see switching being too realistic.
|
| $20 billion is a lot of money. That's worth more than Cloudflare,
| Snap, Spotify, and just $3b shy of Zoom's current market cap.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Yeah, I think the biggest improvement Figma made is that it
| made it so much easier to share and collaborate on artifacts
| from design with the engineering team. The previous process we
| used for taking Sketch designs and turning then into running
| apps was much more painful and cumbersome.
| robertoandred wrote:
| Except getting assets out of Figma is a huge pain. Trying to
| select the layers you need (if even possible), not being able
| to flatten layers into an exported image, not being able to
| compress the exported image...
| the_mar wrote:
| Uhhh what? Sounds like you just throw everything in figma
| file without using artboards or components.
|
| What do you mean you can't flatten layers? Isn't it what
| "exporting an image" is?
|
| You can absolutely compress the exported image, well you
| can decide whether you want to export it at 1x 2x etc. It's
| a bit different from changing dpi but honestly using figma
| for print is rough
| robertoandred wrote:
| Sometimes the artboards, components, or whatever the
| structure in use is doesn't match up with dev needs.
| Sometimes you need things split up, sometimes you need
| them flattened. It's just not flexible.
|
| And 1x 2x etc isn't compression. I want a quality slider
| for JPGs, an 8-bit option for PNGs, I want to explicitly
| set the output resolution, I want to know how large the
| original source file is, how it's being cropped, etc.
| jayd16 wrote:
| I found Figma docs thrown over the wall from designers pretty
| hard to consume.
|
| Perhaps it was just how that particular design team used it but
|
| - they put a huge amount of information in a single document.
|
| - lots of sticky note style additions that were not clearly
| associated with what they referred to.
|
| - hard to search.
|
| - hard to determine what a single unit of work could be. Again,
| maybe this was the team but they didn't have a concept of
| discrete tasking. It was just "here's the giant figma doc with
| everything from p0s to stuff we might not even want"
|
| What are the upsides?
| kgeist wrote:
| Interesting, we have a similar situation. A lot of
| information all at once, hard to navigate, search etc.
| Usually developers are so confused a figma doc is often used
| more like a prototype to show during a demo than a spec to
| share. Instead our designers make screenshots of it and put
| them in a well-organized Confluence document. I don't know
| what's the right way.
| The5thElephant wrote:
| Figma will never be good at dev handoff because it isn't built
| on HTML/CSS rendering, so its code output is awful. No plugin
| or interpretation layer can fix this.
|
| CSS is the language of design, yet for some reason every design
| tool completely ignores it.
|
| Every top feature request on the Figma Forums is for HTML/CSS
| type features. We need a design tool built from the ground up
| on HTML/CSS rendering that has a Figma-like interface. Framer
| and Plasmic are sort of like this except made the mistake of
| wrapping everything in React code with tons of unnecessary
| abstractions that make the HTML/CSS output really messy.
|
| I like the attitude relate.app (now Rainbow) has, but I don't
| see Figma being the final design tool, particularly when
| working with developers.
| radley wrote:
| > every design tool completely ignores it
|
| Figma shows CSS code in the Inspect view. It's limited, but
| not ignored.
| [deleted]
| xyzzyrz wrote:
| Hi, I work on Plasmic. If not React, how would you encode
| composition, state, and behavior?
| rosywoozlechan wrote:
| > CSS is the language of design, yet for some reason every
| design tool completely ignores it.
|
| Maybe for web development, but people use Figma for mobile
| app designs too and those do not for the most part use CSS as
| the language for design.
| ableal wrote:
| For scale: EV maker Lucid is worth 24 billion, and Apple
| recently had twice that in cash reserve. (Looked it up because
| of an unfounded rumor linking both.)
| scarface74 wrote:
| Snap is losing money and doesn't seem to have any path toward
| any decent profitability.
|
| Spotify is a low margin business since no matter how much it
| makes in revenue, it will always have to give 70% to the labels
| - a company with high marginal costs that scales with revenue
| is the opposite of a successful tech company.
|
| Cloud flare is also losing money.
|
| Why would any of these companies besides Zoom be considered a
| successful company that should have a high valuation?
| serverlessmania wrote:
| Can someone explain to me why Adobe acquisition of Figma is
| considered bad?
| atarian wrote:
| Adobe has a history of using dark patterns to keep people
| subscribed to their products such as hidden fees for
| cancelling.
| happytiger wrote:
| So who's up for building a better than it was replacement dual
| license open source version of Figma?
|
| Ironically, we can design the whole thing in Figma.
| moffkalast wrote:
| Anyone seen that open source version called Ligma?
| knicholes wrote:
| Is this a "Ligma balls" joke?
| moffkalast wrote:
| No, I'm being completely serious
| sergiomattei wrote:
| What's Ligma?
| pentagrama wrote:
| Here are some more alternatives with comparisons between them
| https://uxtools.co/tools/design
|
| Penpot should be added to this list.
| hackzornews wrote:
| I think the saddest part of the Figma acquisition isn't the
| possible death of a tool I enjoyed using, it's the death of my
| interest in learning more about design.
|
| I have been an engineer for many years and started to do more
| design work with Figma. I even enrolled in a design bootcamp.
| Figma inspired me a lot and sparked an interest in design.
|
| This acquisition has killed it for me.
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| Despite what Adobe wants you to think, design is bigger than
| them.
|
| Keep at it, maybe read up on physical product design where
| there is less tool talk.
| redocecin wrote:
| That's exactly how I feel. I tried to use some Adobe's products
| but I failed because all of them have a steep learning cure and
| their UI/UX are complicated too. By contrast, Figma made my
| life easier.
| marban wrote:
| Sketch user since day 1, love it. Affinity Designer is great too
| but feels bloated and less intuitive, esp. when you only create
| for the Web.
| evv wrote:
| I really miss the early days of Sketch (DrawIt, anyone?)
|
| As a developer it's been a bittersweet journey to see Sketch
| grow to be so popular amongst designers.
|
| In 2012 I was excited to "buy" Sketch for $50, but I am less
| enthused to subscribe at $100/year. At this point I'm looking
| for a more lightweight and longer-lived solution. Figma is a
| nice alternative but the price is likely only going up from
| here.
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