[HN Gopher] Figma Slides
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Figma Slides
Author : FelipeCortez
Score : 180 points
Date : 2024-06-26 18:04 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.figma.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.figma.com)
| stnmtn wrote:
| Seems like a slam dunk idea for Figma
| jimmyl02 wrote:
| I don't know if the tone selector UX was used by other companies
| before but it is so simple and intuitive I'm surprised I haven't
| seen it more. I wouldn't be shocked if it becomes a standard
| within all the AI tools
|
| Great stuff from Figma, many people I know have already been
| using it for slides and this is a great next step
| impure wrote:
| iA Writer also added presentations recently. Seems like
| presentation software is getting popular again.
| marcinignac wrote:
| Now the question is will there be offline mode that works with
| embedded videos so one can do a proper conference talk.
| tyleo wrote:
| Hell, I'm a dev and I already produce most of my slide shows in
| Figma. I'm so happy a dedicated product is coming!
|
| I find Figma unmatched for architecture diagrams. It's nice to
| have them at my disposal when preparing slide shows.
| flakiness wrote:
| Just curious, why do you use Figma over other slide making
| tools? Just for architecture diagrams, or your familiarity with
| the tool?
|
| I'm not a Figma user and have no clue, and am wondering if it's
| worth giving a shot as a new user.
| ThomPete wrote:
| visual control
| pm90 wrote:
| For architecture diagrams Ive found Google drawing will work
| for my use cases. And if its something fancy, lucidchart.
| IshKebab wrote:
| I would definitely use Draw.io over Google Drawings. That
| sounds a bit masochistic to be honest!
| danielbln wrote:
| Google Drawings was the bees knees 15 years ago, and since
| it is a dead product and hasn't changed one bit today it
| isn't.
|
| We use excalidraw a lot, but my excitement has waned a bit
| there as well.
| IshKebab wrote:
| Yeah I used Excalidraw for a while, but once the novelty
| of the sketchy look wears off it's really a very basic
| drawing program. Not suitable for proper technical
| diagrams (which to be fair it isn't intended to be).
|
| In a way it felt to me like Excalidraw works around your
| diagrams not looking very good by just making them
| obviously not intended to look good. But Draw.io solves
| that problem by just making them actually look good.
|
| The only issue I have with Draw.io is that it can't
| export text in SVG properly - every text object is really
| an embedded HTML element, which means you can only view
| the resulting SVGs in browsers. They don't work anywhere
| else you'd want to use an SVG (e.g. embedded in a PDF).
| https://www.drawio.com/doc/faq/svg-export-text-problems
|
| It doesn't seem like they care about solving that problem
| properly unfortunately. Their "solution" is:
|
| > "Convert Labels to SVG" transmits the diagram to our
| servers, generates a PDF, then pipes that through
| Inkscape, and returns the SVG output.
|
| Jesus.
|
| Aside from that it's an amazing program. A worthy
| successor to Dia.
| freedomben wrote:
| draw.io is pretty good IMHO. The fact that it has a
| reasonably rich set of built-in shapes, and you can add any
| arbitrary jpg or png file to your diagram, makes it
| immensely useful IMHO. I also love that it integrates with
| Google Drive or you can download/upload an XML file
| yourself.
| mulakosag wrote:
| I had never heard of Google drawing until now. Interesting.
| cut3 wrote:
| With the way figma has been rugpulling free features for paid
| ones Im worried prototyping will be enshitefied (or some other
| needed feature) so we can no longer present from designs
| without paying for slides
| danielxli wrote:
| Great way to add new use cases for existing users! Not sure if
| this will bring people over from ppt but certainly many folks who
| would rather continue using figma don't have to leave
| mikece wrote:
| In what way would Figma be better for creating slide decks than
| Canva?
| benatkin wrote:
| Figma components could be used in it.
|
| Penpot has components and is open source and I would like to
| see slide shows in it. https://penpot.app/penpot-2.0
| flakeoil wrote:
| Their landing page does not really show much about this product.
| It looks just like boring powerpoint.
| yoshuaw wrote:
| I've been making my slides in Figma for a couple of years now,
| and having this supported as a first-class flow will be very
| welcome!
| rylan-talerico wrote:
| Figma is already my favorite way to design presentations, but the
| lack of presentation tools like presenter notes has prevented me
| from switching from traditional tools.
|
| Happy that the Figma product team identified this as an
| opportunity worth investing in. Figma's overall product
| trajectory is exceeding my expectations.
| politelemon wrote:
| It would be good to see some demos of what this can produce, this
| just looks like PPTX-light on the web, and the slide templates
| don't really show much.
| hardwaregeek wrote:
| I would disagree. Figma Slides got maybe the most positive
| response at the keynote. Most designers I know already use
| Figma for slides, so to make a first party experience with
| speaker notes and good UX would be understandably very popular.
| dang wrote:
| " _Please don 't post insinuations about astroturfing,
| shilling, bots, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It
| degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried
| about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the
| data._"
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
| politelemon wrote:
| Understood, thanks.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Announcement post: https://www.figma.com/blog/figma-slides/
| mmckelvy wrote:
| This is great. I find I'm using Figma in place of other tools
| more and more. I could see using Figma instead of Word / Google
| docs pretty soon as well.
| math_dandy wrote:
| I know very little about Figma, but if their presentation product
| can (one day) understand LaTeX math syntax and render it, then
| I'll definitely learn it!!
| patchorang wrote:
| Designers are pretty good at siloing themselves. I worry this may
| further silo them as the rest of the business will continue to
| use PPT.
|
| Designers frequently express frustration about "not having a seat
| at the table." It's going to be tough to influence the business
| when using a different tool than everyone else.
|
| Edit: PPT or Google Slides* My point was more about using the
| tool that the rest of the business is using.
| echelon wrote:
| As an engineer for well over a decade, I've never once touched
| PowerPoint or any Microsoft productivity suite, so I don't
| think it's as black and white as you say.
|
| Google slides have been the bread and butter of all the
| engineering presentations I've seen and been a part of. And
| that's too many to even try to count.
|
| I think this depends on what the C-suite was sold more than
| anything. I've never worked in a "Microsoft shop".
|
| Let designers use their own thing. There's no harm.
| beezlebroxxxxxx wrote:
| Interesting. I don't know a single person that uses google
| slides in a professional context. It's ppt files or even just
| pdfs. Designers will whip something up in InDesign or
| Illustrator if they want total control in rare instances,
| though.
| koito17 wrote:
| To add another data point, I can't remember the last time
| I've seen a PowerPoint. Maybe in high school? In every job
| I've had, people used Google Slides, if presenting a
| slideshow at all. Additionally, when designers have
| demonstrated things (e.g. mock designs), they have always
| shared a Figma window.
| dijit wrote:
| Europe (especially germany, or gamedev) is all PPTs.
|
| I sold google workspace to my org and Google Slides is
| what is giving me the most backlash because it is
| considered woefully inadequate compared to powerpoint.
| Especially around brand identity tied to fonts.
| FridgeSeal wrote:
| As a dev, I say more power to them. I support people using
| better tools for things. Maybe if we kept this up we'd all be
| using good things, and not stuck with MS Teams and Google
| slides because little Timmy in marketing chews crayons and
| can't figure out how to use anything but the most basic
| software.
| webdood90 wrote:
| it's possible to make your point without disparaging others
| that you feel are beneath you
| dijit wrote:
| No, some people should be shamed into being better.
|
| I was shamed into using more advanced operating systems and
| it ended up with me having a hugely important and detailed
| understanding of operating system design. This has been
| hugely beneficial not just to me but to every person I
| worked with since.
|
| I would not have elected to do this and not edged out of my
| comfort zone if I had not been shamed.
|
| I was resistant to change otherwise. It is a good
| motivator.
| brazzledazzle wrote:
| Seems like Figma and Miro are converging a bit but from different
| directions
| jagged-chisel wrote:
| Does this export to PowerPoint?
| ffhhj wrote:
| Figma, allow us to do local changes even when files are read-
| only, so we can fix last minute stuff before exporting to svg.
| chatmasta wrote:
| Funny, I was just wondering today why Google doesn't have an
| infinite canvas product. All I want is Google Slides with an
| infinite canvas.
|
| Products like Figma, Miro, and Excalidraw are all great, but
| they're not integrated into Google Workspace like Docs/Slides. I
| like comments, tagging users, auto-completing links to other docs
| with their title, etc.
| dijit wrote:
| Google slides has other pretty major problems for presenting
| things.
|
| Notably if your corporate identity requires the use of a
| specific font, then its not possible.
|
| Figma is a lot better in this regard, but the pricing is
| aggressive for the design part.
| dbg31415 wrote:
| Even when you pay for enterprise, Google support will say
| things like, "Just change your brand font to use a Google
| Font!" It's pretty awful and arrogant.
| dijit wrote:
| I understand a large amount of the technical and legal
| reasons for this, but I agree.
|
| It hurts my position greatly as an advocate of their
| services internally and leads to us having to use
| Powerpoint anyway.
| SkyPuncher wrote:
| They do, but it's not easy to use.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| Google had something called Jamboard that kinda fits the
| description. But Google being Google, it was recently
| discontinued.
| pwthornton wrote:
| All of our serious decks are produced in Figma. Slides and
| PowerPoint can't make a good enough looking presentation.
|
| Internal stuff, quick stuff to show clients, whatever, use
| Slides, but for trying to win new accounts, we use Figma.
| mdorazio wrote:
| Counterpoint: I have never encountered a "designer deck" that I
| couldn't recreate in PowerPoint. Most people just really suck
| at PowerPoint / Slides and, to be fair, the functionality to
| make things look good is often unintuitive.
|
| Just as a random example, most people don't know that shapes in
| PowerPoint are full vector objects with editable Bezier curves
| and Boolean tools available.
| wtf77 wrote:
| How much they will charge for something we can already do?
| yoz wrote:
| At my previous job we used Google Slides, and I rapidly came to
| hate it. Here's why Figma Slides has me excited:
|
| - I use animation a lot, for many reasons, such as keeping
| audience focus on parts of the slide and visually explaining
| information changes and multi-step processes. It's particularly
| helpful for video. Figma already has much better tools for this;
| Google's are not particularly powerful and buggy as hell.
|
| - Consistency. Google Slides will sometimes render the same text
| object with wrapping at different points on different machines. I
| shouldn't have to manually add line breaks to deal with this.
|
| - Precision and flexibility. Google Slides just isn't anywhere
| near as smooth at design work as Figma. I don't even consider
| myself a designer and yet I regularly hit Google Slides's
| limitations.
|
| - Layer/object lists. (Note: I don't see this in the Figma Slides
| demos, but I assume it's available in design mode?) Once you have
| a bunch of shapes on a slide, especially grouped, it makes
| selection so much easier. I don't want to play click roulette
| when trying to select one object from a pile.
|
| (If you're wondering why I'm focused on Google Slides: Apple
| Keynote is great but can't collaborate through Google Workspace.
| I haven't used PowerPoint much, it's okay.)
|
| UPDATE: I've now done a little playing with Figma Slides.
|
| The good news is that it has an object list. But it's only in
| Design Mode. (So it won't be available to free or non-designer
| accounts - that's a Figma thing.)
|
| The bad news is that _in this beta_ the animation tools are even
| less flexible than Google Slides: you can only choose from a
| limited set of transitions; those transitions apply to the entire
| slide, not to individual objects; and there 's no way to change
| the timing or easing. However, "smart animate" is one of the
| transitions, which does a Magic-Move-like "move the objects in
| slide 1 to their positions in slide 2".
|
| (Note the emphasis on _this beta_. Figma Slides won 't be
| considered GA until next year, so I'm hoping that all the
| animation tools from regular Figma will be available by then.)
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| > I use animation a lot,
|
| My personal preference is the opposite: I came to hate
| presentations that use animations. Any presentation that can't
| be presented in static pdf is a presentation I'd rather miss.
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| Animations are essential for presenting mathematical concepts
| visually to help more of the audience follow along. Also,
| rendering LaTeX. Google Slides makes you use other tools and
| only clunkily lets you insert them into your presentation.
| matsemann wrote:
| It's not PowerPoint ala 97 with spinning text. It's
| highlights or a story based presentation where thing unfolds,
| or perhaps interacting with something without leaving the
| slides. Adjusting parameters in a graph. Which is hard to do
| in Google. The end result of each slide could still be
| compiled to a static pdf. Think like a 3bluebrown video, or
| numberphile or something. You don't want static for all kinds
| of presentations, that's hyperbole.
| cornstalks wrote:
| I suggest watching a lecture by Matt Might. I used to hate
| animations but he used them in ways that I found incredibly
| helpful to understand concepts like parsing transforms and
| stuff.
| cantSpellSober wrote:
| There's useful animations--guiding the audience that
| something has changed for ex.
|
| Then there's the terrible animations--a gif of a meme playing
| in an infinite loop. These make the slide unwatchable for me.
| fishtoaster wrote:
| Agreed. I've given a few conference talks and found
| judicious animations super helpful when I'm presenting
| code.
|
| Showing 10 lines of code on a screen at once is a surefire
| way to have the audience either not read/understand it or
| _to_ read it, but ignore what I 'm saying. So I like to
| build up a slide full of code by starting with a couple
| line (eg the function definition), then adding a few more,
| then a few more, and then the whole thing. Subtly animating
| the new line in is a great way to highlight what's
| changing. Double-so if I'm _reordering_ lines. Otherwise
| the code is just flashing from one state to another and it
| 's not always obvious what happened.
|
| Even better, I sometimes want to walk through the execution
| of code. I love having a red arrow highlighting what line
| we're on, and animating it between positions is a good way
| to highlight that we're moving from one thing to the next,
| especially with non-linear jumps (like from the end of a
| loop back to the top).
|
| Animation is an easily-abused tool, but it's also a
| powerful one.
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| It's not ideal to have slides that only work if everyone
| is paying attention at all times. This animation should
| not be used to impart information. You can highlight
| changes in other ways.
| mintplant wrote:
| Agreed with all your pain points. I push Google Slides pretty
| close to its limits for my talks, and it's got its quirks and
| limitations, but other presentation software I've looked at
| doesn't have the same flexibility in terms of drawing,
| shadowing, adding borders to arbitrary objects, etc. So I'm
| very excited to see this problem approached from a vector-
| illustration perspective.
| timr wrote:
| All of the things you mentioned (save maybe layer lists) are
| why I fell in love with Keynote, and wish I could use it for
| all presentations.
|
| Sadly, 99% of my time is spent in Google slides, which is like
| banging rocks together. Keynote's ability to do things like
| introspect into postscript/vector objects and align on lines
| _within the object_ is one of those things that makes you re-
| evaluate how software should work.
|
| I just wanted to praise Keynote, since it gets so little love.
| yoz wrote:
| Wow, I didn't know about that Keynote feature, that's
| amazing. it really shows the extent to which they care about
| visual design as an end result.
|
| I desperately wish Apple's office apps got more development.
| They have the potential to be world-beating (especially
| Numbers) but Apple seems content to just update a couple of
| minor features a year and leave it at that.
| timr wrote:
| Keynote is absolutely the presentation software a designer
| would create, if they didn't have to do it while being
| saddled with inappropriate technologies.
|
| I'm a pragmatist and I understand why collaborative editing
| and web-based "files" won out...but when you use a well-
| crafted piece of desktop software like Keynote it really
| makes you wistful for what might have been. People have
| forgotten how much of a hole you dig for yourself in when
| you have to build everything in the browser.
| yoz wrote:
| You prompted me to try out the little-known web version
| of Keynote on iCloud.com. I expected it to be
| surprisingly good if not quite up to the desktop
| standard, since Apple's front end web teams do amazing
| work. And sure enough, that's what it is.
|
| I focused on animation features and it has _most_ of
| those available in the desktop version, but it 's missing
| a few (e.g. action build effects). It's also missing some
| of the image adjustments. But it's got Magic Move, and
| shape subtraction/intersection[1]. Most importantly feels
| pretty good to use, though it takes a while to load (on
| Chromium). I've no idea if they implemented that inner-
| detail object alignment - don't have an easy way of
| testing it.
|
| [1] https://support.apple.com/guide/keynote/combine-or-
| break-apa... - note the feature about breaking apart SVG
| images too, I wonder if that's related to the inner-
| detail trick.
| al_borland wrote:
| I sometimes wonder if Keynote will suffer now that Jobs is
| gone and the Apple keynotes have gone to using videos ever
| since the pandemic. I don't think Cook ever liked doing the
| live demos, so the videos are likely here to stay. The
| presentations Jobs did were a big driver of Keynote's
| development.
|
| If you haven't seen it, there is an interview with the guy
| who put those presentations together for 20 years. It's
| pretty interesting.
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20210205063616/https://www.cake..
| ..
| toddmorey wrote:
| Yeah it's like slide software was bifurcated: either you can
| actually collaborate (google) or make quality slides (keynote).
| Finally some hope: Figma actually does both of those things
| really well.
|
| I'm also excited by what you can potentially do
| programmatically in Figma. Has anyone ever tried using the
| google slides API? It's one of those APIs where you sort of
| wonder if you are the only actual user or if other people just
| enjoy eating razors to feel alive.
|
| Footnote rant: And WHY Google for the love of all things can
| you STILL not import an SVG into a google slide deck?! It's
| supposed to be web software for crying out loud!
| yoz wrote:
| Totally with you on Google's lack of SVG support. SVG works
| fine in PowerPoint, and Keynote even lets you break SVGs
| apart[1]. It's embarrassing that Google were beaten by both
| MS and Apple on basic web standards support.
| kristopolous wrote:
| Google slides has a bunch of "smart" features, which is when
| things automatically change without telling you in unexpected
| ways.
| mgh2 wrote:
| What about Canva slides? They are both design focused
| howon92 wrote:
| Wow this is really cool
| kshri24 wrote:
| Its crazy that Figma has time to bring out a completely new
| product but has no time to just implement a Dark Mode for FigJam
| [1]. Its been 3 years and counting.
|
| [1]: https://forum.figma.com/t/dark-mode-for-figjam/3147
| maximilianroos wrote:
| Happy to see them making the correct prioritization
| kshri24 wrote:
| Well in that case many won't be using FigJam which is a real
| shame because it is an awesome product. The only thing
| stopping me from using it is that it causes eyesight issues.
| It is not even some fancy feature. Basic accessibility in
| 2024 shouldn't be a big ask. Especially considering they
| implemented dark mode for Figma in 2022 [1]. Extending to
| FigJam is just a few more lines of code. Shouldn't take 3
| years to do this.
|
| [1]: https://forum.figma.com/t/launched-figma-dark-mode-
| theme/229...
| cycomanic wrote:
| What does this add over slides.com, pretzi.com or any of the many
| other presentation tools (for devs there also the many text to
| slides tools like reveal.js, slides.dev, impress.js)?
|
| I thought this space is pretty saturated is this essentially just
| to capture and lock in more users into a single tool?
| jtriangle wrote:
| What it offers is additional market capture, which leads to
| additional data capture for their AI projects.
| bnchrch wrote:
| Besides a familiar UI/UX.
|
| It adds that I don't need to reach for yet another tool.
| steren wrote:
| Figma invested years in this super powerful real time canvas,
| only using it for UX mocks is not tapping its full potential
| bags43 wrote:
| This does not work in Firefox really well.
| barrrrald wrote:
| Packaging on this is interesting - from pricing page:
|
| _How much will Figma Slides cost when it is generally
| available?_ Figma Slides will be included in all Starter plans
| for free or can be purchased for $3 per seat /month on
| Professional plans, and $5 per seat/month on Organization and
| Enterprise plans.
|
| _Do I need to have a full Figma design seat to use Figma
| Slides?_ No, you do not need to have a paid Figma Design or paid
| FigJam seat to use Figma Slides. You will need a paid Figma
| Design seat to use advanced design tools in Figma Slides.
| Aerbil313 wrote:
| Meanwhile, I use typesetting (Typst) to create slides. I know I
| should just dump it and use Google Slides but I just can't help
| myself, as a hacker in spirit. Take a look at one of my school
| project presentations, Hypnotherapist-GPT:
| https://typst.app/project/r-gKDYaSo4KvbEJo-LNYTV
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(page generated 2024-06-26 23:00 UTC)