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It is a vastly superior alternative to Sketch or Illustrator. Used to work in an ad office making ads with Freehand and Illustrator and Photoshop. Figma is a w

by serpix 7y ago

It is a vastly superior alternative to Sketch or Illustrator. Used to work in an ad office making ads with Freehand and Illustrator and Photoshop. Figma is a wet dream compared to tools of that day. Could not have even dreamed of something like it back then.

usaphp 7y ago
I would not call it vastly superior to Sketch. I still find sketch to fit my workflow better.
jjcm 7y ago
This is hyperbole for sure - there are some amazing things that Figma does and I love using it, but it's still missing a lot of things that Sketch and Illustrator have. On the plugin side which is what this article was about, Sketch is leagues ahead of Figma. File system access and native app functionality mean that plugins can go beyond just the constraints of a browser. Even in the web constraints though, Sketch is still leading in the support it has. An example of this is an events API - Figma doesn't have any way to listen to insertions of components and react accordingly to it. This vastly limits the scope of what Figma plugins can do - they can only be proactive, not reactive. Often we want plugins that just work seamlessly, and right now Figma doens't support that. Illustrator on the other hand is still vastly better at what it's named after - illustration. Figma has great basic vector functionality that will cover 99% of your design needs, but little around illustration needs. I'm really excited for Figma and what comes out of it, but it still has a long way to go to catch up. I think it has a better foundation though.
- ljm 7y ago
  I was only really sold on Figma because it could actually read Sketch files. That was an absolute blessing when I worked on a Windows machine. It’s improved loads since then but ultimately I’d still take a native app over a browser-based one.
  - aidos 7y ago
    With Figma’s deep use of webassembly and canvas, it’s much closer to a native app than a web app. Certainly it’s much less webappy than most.

by serpix 7y ago

usaphp 7y ago

I would not call it vastly superior to Sketch. I still find sketch to fit my workflow better.

jjcm 7y ago

This is hyperbole for sure - there are some amazing things that Figma does and I love using it, but it's still missing a lot of things that Sketch and Illustrator have. On the plugin side which is what this article was about, Sketch is leagues ahead of Figma. File system access and native app functionality mean that plugins can go beyond just the constraints of a browser. Even in the web constraints though, Sketch is still leading in the support it has. An example of this is an events API - Figma doesn't have any way to listen to insertions of components and react accordingly to it. This vastly limits the scope of what Figma plugins can do - they can only be proactive, not reactive. Often we want plugins that just work seamlessly, and right now Figma doens't support that. Illustrator on the other hand is still vastly better at what it's named after - illustration. Figma has great basic vector functionality that will cover 99% of your design needs, but little around illustration needs. I'm really excited for Figma and what comes out of it, but it still has a long way to go to catch up. I think it has a better foundation though.

ljm 7y ago
I was only really sold on Figma because it could actually read Sketch files. That was an absolute blessing when I worked on a Windows machine. It’s improved loads since then but ultimately I’d still take a native app over a browser-based one.
- aidos 7y ago
  With Figma’s deep use of webassembly and canvas, it’s much closer to a native app than a web app. Certainly it’s much less webappy than most.