5 ms·

This will allow Sketch to kick Figma's ass as soon as they solve their online multi-user editing

pantulis 6y ago
Ben’s blow at Sketch seemed a little excessive to me, but that is the painful path that Evernote has decided to follow to survive. Although the target market is designers and sketch is not multi platform, being full native is hard.
- gammarator 6y ago
  Unfortunately Evernote has destroyed its performance by doing so. The Evernote support boards are full of angry paying users figuring out how to downgrade versions and discussing alternatives.
  - pantulis 6y ago
    Don’t tell me... I am a paying EN customer. Although I find that the biggest performance impact is not Electron but that now you don’t have a local database and a lot of requests are going through the network before the caching mechanisms kick in. In my opinion, it’s the correct move to make but incredibly hard. Now they have launched v10 they have at most and additionaa billing cycle (12 months) to start cranking out compelling features and polishing the product. My concern with EN is that they bleed so many paying users that they end being unsustainable. Time will tell.
save_ferris 6y ago
Not if the design community fully embraces Figma and opts not to go back to sketch. I'm already seeing this transition at my company, and I have a hard time seeing management OKing a switch back to Sketch once they iron out their collab issues.
Etheryte 6y ago
As a developer on the receiving end of designs, in my experience, performance isn't really a discussion point as long as it isn't abysmal. Figma hits it out of the park in every way in user experience, functionality, deliverables, and more. This is a personal and very subjective opinion, but Sketch doesn't feel even remotely close to achieving the same level of quality.
- wdb 6y ago
  Personally, the user experience is bad in Figma, as each time it wants me to login in the browser while using the Figma desktop app. Every time you start up the app :( Also requires me have a working internet to be able to use it. Sketch or Affinity Designer don't have these problems. I hope they will fix that problem with Figma.
  - kitsunesoba 6y ago
    Being so strongly tethered to the web is absolutely Figma's achilles's heel. Well that, and its needless Electron wrapping for its desktop version. Its file format not being open and well documented (unlike the Sketch file format) is also concerning to me. So if they… - Add a full offline mode - Ditch Electron for a more focused/lightweight webassembly+canvas implementation - Open and document their file format to allay lockin concerns …I'd be much more inclined to use it instead of Sketch.
    - applecrazy 6y ago
      > - Ditch Electron for a more focused/lightweight webassembly+canvas implementation Actually, that's exactly how Figma is built—their desktop app just wraps their web version while hooking into file system APIs provided by Electron/NodeJS. See https://www.figma.com/blog/webassembly-cut-figmas-load-time-by-3x/ https://www.figma.com/blog/webassembly-cut-figmas-load-time-....
      - kitsunesoba 6y ago
        Sorry, I used ambiguous language. What I was suggesting was replacing Electron with a standalone webassembly+canvas engine, since much of Chromium is redundant in this particular case.
notsureaboutpg 6y ago
Sketch will lose to Figma as long as it is not cross-platform. It's as simple as that.
alexashka 6y ago
As someone who works on multi-user editing - Sketch will not be 'solving' it without a damn near complete re-write and neither will any other piece of software that didn't build a foundation that supports multi-user editing from the start. For a user, it may seem like 'why can't they just add sync', for a programmer, it's a little more complicated :)
pier25 6y ago
It won't because Sketch is still macOS exclusive. Figma can be used even in a Chromebook.
flixic 6y ago
UI designer here, migrated from Sketch (used for about 5 years) to Figma. I'm happy to celebrate Sketch as a great Mac app, and I still keep it in the dock for short tasks, but I'm not looking back. Figma won me over. And it's not just Figma's collaborative features. Figma made fundamentally better decisions about design tool feature set. Better vector editor. Better concept of "symbol" as a component. Much better approach to auto-layout. Much better approach to shared colors / text styles. At every step, Figma is just a better designed design tool. And a large part of why it's taking the design world by storm is exactly that. Most design work is done alone, not collaboratively dragging elements on the screen. Figma is just a great tool. Sketch is trying to catch up, but they would need to modify a LOT of their past decisions to get to the spot Figma is at.
- nbzso 6y ago
  I am reading all this Figma talk in utter disbelief. Actually in my view Sketch never had a chance to replace Illustrator or Affinity Designer. Figma? For collaboration if use case is demanding it may be. But suddenly UI design field is filled with decorators doing boxes with drop shadow but having "Designer"opinions. May be I am in mostly silent minority of professionals that don't search and prize tools over essential skills. As a designer your work must be detached of workflow sentiments. Tools are tools. Nothing more. I can make a great UI with Inkscape any day I want. I can implement and test it in pure HTML/CSS prototype. So what? On Apple and cloud computing in general. I like owning things, call me old-fashioned, boomer, or whatever. When I own a piece of software, I can use it without someone logging my mouse and keyboard, without fear of losing internet connection. Is this a small thing to behold?
  - flixic 6y ago
    That's quite a rant, so I'll pick out probably the core message: As a designer your work must be detached of workflow sentiments. Tools are tools. Nothing more. I can make a great UI with Inkscape any day I want. As software development is changing, UI design tools are changing. Inkscape has no concept of Symbols or Auto-layout. Sure, you CAN establish a design system in Inkscape, but it will be mostly copy-paste and lots of resizing. Figma takes this a step further. Design components can be connected to JS components using Storybooks. Localization can be automatically applied to designs, and elements will automatically adjust because of a powerful, flexbox-like auto-layout. Sure, you CAN make the same design using Inkscape. But Figma enables previously impossible workflows and makes the end result -- user experience with product -- better.
whywhywhywhy 6y ago
Don't underestimate Figma's engineering team, what they have built is astonishing and they're working at a much lower level than Sketch's team.
poof_he_is_gone 6y ago
I switched my team from Sketch to Figma. I was able to replace 4 software tools with one (Sketch, Zeplin, InVision, Box). It doesn't do everything as well as the others, but it does them well enough. I have been managing co-located design teams since before Covid. The mix of visibility into my design teams work, the capabilities of sharing components and libraries, and the ability to easily share work across product and engineering has made a huge impact. My team's work is more transparent, up to date, and we can iterate together more easily.

Ben’s blow at Sketch seemed a little excessive to me, but that is the painful path that Evernote has decided to follow to survive. Although the target market is designers and sketch is not multi platform, being full native is hard.

gammarator 6y ago
Unfortunately Evernote has destroyed its performance by doing so. The Evernote support boards are full of angry paying users figuring out how to downgrade versions and discussing alternatives.
- pantulis 6y ago
  Don’t tell me... I am a paying EN customer. Although I find that the biggest performance impact is not Electron but that now you don’t have a local database and a lot of requests are going through the network before the caching mechanisms kick in. In my opinion, it’s the correct move to make but incredibly hard. Now they have launched v10 they have at most and additionaa billing cycle (12 months) to start cranking out compelling features and polishing the product. My concern with EN is that they bleed so many paying users that they end being unsustainable. Time will tell.

save_ferris 6y ago

Not if the design community fully embraces Figma and opts not to go back to sketch. I'm already seeing this transition at my company, and I have a hard time seeing management OKing a switch back to Sketch once they iron out their collab issues.

Etheryte 6y ago

As a developer on the receiving end of designs, in my experience, performance isn't really a discussion point as long as it isn't abysmal. Figma hits it out of the park in every way in user experience, functionality, deliverables, and more. This is a personal and very subjective opinion, but Sketch doesn't feel even remotely close to achieving the same level of quality.

wdb 6y ago
Personally, the user experience is bad in Figma, as each time it wants me to login in the browser while using the Figma desktop app. Every time you start up the app :( Also requires me have a working internet to be able to use it. Sketch or Affinity Designer don't have these problems. I hope they will fix that problem with Figma.
- kitsunesoba 6y ago
  Being so strongly tethered to the web is absolutely Figma's achilles's heel. Well that, and its needless Electron wrapping for its desktop version. Its file format not being open and well documented (unlike the Sketch file format) is also concerning to me. So if they… - Add a full offline mode - Ditch Electron for a more focused/lightweight webassembly+canvas implementation - Open and document their file format to allay lockin concerns …I'd be much more inclined to use it instead of Sketch.
  - applecrazy 6y ago
    > - Ditch Electron for a more focused/lightweight webassembly+canvas implementation Actually, that's exactly how Figma is built—their desktop app just wraps their web version while hooking into file system APIs provided by Electron/NodeJS. See https://www.figma.com/blog/webassembly-cut-figmas-load-time-by-3x/ https://www.figma.com/blog/webassembly-cut-figmas-load-time-....
    - kitsunesoba 6y ago
      Sorry, I used ambiguous language. What I was suggesting was replacing Electron with a standalone webassembly+canvas engine, since much of Chromium is redundant in this particular case.

notsureaboutpg 6y ago

Sketch will lose to Figma as long as it is not cross-platform. It's as simple as that.

alexashka 6y ago

As someone who works on multi-user editing - Sketch will not be 'solving' it without a damn near complete re-write and neither will any other piece of software that didn't build a foundation that supports multi-user editing from the start. For a user, it may seem like 'why can't they just add sync', for a programmer, it's a little more complicated :)

pier25 6y ago

It won't because Sketch is still macOS exclusive. Figma can be used even in a Chromebook.

flixic 6y ago

UI designer here, migrated from Sketch (used for about 5 years) to Figma. I'm happy to celebrate Sketch as a great Mac app, and I still keep it in the dock for short tasks, but I'm not looking back. Figma won me over. And it's not just Figma's collaborative features. Figma made fundamentally better decisions about design tool feature set. Better vector editor. Better concept of "symbol" as a component. Much better approach to auto-layout. Much better approach to shared colors / text styles. At every step, Figma is just a better designed design tool. And a large part of why it's taking the design world by storm is exactly that. Most design work is done alone, not collaboratively dragging elements on the screen. Figma is just a great tool. Sketch is trying to catch up, but they would need to modify a LOT of their past decisions to get to the spot Figma is at.

nbzso 6y ago
I am reading all this Figma talk in utter disbelief. Actually in my view Sketch never had a chance to replace Illustrator or Affinity Designer. Figma? For collaboration if use case is demanding it may be. But suddenly UI design field is filled with decorators doing boxes with drop shadow but having "Designer"opinions. May be I am in mostly silent minority of professionals that don't search and prize tools over essential skills. As a designer your work must be detached of workflow sentiments. Tools are tools. Nothing more. I can make a great UI with Inkscape any day I want. I can implement and test it in pure HTML/CSS prototype. So what? On Apple and cloud computing in general. I like owning things, call me old-fashioned, boomer, or whatever. When I own a piece of software, I can use it without someone logging my mouse and keyboard, without fear of losing internet connection. Is this a small thing to behold?
- flixic 6y ago
  That's quite a rant, so I'll pick out probably the core message: As a designer your work must be detached of workflow sentiments. Tools are tools. Nothing more. I can make a great UI with Inkscape any day I want. As software development is changing, UI design tools are changing. Inkscape has no concept of Symbols or Auto-layout. Sure, you CAN establish a design system in Inkscape, but it will be mostly copy-paste and lots of resizing. Figma takes this a step further. Design components can be connected to JS components using Storybooks. Localization can be automatically applied to designs, and elements will automatically adjust because of a powerful, flexbox-like auto-layout. Sure, you CAN make the same design using Inkscape. But Figma enables previously impossible workflows and makes the end result -- user experience with product -- better.

whywhywhywhy 6y ago

Don't underestimate Figma's engineering team, what they have built is astonishing and they're working at a much lower level than Sketch's team.

poof_he_is_gone 6y ago

I switched my team from Sketch to Figma. I was able to replace 4 software tools with one (Sketch, Zeplin, InVision, Box). It doesn't do everything as well as the others, but it does them well enough. I have been managing co-located design teams since before Covid. The mix of visibility into my design teams work, the capabilities of sharing components and libraries, and the ability to easily share work across product and engineering has made a huge impact. My team's work is more transparent, up to date, and we can iterate together more easily.