6 ms·

Figma makes 200 fixes and improvements to Dev Mode

131 points by emilsjolander 3y ago

ramesh31 3y ago
Pour one out for the ticket factory devs over there
- graypegg 3y ago
  Are the teams working on Figma known to be like that? I’ve only heard good things about Figma honestly, but all before the purchase by Adobe.
  - kajecounterhack 3y ago
    They're known for consistently shipping significant new features fast, so call it what you want but whatever they do works! What you really don't want is to work at a ticket factory where every ticket is for a new hack that could be avoided by paying down basic technical debt :)
    - happytoexplain 3y ago
      >consistently shipping significant new features fast This is an external result of talent. However, it's also an external result of bad management. From the outside, we can't see how much of column A and how much of column B it really is, until the day we notice superfluous features, weird UX, bugs, and fix timelines on the order of years. Figma did give me almost 100% column-A vibes more than almost any other product I've used, so I was quite optimistic, but since the buyout I've noticed a few bugs/UX-issues of the concerning variety, and regardless of whether that timing is a coincidence, I'm starting to worry that in the end it will just be more business as usual for this piece of software. Edit: Since the buyout announcement. But again, no idea if it's related.
  - jjcm 3y ago
    PM over here at Figma. We don't have dedicated bug teams whose only job is to fix incoming bugs. Feature teams are responsible for their own bugs, so we typically have an ebb and flow of feature work vs quality work. Quality is also pretty high on our pri list for leadership, so we typically don't have pushback if we want to focus on bug fixing vs pursuing new features. Also just FYI, the purchase hasn't gone through yet.
    - graypegg 3y ago
      Hey that sounds more like what I’ve heard then! :) And as for the pending Adobe buy-out… you can’t say it out-loud, but I can: I really hope they treat you folks right, but I doubt they will. Figma is awesome. Probably too good for a company as famous for it’s customer hatred as Adobe.
    - deleted 3y ago
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- deleted 3y ago
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- mvdtnz 3y ago
  Heaven forbid developers be asked to demean themselves by doing such things as fixing bugs or shipping features.
  - llanowarelves 3y ago
    It's clear you've never experienced significant amounts of tech debt that you aren't allowed to fix because it doesnt Excel chart nicely for the boomers higher up who only see things in terms of "something working on the screen" or not. And no, I'm not going to rebel by secretly fixing it silently and unappreciatedly while peers pile on hacks and get promoted for things on the screen. Luckily Figma has a great engineering background as its basis with technical founders, so they can avoid becoming that, but not all companies are like that.
    - happytoexplain 3y ago
      This is a precise description of The Problem with software, and, as noted, Figma has (or had, depending on one's opinion) very good signaling that they are one of those minority companies that are avoiding The Problem. I don't agree with ramesh31's implication that this is what's happening just because the ticket count is large, but it is absolutely a valid concern, especially when it threatens such a superlative product.
willsmith72 3y ago
Figma has been such a cool story, I'm so disappointed that the buyout wasn't blocked. Obviously it's an awesome tool and still getting better, but competition is a good thing and I'd really hoped in 5 years we'd have figma and others pushing adobe to be more innovative and user-friendly.
- waffl 3y ago
  Is it not still blocked, or at least under heavy scrutiny? I would also dread Figma being folded into Adobe's bloated ecosystem. Thank god for penpot as mentioned in another comment as I would need an alternative if Figma does indeed get taken over by Adobe.
  - azemetre 3y ago
    I bet Adobe would like to back out of the deal too, they paid an extreme premium before tech took a general nosedive. I doubt Figma is worth $20 billion in todays climate.
    - paxys 3y ago
      Maybe not on its own, but it is worth that much to Adobe because it threatens their core business.
      - steve_adams_86 3y ago
        Yeah, I saw this move as a general protective manoeuvre rather than an acquisition intended to become a cash cow in and of itself. Figma is remarkably useful and capable. Over the years I've found myself leaning on it more and more for things I didn't really expect to.
    - _xivi 3y ago
      > I bet Adobe would like to back out of the deal too They don't, they already killed their Adobe Xd[0]. Even if it was still around, it was in a different league. So they very much betting on the deal, they don't want to be out of the UI/UX space entirely. [0] - The Silent End of Adobe XD: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36637055 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36637055
sdflhasjd 3y ago
I can guess what's coming next: dev mode will get locked behind the "editor" per user pricing and then it's going to become a pain getting stuff out of Figma. Also, there's an annoying "bug" in Figma when it tries to implement its own hotkeys: I have various Ctrl/Cmnd key combos swapped and hitting Ctrl causes Figma to de-select whatever I've highlighted so that trying to copy some portion of a colour code or whatever with Ctrl+C causes me to copy nothing but thin air.
- 542458 3y ago
  They already announced that in ~1 year dev mode will become a paid feature - 25 bucks a month per dev, or 35 if you’re on the “enterprise” plan.
  - steve_adams_86 3y ago
    $25/mth seems like an egregious price for such an unhelpful feature. I understand it will get better, but at this point... I can't imagine paying more than $5/mth on top of my current price assuming it was more polished. Maybe I'm not the target market. I can transcribe visuals to CSS and HTML fairly automatically due to so many years of doing it, and I can do it reliably and consistently in ways that fit various workflows and other challenges. I understand Figma probably wants dev mode to provide a source of truth and gradually add some show stopping features, but even then... $25 is so much. I already feel like Figma costs me more than I want to pay for it. Their pricing model is really aggressive.
    - radley 3y ago
      Dev Mode is included in the $15 per editor Professional tier. $25 Dev Mode stand-alone subscription is a less expensive option for Organization or Enterprise tiers, which are $45-75 per editor.
      - steve_adams_86 3y ago
        Ah. I feel silly now. Thanks for pointing that out, and I’ll try to do my research next time.
evolve2k 3y ago
Broadly this is great to see and I’m sure the team has worked hard on this. But can’t help but feel like this is a bit of knee jerk reaction to the growth of the much smaller open source product Penpot, that’s received increasing interest and even some funding since the Figma sale was announced. Penpot has bet on making all the controls match the html/css spec as well as save everything as svg, in short having a big focus on making devs first class stakeholders. This feels like a late response following Penpot Fest that ran recently and announced many cool dev features. https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLgcCPfOv5v56-fghJo2dHNBqL9zlDTslh https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLgcCPfOv5v56-fghJo2dHNB...
- alberth 3y ago
  Aren't there network effects to using Figma, that a self-hosted version of Penpot will never benefit from? Just like Github vs open source Gitea alternative.
  - guideamigo 3y ago
    GitHub is too cheaply priced to disrupt. IMHO, Figma is expensive and Dev mode is poor.
  - delfinom 3y ago
    Figma isn't a collaborative platform beyond your own project, it isn't a GitHub, it's for propertiary design of your products. The only thing Penpot has to do is "disrupt" the pricing equation and some businesses will pick it up to save some bucks, heck to even retain independent control.
  - willsmith72 3y ago
    I think the main blockers are the pain of re-learning the software, and migrating things over. Lots of designers have down this already in the last few years from sketch. It's like software frameworks where young designers want to learn the most popular, coolest tool to help find a job, and companies want to use the most popular, coolest tool to help with hiring. I don't think it being self-hosted changes this for better or worse, but they still have a tough task ahead to get a critical-mass switching.
jordigh 3y ago
[flagged]
- 0l 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - jordigh 3y ago
    Oh, but of course. Seriously, though, how did they come up with this name for the company?
iamcalledrob 3y ago
I use Figma to design and then build what I design. This might be a bit unusual :) The switch to "Dev Mode" as a different modality has unfortunately been a bit frustrating, because I can no longer hop back and forth between designing and grabbing "developer" values (e.g. Android ARGB colour values). This means I'm toggling in and out of dev mode for only a few seconds. I wish the Figma team had found a way to introduce these features more contextually, rather than introducing a new modality.
- diacritica 3y ago
  Those "modes" are extremely frustrating and represent a silo-based conception of how teams work. If the tools creates disconnects... the team gets disconnected, that's not progress at all.
victornomad 3y ago
I was an early adopter of Figma. Unlike many designers, I chose not to use a Mac since I'm more attuned to Linux. So, when I discovered Figma as an alternative to Sketch, it felt like a breath of fresh air. Over the years, I've been a fan of most of Figma's updates, but the recent ones have been somewhat disappointing to me. The notable exception is the flex mode, which seems to draw inspiration from Penpot. As for the developer mode, I find it lackluster. Its primary value seems to be in its read-only mode. In the past, I addressed this by copying deliverables to a separate file to prevent accidental edits. Lately, I've observed more and more designers with coding skills or coders with design skills. When I work with people that they understand both worlds, I prefer workflows that incorporate Figma and Storybook, emphasizing code as the ultimate source of truth. I'd like to see more in this direction where there is no artificial barriers between coders and designers...
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wiesson 3y ago
Offtopic but is there a "Figma for 3d" app? (Yes, I'm looking for the 2023 version of Sketchup which was simple and easy to use)
- capableweb 3y ago
  "3D" is such a broad term though, What specifically you want to do?
  - wiesson 3y ago
    I‘d like to „quickly“ draw my house in 3d to test different stairs, with a wall to the kitchen or without. More or less wireframes would be sufficient
- kveykva 3y ago
  Spline and Vectary are both in this space
- spongeb00b 3y ago
  Have a look at Plasticity, it seems to be a bit under the radar currently but I think it’s going to grow well
pcurve 3y ago
While some of these are great, I can't help but wonder if Figma is becoming more and more difficult to use for newer, less technically inclined users.
- steve_adams_86 3y ago
  I think this is why they’re making dev mode distinct from other modes. As others have mentioned though, this comes with several friction points and may actually be more confusing than the people at Figma expected. That’s not unreasonable or anything either. This is a hard thing to do, UI/UX wise, and it’s a complex set of features being added to an already complex application. It’ll take time to iron out, but hopefully it winds up landing nicely like past features in figma have, rather than like I’d expect adobe features to land.
robertoandred 3y ago
It still feels super slow and heavy. And I still get lost trying to find animation prototypes, durations, timing functions, etc
isuckatcoding 3y ago
“Developers go back and fix tech debt and shortcuts accrued due to short release timeline”
ryanwhitney 3y ago
Lots of people saying it’s not for them. Anyone actually using Dev Mode? How’s it helping you? (Not an astroturf; I’m in the former camp myself.)
ajhurliman 3y ago
Can they fix file navigation next? I’ve never been able to figure it out, somehow I can have files shared with me that are impossible to browse/ search for, you just have to bookmark the link.
- lsajdn872he 3y ago
  God, yes!
b33j0r 3y ago
[flagged]
deleted 3y ago
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131 points by emilsjolander 3y ago

ramesh31 3y ago

Pour one out for the ticket factory devs over there

graypegg 3y ago
Are the teams working on Figma known to be like that? I’ve only heard good things about Figma honestly, but all before the purchase by Adobe.
- kajecounterhack 3y ago
  They're known for consistently shipping significant new features fast, so call it what you want but whatever they do works! What you really don't want is to work at a ticket factory where every ticket is for a new hack that could be avoided by paying down basic technical debt :)
  - happytoexplain 3y ago
    >consistently shipping significant new features fast This is an external result of talent. However, it's also an external result of bad management. From the outside, we can't see how much of column A and how much of column B it really is, until the day we notice superfluous features, weird UX, bugs, and fix timelines on the order of years. Figma did give me almost 100% column-A vibes more than almost any other product I've used, so I was quite optimistic, but since the buyout I've noticed a few bugs/UX-issues of the concerning variety, and regardless of whether that timing is a coincidence, I'm starting to worry that in the end it will just be more business as usual for this piece of software. Edit: Since the buyout announcement. But again, no idea if it's related.
- jjcm 3y ago
  PM over here at Figma. We don't have dedicated bug teams whose only job is to fix incoming bugs. Feature teams are responsible for their own bugs, so we typically have an ebb and flow of feature work vs quality work. Quality is also pretty high on our pri list for leadership, so we typically don't have pushback if we want to focus on bug fixing vs pursuing new features. Also just FYI, the purchase hasn't gone through yet.
  - graypegg 3y ago
    Hey that sounds more like what I’ve heard then! :) And as for the pending Adobe buy-out… you can’t say it out-loud, but I can: I really hope they treat you folks right, but I doubt they will. Figma is awesome. Probably too good for a company as famous for it’s customer hatred as Adobe.
  - deleted 3y ago
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mvdtnz 3y ago
Heaven forbid developers be asked to demean themselves by doing such things as fixing bugs or shipping features.
- llanowarelves 3y ago
  It's clear you've never experienced significant amounts of tech debt that you aren't allowed to fix because it doesnt Excel chart nicely for the boomers higher up who only see things in terms of "something working on the screen" or not. And no, I'm not going to rebel by secretly fixing it silently and unappreciatedly while peers pile on hacks and get promoted for things on the screen. Luckily Figma has a great engineering background as its basis with technical founders, so they can avoid becoming that, but not all companies are like that.
  - happytoexplain 3y ago
    This is a precise description of The Problem with software, and, as noted, Figma has (or had, depending on one's opinion) very good signaling that they are one of those minority companies that are avoiding The Problem. I don't agree with ramesh31's implication that this is what's happening just because the ticket count is large, but it is absolutely a valid concern, especially when it threatens such a superlative product.

willsmith72 3y ago

Figma has been such a cool story, I'm so disappointed that the buyout wasn't blocked. Obviously it's an awesome tool and still getting better, but competition is a good thing and I'd really hoped in 5 years we'd have figma and others pushing adobe to be more innovative and user-friendly.

waffl 3y ago
Is it not still blocked, or at least under heavy scrutiny? I would also dread Figma being folded into Adobe's bloated ecosystem. Thank god for penpot as mentioned in another comment as I would need an alternative if Figma does indeed get taken over by Adobe.
- azemetre 3y ago
  I bet Adobe would like to back out of the deal too, they paid an extreme premium before tech took a general nosedive. I doubt Figma is worth $20 billion in todays climate.
  - paxys 3y ago
    Maybe not on its own, but it is worth that much to Adobe because it threatens their core business.
    - steve_adams_86 3y ago
      Yeah, I saw this move as a general protective manoeuvre rather than an acquisition intended to become a cash cow in and of itself. Figma is remarkably useful and capable. Over the years I've found myself leaning on it more and more for things I didn't really expect to.
  - _xivi 3y ago
    > I bet Adobe would like to back out of the deal too They don't, they already killed their Adobe Xd[0]. Even if it was still around, it was in a different league. So they very much betting on the deal, they don't want to be out of the UI/UX space entirely. [0] - The Silent End of Adobe XD: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36637055 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36637055

sdflhasjd 3y ago

I can guess what's coming next: dev mode will get locked behind the "editor" per user pricing and then it's going to become a pain getting stuff out of Figma. Also, there's an annoying "bug" in Figma when it tries to implement its own hotkeys: I have various Ctrl/Cmnd key combos swapped and hitting Ctrl causes Figma to de-select whatever I've highlighted so that trying to copy some portion of a colour code or whatever with Ctrl+C causes me to copy nothing but thin air.

542458 3y ago
They already announced that in ~1 year dev mode will become a paid feature - 25 bucks a month per dev, or 35 if you’re on the “enterprise” plan.
- steve_adams_86 3y ago
  $25/mth seems like an egregious price for such an unhelpful feature. I understand it will get better, but at this point... I can't imagine paying more than $5/mth on top of my current price assuming it was more polished. Maybe I'm not the target market. I can transcribe visuals to CSS and HTML fairly automatically due to so many years of doing it, and I can do it reliably and consistently in ways that fit various workflows and other challenges. I understand Figma probably wants dev mode to provide a source of truth and gradually add some show stopping features, but even then... $25 is so much. I already feel like Figma costs me more than I want to pay for it. Their pricing model is really aggressive.
  - radley 3y ago
    Dev Mode is included in the $15 per editor Professional tier. $25 Dev Mode stand-alone subscription is a less expensive option for Organization or Enterprise tiers, which are $45-75 per editor.
    - steve_adams_86 3y ago
      Ah. I feel silly now. Thanks for pointing that out, and I’ll try to do my research next time.

evolve2k 3y ago

Broadly this is great to see and I’m sure the team has worked hard on this. But can’t help but feel like this is a bit of knee jerk reaction to the growth of the much smaller open source product Penpot, that’s received increasing interest and even some funding since the Figma sale was announced. Penpot has bet on making all the controls match the html/css spec as well as save everything as svg, in short having a big focus on making devs first class stakeholders. This feels like a late response following Penpot Fest that ran recently and announced many cool dev features. https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLgcCPfOv5v56-fghJo2dHNBqL9zlDTslh https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLgcCPfOv5v56-fghJo2dHNB...

alberth 3y ago
Aren't there network effects to using Figma, that a self-hosted version of Penpot will never benefit from? Just like Github vs open source Gitea alternative.
- guideamigo 3y ago
  GitHub is too cheaply priced to disrupt. IMHO, Figma is expensive and Dev mode is poor.
- delfinom 3y ago
  Figma isn't a collaborative platform beyond your own project, it isn't a GitHub, it's for propertiary design of your products. The only thing Penpot has to do is "disrupt" the pricing equation and some businesses will pick it up to save some bucks, heck to even retain independent control.
- willsmith72 3y ago
  I think the main blockers are the pain of re-learning the software, and migrating things over. Lots of designers have down this already in the last few years from sketch. It's like software frameworks where young designers want to learn the most popular, coolest tool to help find a job, and companies want to use the most popular, coolest tool to help with hiring. I don't think it being self-hosted changes this for better or worse, but they still have a tough task ahead to get a critical-mass switching.

jordigh 3y ago

[flagged]

0l 3y ago
[flagged]
- jordigh 3y ago
  Oh, but of course. Seriously, though, how did they come up with this name for the company?

iamcalledrob 3y ago

I use Figma to design and then build what I design. This might be a bit unusual :) The switch to "Dev Mode" as a different modality has unfortunately been a bit frustrating, because I can no longer hop back and forth between designing and grabbing "developer" values (e.g. Android ARGB colour values). This means I'm toggling in and out of dev mode for only a few seconds. I wish the Figma team had found a way to introduce these features more contextually, rather than introducing a new modality.

diacritica 3y ago
Those "modes" are extremely frustrating and represent a silo-based conception of how teams work. If the tools creates disconnects... the team gets disconnected, that's not progress at all.

victornomad 3y ago

I was an early adopter of Figma. Unlike many designers, I chose not to use a Mac since I'm more attuned to Linux. So, when I discovered Figma as an alternative to Sketch, it felt like a breath of fresh air. Over the years, I've been a fan of most of Figma's updates, but the recent ones have been somewhat disappointing to me. The notable exception is the flex mode, which seems to draw inspiration from Penpot. As for the developer mode, I find it lackluster. Its primary value seems to be in its read-only mode. In the past, I addressed this by copying deliverables to a separate file to prevent accidental edits. Lately, I've observed more and more designers with coding skills or coders with design skills. When I work with people that they understand both worlds, I prefer workflows that incorporate Figma and Storybook, emphasizing code as the ultimate source of truth. I'd like to see more in this direction where there is no artificial barriers between coders and designers...

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

wiesson 3y ago

Offtopic but is there a "Figma for 3d" app? (Yes, I'm looking for the 2023 version of Sketchup which was simple and easy to use)

capableweb 3y ago
"3D" is such a broad term though, What specifically you want to do?
- wiesson 3y ago
  I‘d like to „quickly“ draw my house in 3d to test different stairs, with a wall to the kitchen or without. More or less wireframes would be sufficient
kveykva 3y ago
Spline and Vectary are both in this space
spongeb00b 3y ago
Have a look at Plasticity, it seems to be a bit under the radar currently but I think it’s going to grow well

pcurve 3y ago

While some of these are great, I can't help but wonder if Figma is becoming more and more difficult to use for newer, less technically inclined users.

steve_adams_86 3y ago
I think this is why they’re making dev mode distinct from other modes. As others have mentioned though, this comes with several friction points and may actually be more confusing than the people at Figma expected. That’s not unreasonable or anything either. This is a hard thing to do, UI/UX wise, and it’s a complex set of features being added to an already complex application. It’ll take time to iron out, but hopefully it winds up landing nicely like past features in figma have, rather than like I’d expect adobe features to land.

robertoandred 3y ago

It still feels super slow and heavy. And I still get lost trying to find animation prototypes, durations, timing functions, etc

isuckatcoding 3y ago

“Developers go back and fix tech debt and shortcuts accrued due to short release timeline”

ryanwhitney 3y ago

Lots of people saying it’s not for them. Anyone actually using Dev Mode? How’s it helping you? (Not an astroturf; I’m in the former camp myself.)

ajhurliman 3y ago

Can they fix file navigation next? I’ve never been able to figure it out, somehow I can have files shared with me that are impossible to browse/ search for, you just have to bookmark the link.

lsajdn872he 3y ago
God, yes!

b33j0r 3y ago

[flagged]

deleted 3y ago

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