4 ms·

What is the fascination with Figma? Maybe my expectations are just wrong, but as long that it cannot generate reusable HTML templates and CSS from the mock-ups

What is the fascination with Figma? Maybe my expectations are just wrong, but as long that it cannot generate reusable HTML templates and CSS from the mock-ups it's just a fancy Microsoft Publisher which doesn't make life easier for anyone but designers. If anything it only serves to move designers further away from the developers doing the implementation. Am I just holding it wrong?

schpaencoder 3y ago
I feel the same
pavi2410 3y ago
You are not wrong. Designer-developer handoff isn't smooth. Use of hard-coded pixel values throughout is difficult to get around. They even made the Dev mode a paid feature last I remember.
Folcon 3y ago
You're sort of missing the point? On that axis it's bad, on the axis of designers and people who value visual tools like that it's productivity and ease of use is off the charts, the number of people who I know jump on and find using the tool frankly joyful surprises me at times. It's executed very well for what it's doing, the fact that you can't export the outputs into code is in some sense incidental, because it's not a requirement that anyone I know who uses it cares much about.
nicoburns 3y ago
It's much better than publisher or photoshop for creating UI designs because it allows you to create reusable components that adjust properly when you resize them, etc. That's incredibly useful even if the output format is a flat png.
notpastori 3y ago
> doesn't make life easier for anyone but designers It may sound crazy to a developer, but Figma is a design tool for designers whose features and workflows respond to the needs of, indeed, designers.
- wordofx 3y ago
  Designers sure do seem to complain about figma a lot tho.
  - sgraz 3y ago
    Designer here. They really shouldn't because it is de facto the industry standard and no other software even comes close. Why do you think Adobe was willing to buy it for 20B
  - thiht 3y ago
    Do they? The designers I’ve worked with all absolutely loved Figma.
    - wordofx 3y ago
      Designers I’ve worked with love it. But they complain about it all the time.
      - thiht 3y ago
        Seems about right! Do you even love a tool if you don’t complain about it?
  - Lalabadie 3y ago
    Designer here. I have lots of things I can point out for Figma to address or change, but the reason I have these off the top of my head is: - out of all tools, I picked Figma as clearly the best for UI design - I've used it enough that I run into multiple edge cases and limitations - it's my job to identify such limitations and document how they might be addressed by changing the product. Addressing the root comment, Figma is a design tool with basic prototyping offered, it's not not a prototyping or web publishing tool. It's why it's not judged as a Frontosge (or rather 25 years later, Webflow) alternative.
  - Yaina 3y ago
    Doesn't ever profession complain about the tools they use?
nayroclade 3y ago
No skilled engineer I've met has had any issue turning a Figma design into a HTML/CSS. That's their job. If someone protested that they couldn't reproduce a Figma design without it spitting out HTML/CSS for them, that would be a serious red flag about their abilities.
- nxicvyvy 3y ago
  I have no problem hacking up some figma design in html / react. The problem is that it isn't reusable, it isn't clean components, styles are copy pasted from figma to the component and unlined with BEM. The problem isn't a skill issue on my end, I could build it cleanly, I just don't know why I would when the other 1200 engineers I work with don't have any incentive to do so. Figma is a shit version of Dreamweaver, a html based WYSIWYG from the 00s.
  - nkmnz 3y ago
    figma has a perfectly capable component system, so maybe the fault is on the side of your designer not caring about your component needs.
    - joerick 3y ago
      If a project is really mature, reusable components in design tools can work. But for early stage stuff, they can quickly prove more trouble than they're worth. The designer's job is to think creatively, on behalf of the user, through the entire system, the states, the transitions. Faffing around with reusable components gets in the way of the right kind of thought, IMHO. It's like the design version of big complex class hierarchies. Done too early, they will really slow you down.
      - nkmnz 3y ago
        I completely agree. But I've replied to someone who's been complaining that they don't get reusable components "from figma" when, in fact, it's the designers choice to not do that (for whatever good or bad reason).
doix 3y ago
Eh, it's a pretty huge step forward from working with PSD's and trying to convert them to designs. I guess it depends on your designers and how closely you work with them to make sure the Figma designs make sense. But for us (at Kitemaker), we designed a bunch of parameterized components in Figma and then implemented them in code so that they match up. Then when there's a screen with a button, I can click the button in Figma, see the properties and convert it to React. It's pretty quick If you're using flex for your layouts, it matches pretty well with Figma's auto-layout stuff. So you can click on a container and see that it's a flex row with some padding and justify-content center. When I start seeing components in a bunch of nested containers, I know I need to pay attention, because just doing the usual flex stuff will result in things that don't quite line up due to whatever. You can define a bunch of colors in Figma and have them matchup in code. So when I see something is gray10, I know I use var(--gray10) in code. There are probably more things that I take for granted that I can't think of off the top of my head. That being said, it's not a magic bullet. If the designs don't have reusable components, with standard colors and everything is laid out by hand with specific pixel values instead of auto layout, then it's probably the same as just designing from a PSD. Fuck devmode though. I don't get it, as far as I can tell they just took functionality that existed before and split it into two tabs so I'm constantly clicking between them to find what I'm looking for. I get that there's some pricing thing or whatever, but I would honestly just rather pay more for the old interface. tl;dr I like it, I think it's a step forward from the PSD days. Maybe your designer is holding it wrong, maybe you are holding it wrong or maybe it's just not for you.
zarzavat 3y ago
> If anything it only serves to move designers further away from the developers doing the implementation. Given the quality of many developer-designed UIs this can only be a good thing. Developers often prioritize implementation expedience over user experience. A lot of developers think that “clean code” is as important or more important than user experience. The job of a designer is to tell them that they’re wrong.
- emayljames 3y ago
  As a dev I second this. Dev's are usually far removed from any knowledge of design, hopefully that changes.
  - croes 3y ago
    And designers seem to be far removed from perfomance of smartphones and download speed.
    - mark38848 3y ago
      What? Smartphones are faster than computers from a few years ago. Smartphones have been running Fortnite since at least 2018. I really wonder what your designers ask from you that is more demanding than that.
      - croes 3y ago
        Smartphones are faster but the web apps are still slow or even worse, slower. Many useless design elements drain the battery and take time to render. Fortnite isn't a web app and I doubt that Figma was used by the game designers.
- littlestymaar 3y ago
  Both as right, and wrong at the same time: developers have the knowledge of what's needed to run the service, and they know that if you make things too complicated it will be too costly to maintain and the organization will grind to halt. But the designers have the view of the users and they know that if the product is too unergonomic to use, there won't be any users to pay the bills. Both need to understand the other's POV in order to ship sustainable software that is actually used.
bbx 3y ago
I'm both a designer and developer, and even as a design-only tool, Figma is superior to all other web design apps I've used. Things like auto layout, component variants, nested instances, global variables… are just fantastic to use. It's really well thought out and still incredibly performant. The only other tool that was close is Sketch, but the Figma experience is just better in every sense. I only wish I could use it offline.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

schpaencoder 3y ago

I feel the same

pavi2410 3y ago

You are not wrong. Designer-developer handoff isn't smooth. Use of hard-coded pixel values throughout is difficult to get around. They even made the Dev mode a paid feature last I remember.

Folcon 3y ago

You're sort of missing the point? On that axis it's bad, on the axis of designers and people who value visual tools like that it's productivity and ease of use is off the charts, the number of people who I know jump on and find using the tool frankly joyful surprises me at times. It's executed very well for what it's doing, the fact that you can't export the outputs into code is in some sense incidental, because it's not a requirement that anyone I know who uses it cares much about.

nicoburns 3y ago

It's much better than publisher or photoshop for creating UI designs because it allows you to create reusable components that adjust properly when you resize them, etc. That's incredibly useful even if the output format is a flat png.

notpastori 3y ago

> doesn't make life easier for anyone but designers It may sound crazy to a developer, but Figma is a design tool for designers whose features and workflows respond to the needs of, indeed, designers.

wordofx 3y ago
Designers sure do seem to complain about figma a lot tho.
- sgraz 3y ago
  Designer here. They really shouldn't because it is de facto the industry standard and no other software even comes close. Why do you think Adobe was willing to buy it for 20B
- thiht 3y ago
  Do they? The designers I’ve worked with all absolutely loved Figma.
  - wordofx 3y ago
    Designers I’ve worked with love it. But they complain about it all the time.
    - thiht 3y ago
      Seems about right! Do you even love a tool if you don’t complain about it?
- Lalabadie 3y ago
  Designer here. I have lots of things I can point out for Figma to address or change, but the reason I have these off the top of my head is: - out of all tools, I picked Figma as clearly the best for UI design - I've used it enough that I run into multiple edge cases and limitations - it's my job to identify such limitations and document how they might be addressed by changing the product. Addressing the root comment, Figma is a design tool with basic prototyping offered, it's not not a prototyping or web publishing tool. It's why it's not judged as a Frontosge (or rather 25 years later, Webflow) alternative.
- Yaina 3y ago
  Doesn't ever profession complain about the tools they use?

nayroclade 3y ago

No skilled engineer I've met has had any issue turning a Figma design into a HTML/CSS. That's their job. If someone protested that they couldn't reproduce a Figma design without it spitting out HTML/CSS for them, that would be a serious red flag about their abilities.

nxicvyvy 3y ago
I have no problem hacking up some figma design in html / react. The problem is that it isn't reusable, it isn't clean components, styles are copy pasted from figma to the component and unlined with BEM. The problem isn't a skill issue on my end, I could build it cleanly, I just don't know why I would when the other 1200 engineers I work with don't have any incentive to do so. Figma is a shit version of Dreamweaver, a html based WYSIWYG from the 00s.
- nkmnz 3y ago
  figma has a perfectly capable component system, so maybe the fault is on the side of your designer not caring about your component needs.
  - joerick 3y ago
    If a project is really mature, reusable components in design tools can work. But for early stage stuff, they can quickly prove more trouble than they're worth. The designer's job is to think creatively, on behalf of the user, through the entire system, the states, the transitions. Faffing around with reusable components gets in the way of the right kind of thought, IMHO. It's like the design version of big complex class hierarchies. Done too early, they will really slow you down.
    - nkmnz 3y ago
      I completely agree. But I've replied to someone who's been complaining that they don't get reusable components "from figma" when, in fact, it's the designers choice to not do that (for whatever good or bad reason).

doix 3y ago

Eh, it's a pretty huge step forward from working with PSD's and trying to convert them to designs. I guess it depends on your designers and how closely you work with them to make sure the Figma designs make sense. But for us (at Kitemaker), we designed a bunch of parameterized components in Figma and then implemented them in code so that they match up. Then when there's a screen with a button, I can click the button in Figma, see the properties and convert it to React. It's pretty quick If you're using flex for your layouts, it matches pretty well with Figma's auto-layout stuff. So you can click on a container and see that it's a flex row with some padding and justify-content center. When I start seeing components in a bunch of nested containers, I know I need to pay attention, because just doing the usual flex stuff will result in things that don't quite line up due to whatever. You can define a bunch of colors in Figma and have them matchup in code. So when I see something is gray10, I know I use var(--gray10) in code. There are probably more things that I take for granted that I can't think of off the top of my head. That being said, it's not a magic bullet. If the designs don't have reusable components, with standard colors and everything is laid out by hand with specific pixel values instead of auto layout, then it's probably the same as just designing from a PSD. Fuck devmode though. I don't get it, as far as I can tell they just took functionality that existed before and split it into two tabs so I'm constantly clicking between them to find what I'm looking for. I get that there's some pricing thing or whatever, but I would honestly just rather pay more for the old interface. tl;dr I like it, I think it's a step forward from the PSD days. Maybe your designer is holding it wrong, maybe you are holding it wrong or maybe it's just not for you.

zarzavat 3y ago

> If anything it only serves to move designers further away from the developers doing the implementation. Given the quality of many developer-designed UIs this can only be a good thing. Developers often prioritize implementation expedience over user experience. A lot of developers think that “clean code” is as important or more important than user experience. The job of a designer is to tell them that they’re wrong.

emayljames 3y ago
As a dev I second this. Dev's are usually far removed from any knowledge of design, hopefully that changes.
- croes 3y ago
  And designers seem to be far removed from perfomance of smartphones and download speed.
  - mark38848 3y ago
    What? Smartphones are faster than computers from a few years ago. Smartphones have been running Fortnite since at least 2018. I really wonder what your designers ask from you that is more demanding than that.
    - croes 3y ago
      Smartphones are faster but the web apps are still slow or even worse, slower. Many useless design elements drain the battery and take time to render. Fortnite isn't a web app and I doubt that Figma was used by the game designers.
littlestymaar 3y ago
Both as right, and wrong at the same time: developers have the knowledge of what's needed to run the service, and they know that if you make things too complicated it will be too costly to maintain and the organization will grind to halt. But the designers have the view of the users and they know that if the product is too unergonomic to use, there won't be any users to pay the bills. Both need to understand the other's POV in order to ship sustainable software that is actually used.

bbx 3y ago

I'm both a designer and developer, and even as a design-only tool, Figma is superior to all other web design apps I've used. Things like auto layout, component variants, nested instances, global variables… are just fantastic to use. It's really well thought out and still incredibly performant. The only other tool that was close is Sketch, but the Figma experience is just better in every sense. I only wish I could use it offline.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]