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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, suc

by yoz 2y ago

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 2y ago
> 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 2y ago
  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 2y ago
  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 2y ago
  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 2y ago
  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 2y ago
    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.
mintplant 2y ago
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 2y ago
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 2y ago
  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 2y ago
    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 2y ago
      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-apart-shapes-tane80cfd59d/mac 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.
toddmorey 2y ago
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 2y ago
  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.
- mattegan 2y ago
  I cannot stand the lack of SVG support in Google slides. When I worked on the hardware team there I hated that I had to import my polished vector block diagrams into slides as PNGs. There was a 10+ year old bug thread with 100s of +1s for SVG support in Docs. IIRC the reasoning behind the delay was security concerns - seemed like a bit of a cop out, but what do I know?
  - aikinai 2y ago
    There’s still one painful workaround to get SVGs into Google Slides! I actually posted it in that bug thread at Google and then ended up with people attacking me like I was on the team and claiming the workaround is good enough. Anyway, here’s how to do it: Download Inkscape and then convert your SVG to EMF (some PowerPoint vector format I think). /Applications/Inkscape.app/Contents/MacOS/inkscape file.svg --export-filename=file.emf Upload the EMF file to Google Drive with content type “application/x-msmetafile”. rclone copyto --http-headers '"Content-Type","application/x-msmetafile"' file.emf gdrive:file.emf Right-click on the file in Drive and open in Google Drawings (if Google Drawings isn’t an option, you don’t have the right content-type set on the file. Copy from Google Drawings to Google Slides. Enjoy your painful-but-at-least-possible vector objects in Google Slides!
kristopolous 2y ago
Google slides has a bunch of "smart" features, which is when things automatically change without telling you in unexpected ways.
mgh2 2y ago
What about Canva slides? They are both design focused
freeqaz 2y ago
Looks like it should be available in the free plan according to the pricing page. > "Available in beta through 2024. In early 2025, Figma Slides will be free on Starter plans and $3 or $5/month depending on your paid plan." https://www.figma.com/pricing/ https://www.figma.com/pricing/
hackernewds 2y ago
this seems like a pr post? might tagging it with #ad at least

by yoz 2y ago

Andrew_nenakhov 2y ago

> 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 2y ago
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 2y ago
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 2y ago
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 2y ago
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 2y ago
  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.

mintplant 2y ago

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 2y ago

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 2y ago
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 2y ago
  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 2y ago
    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-apart-shapes-tane80cfd59d/mac 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.

toddmorey 2y ago

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 2y ago
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.
mattegan 2y ago
I cannot stand the lack of SVG support in Google slides. When I worked on the hardware team there I hated that I had to import my polished vector block diagrams into slides as PNGs. There was a 10+ year old bug thread with 100s of +1s for SVG support in Docs. IIRC the reasoning behind the delay was security concerns - seemed like a bit of a cop out, but what do I know?
- aikinai 2y ago
  There’s still one painful workaround to get SVGs into Google Slides! I actually posted it in that bug thread at Google and then ended up with people attacking me like I was on the team and claiming the workaround is good enough. Anyway, here’s how to do it: Download Inkscape and then convert your SVG to EMF (some PowerPoint vector format I think). /Applications/Inkscape.app/Contents/MacOS/inkscape file.svg --export-filename=file.emf Upload the EMF file to Google Drive with content type “application/x-msmetafile”. rclone copyto --http-headers '"Content-Type","application/x-msmetafile"' file.emf gdrive:file.emf Right-click on the file in Drive and open in Google Drawings (if Google Drawings isn’t an option, you don’t have the right content-type set on the file. Copy from Google Drawings to Google Slides. Enjoy your painful-but-at-least-possible vector objects in Google Slides!

kristopolous 2y ago

Google slides has a bunch of "smart" features, which is when things automatically change without telling you in unexpected ways.

mgh2 2y ago

What about Canva slides? They are both design focused

freeqaz 2y ago

Looks like it should be available in the free plan according to the pricing page. > "Available in beta through 2024. In early 2025, Figma Slides will be free on Starter plans and $3 or $5/month depending on your paid plan." https://www.figma.com/pricing/ https://www.figma.com/pricing/

hackernewds 2y ago

this seems like a pr post? might tagging it with #ad at least