return to table of content

Figma Slides

yoz
47 replies
22h24m

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.)

timr
26 replies
22h0m

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
8 replies
21h33m

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.

alwillis
4 replies
19h5m

They have the potential to be world-beating (especially Numbers)

Don't sleep on Numbers. It doesn't get a lot of attention but it can do some nice things in a much less bloated interface than Excel.

It's had regular expressions for a while for example, while Excel is just getting them.

I love being able to put multiple spreadsheets on a page and arrange them in whatever way you want. Reminds me of Lotus Improv [1] from back in the day.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotus_Improv

gcanyon
2 replies
17h55m

put multiple spreadsheets on a page

I’ve been hot for this feature since the Improv days — I browbeat the AppleWorks people to support it better, and when a bunch of them split off to build <app I don’t remember the name of> I made sure they knew this was a key feature.

Ragtime still supports it as far as I know. https://www.ragtime.de/start.html?lang_id=en

tveyben
1 replies
11h22m

Ragtime is still a thing??? I had the pleasure of working in Ragtime 2.5 and then 3 in 199x on a MacPlus (I had a job translating the manual for Cricket Presents - “PowerPoint” before PowerPoint - from English to danish).

It was one of the reasons I ‘got in to computers’(Macs) - it felt like it could ‘do it all’ and was so easy to use (at the time x86 based pc’s did not do the same for me…

gcanyon
0 replies
6h44m

Remarkably enough it seems so. Unfortunately I've never been in a place where 1. I needed its particular skillset 2. It was the best candidate for the job.

I love the idea of having multiple worksheets in a particular document so much, and yet 99.9% of the time I just throw open a google sheet and start throwing in numbers. The collaboration smoothness is a beats-all-else feature.

tambourine_man
0 replies
18h14m

I like numbers, but AFAIK its file format is not open and Apple just dropped support for older versions some years ago.

Imagine not being able to open a spreadsheet from 5 years ago.

timr
2 replies
20h55m

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
0 replies
20h2m

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-apa... - note the feature about breaking apart SVG images too, I wonder if that's related to the inner-detail trick.

ianleighton
0 replies
12h47m

My only counter to this is that after, what, two _decades_, Apple _still_ has not added the ability to adjust number boxes with the up/down arrows on the keyboard (like text size for example). A designer would have included this on day 1, it’s such a common UI pattern in design tools.

If anyone on the iWork team is reading this, _please_ get to that Radar.

insane_dreamer
7 replies
19h29m

In my experience of many years, not only is Keynote fantastic, but Pages is better than Word and Numbers is better than Excel (though not the extensive Excel ecosystem).

perryizgr8
1 replies
7h47m

Numbers is better than Excel

???????

Nothing is better than Excel.

insane_dreamer
0 replies
3h57m

fair point :)

bb86754
1 replies
13h28m

Keynote is awesome. Last I checked a few years ago though Numbers was nowhere even close to Excel. No dynamic array formulas, Power Query, lambda functions, VBA, etc. All are pretty essential if you're doing anything beyond basic spreadsheets but I may need to checkout Numbers again.

insane_dreamer
0 replies
3h50m

I should have qualified "better". I find Numbers easier to use for basic spreadsheet tasks. Advanced, programming-like tasks are better in Excel, which has many more advanced features. I don't think Numbers is Turing complete, but then again I tend to use Python rather than Excel for advanced math processing.

Word has some features that Pages doesn't have, but they're not commonly used, and if you're doing any kind of page layout, Pages is __much__ easier to work with than MS Word.

noodlesUK
0 replies
17h57m

I agree. I recently tried to do something in MS Office that was fairly simple in Pages: create a straightforward invoice.

I discovered that Word doesn’t even support formulae in its tables, which came as a great surprise. Apparently I needed to do this in Excel, which of course meant that the whole document needed to be written as fixed-width cells. This totally sucked for my use case.

ngrilly
0 replies
9h39m

Agreed. I've been using Pages quite a lot during the past year, growing frustrated with Word, and Pages is surprisingly good. It is much easier to use and to get nice results.

jwells89
0 replies
14h58m

Not too long ago I had to write a short paper in the current version of Word for Mac for a class I was taking and was surprised at how frustrating the experience was, in several ways feeling like stepping back in time a couple decades. Thankfully assignments since have accepted PDFs so using Pages is no problem.

al_borland
3 replies
19h34m

I sometimes wonder if Keynote will suffer now that Jobs is gone and the Apple keynotes have gone to using videos ever since the pandemic. I don’t think Cook ever liked doing the live demos, so the videos are likely here to stay. The presentations Jobs did were a big driver of Keynote’s development.

If you haven’t seen it, there is an interview with the guy who put those presentations together for 20 years. It’s pretty interesting.

https://web.archive.org/web/20210205063616/https://www.cake....

wodenokoto
0 replies
8h19m

That thing about the presentation having a color scheme match the emotion and villains and heroes.

Is there an essay that analyzes the iPhone launch as you would a book or a movie?

rhodin
0 replies
2h33m

They mention a book, book seems like it never came out?

bowsamic
0 replies
13h39m

I don’t think that will affect it. Apple’s public use of Keynote has always been very basic

Thrymr
1 replies
3h10m

Keynote is great if you are making a presentation for yourself and you don't need to share or collaborate on it. Otherwise, interoperability trumps features, and either Google Slides or PowerPoint is good enough and more likely to be compatible with your collaborators. It is sad, I'd love to use Keynote too, but the sharing barrier is just not worth it in 99% of my use cases.

edit: I think Figma slides has an uphill battle ahead for the same reason.

victor106
0 replies
15h6m

Agree 1000%

After I struggled with PowerPoint and Google Slides, Keynote was what I was super comfortable with and could very easily express what I wanted to. It’s the first tool I reach out to. I hope Apple keeps this alive for a long time.

devmunchies
0 replies
13h38m

I was a speaker at this years Figma Config (ends tomorrow) and we all had to use keynote since it has way better support for video and animations than goog.

I’m sure that won’t be the case next year with this new announcement.

blt
0 replies
16h20m

I love Keynote, but after spending a lot of time in LaTeX Beamer when almost anything can be changed temporally within a slide using overlays, Keynote has frustrating limits. For example, you can't animate changing the background color of a table cell.

Also, its tools for editing embedded videos are quite less capable than PowerPoint's.

Not sure if PowerPoint can do the table cell thing. But overall, I still feel the perfect slide making software doesn't exist yet.

Andrew_nenakhov
9 replies
22h16m

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.

cantSpellSober
4 replies
21h49m

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
3 replies
21h30m

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.

zeroonetwothree
2 replies
19h36m

It’s not ideal to have slides that only work if everyone is paying attention at all times. This animation should not be used to impart information. You can highlight changes in other ways.

chris37879
1 replies
17h19m

I'd be curious to hear how you'd do the execution flow like they mention? Just use multiple sequential slides?

hamandcheese
0 replies
13h20m

I'm not sure if this is considered animation or not, but I've demonstrated code refactors between slides by adding a colored border around the code in question (both in the before and in the after slide).

I'd probably do something similar for stepping through code. But at that point it's a quasi-animation (albeit, one that can still be understood by pdf slides).

matsemann
0 replies
21h52m

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.

maccard
0 replies
6h39m

Any presentation that can't be presented in static pdf is a presentation I'd rather miss.

I feel the complete opposite - if the presentation can be distilled in a static PDF, I'd rather just read the blog post. The entire point of a presentation is being engaged with the speaker to me.

lern_too_spel
0 replies
22h2m

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.

cornstalks
0 replies
21h50m

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.

toddmorey
4 replies
21h0m

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!

mattegan
1 replies
19h20m

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
0 replies
15h34m

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!

yoz
0 replies
19h59m

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.

schnable
0 replies
6h14m

It also really stinks at resizing raster images, as does all Gsuite apps. It makes diagrams look terrible.

mintplant
0 replies
22h4m

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.

mgh2
0 replies
20h42m

What about Canva slides? They are both design focused

kristopolous
0 replies
20h55m

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

hackernewds
0 replies
10h42m

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

freeqaz
0 replies
18h6m

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/

patchorang
23 replies
22h52m

Designers are pretty good at siloing themselves. I worry this may further silo them as the rest of the business will continue to use PPT.

Designers frequently express frustration about "not having a seat at the table." It's going to be tough to influence the business when using a different tool than everyone else.

Edit: PPT or Google Slides* My point was more about using the tool that the rest of the business is using.

echelon
7 replies
22h4m

As an engineer for well over a decade, I've never once touched PowerPoint or any Microsoft productivity suite, so I don't think it's as black and white as you say.

Google slides have been the bread and butter of all the engineering presentations I've seen and been a part of. And that's too many to even try to count.

I think this depends on what the C-suite was sold more than anything. I've never worked in a "Microsoft shop".

Let designers use their own thing. There's no harm.

beezlebroxxxxxx
6 replies
21h47m

Interesting. I don't know a single person that uses google slides in a professional context. It's ppt files or even just pdfs. Designers will whip something up in InDesign or Illustrator if they want total control in rare instances, though.

koito17
3 replies
21h30m

To add another data point, I can't remember the last time I've seen a PowerPoint. Maybe in high school? In every job I've had, people used Google Slides, if presenting a slideshow at all. Additionally, when designers have demonstrated things (e.g. mock designs), they have always shared a Figma window.

dijit
2 replies
19h44m

Europe (especially germany, or gamedev) is all PPTs.

I sold google workspace to my org and Google Slides is what is giving me the most backlash because it is considered woefully inadequate compared to powerpoint. Especially around brand identity tied to fonts.

lopkeny12ko
1 replies
18h8m

"brand identity tied to fonts" sounds like more of a problem related to your company culture/ego of the marketing team than a shortcoming of the tool.

I guarantee you that if you substituted your company's cherished sans serif font for another sans serif font, no one would notice or care except the designers who have nothing better to occupy their time with.

dijit
0 replies
15h33m

"brand identity tied to fonts" sounds like more of a problem related to your company culture/ego of the marketing team than a shortcoming of the tool.

I mean, first, I'm not so egotistical as to claim tacit knowledge of domains that aren't mine. Corp Comms and Marketing deserve to work with good tools, the same as engineers do.

Second, I can't imagine a marketing person coming to me and forcing me to use a different IDE that didn't permit debugging because of their personal preferences.

I would (rightfully) chew them out for being so arrogant to have an opinion on what is useful for my work.

mastazi
0 replies
9h32m

Same here, looking at the companies I have interacted with, it's mostly MS with a few Google shops here and there. I am currently in Australia and work regularly with EU-based companies. I see you are being downvoted, perhaps in other areas such as the US the market is different. We are starting some projects with a few US companies, I will keep an eye on what they use, I'm curious.

AzzyHN
0 replies
19h12m

Genentech, and possibly the rest of the Roche pharma conglomerate, uses the full Google Suite instead of Office. Sure, they're still using Windows computers, but it's not unheard of for companies to use something other than Office.

FridgeSeal
7 replies
20h48m

As a dev, I say more power to them. I support people using better tools for things. Maybe if we kept this up we’d all be using good things, and not stuck with MS Teams and Google slides because little Timmy in marketing chews crayons and can’t figure out how to use anything but the most basic software.

webdood90
3 replies
20h41m

it's possible to make your point without disparaging others that you feel are beneath you

dijit
2 replies
19h46m

No, some people should be shamed into being better.

I was shamed into using more advanced operating systems and it ended up with me having a hugely important and detailed understanding of operating system design. This has been hugely beneficial not just to me but to every person I worked with since.

I would not have elected to do this and not edged out of my comfort zone if I had not been shamed.

I was resistant to change otherwise. It is a good motivator.

29ebJCyy
1 replies
13h19m

Some people get abused into being better, but it's not the only way.

skidd0
0 replies
58m

Shame != Abuse

shove
1 replies
18h5m

Timmy in marketing knows things you cannot fathom

sundry_gecko
0 replies
10h53m

Can’t be much since he is in marketing :P (obvious sarcasm)

zanellato19
0 replies
3h34m

In my experience, its always higher level management that doesn't want to change, not the labor people.

Little Timmy will use whatever Thomas the Senior Manager tells him to use and those people get waaay to attached to the way they have always done things.

bmitc
3 replies
14h41m

Why does it matter? How does designers using a tool affect anybody? Are you familiar with Figma? It's ubiquitous and awesome.

And, as if developers use a non-plethora of non-esoteric, non-outdated tooling.

blackoil
2 replies
14h6m

Lack of collaboration with folks in other expertise areas who won't/can't use that tool.

dkdbejwi383
0 replies
9h56m

You could extrapolate that into "software engineers should write code in MS Word because otherwise the finance department can't collaborate with them". Just use the right tool for the job.

bmitc
0 replies
6h32m

Why do others need to be able to use the tool?

By the way, Figma has powerful live collaboration features.

diegof79
1 replies
16h15m

The goal is to use the best tool to solve a problem. But it is tricky when you don’t know better and everyone around you follows the herd for different reasons.

Most presentation tools are poorly designed.

For example, many cognitive studies support the idea that the same brain channel handles text and speech. If you try to read and listen to different things, you can’t simultaneously pay full attention to both. Yet most presentation software encourages using bullet points, which are used extensively in business presentations.

Superfluous animation is distracting, yet presentation software animation capabilities are redundant and don’t have basic things like having a timeline with keyframes.

Outlining and notes are handy during the ideation phase of a presentation, yet outlining features are terrible.

Google Slides is extremely painful to work with. Taking a template and filling in the blanks with bullet points is okay, but even formatting a text box right is painful. PPT is better, but it has the typical MS problem: feature bloat, where the most valuable things are half-baked. Keynote is one of the best. However, its sharing editing capabilities are between buggy and nonexistent.

By contrast, Figma's visual editing capabilities are orders of magnitude better: components and auto-layout help you work faster with a tool abstraction that is much better than the crappy master slides.

So, if you work the whole day with Figma and are productive with it… why inflect yourself the pain of using PPT/Google Slides for your presentation? You will be the one presenting. (Note: many times, I used Google Slides for those shared presentations, which I suffer… but if its my presentation I prefer Keynote or Figma depending on the case)

zarzavat
0 replies
12h51m

Slides are consumed in a variety of different ways.

Slides can be something to keep the eyes busy while someone is talking IRL. Alternatively, they can be a way to exchange information outside of a presentation, reading them like a book. In the latter case, bullet points are quite useful.

A lot of features of presentation software are there solely to stop people from going to sleep.

SebastianKra
0 replies
7h36m

Considering how bad tools parasitically benefit from rigid company structures, I'd diversify where possible and deal with the incompatibilities when they arise, rather than get locked into even more Software like Jira, Teams, etc...

Ideally, coworkers should discover the best tools for themselves and then get recommendations from each other.

My company somehow managed to get sold a proprietary VPN when Wireguard and OpenVPN exist. Obviously the only compatible client is bad.

tyleo
12 replies
23h41m

Hell, I’m a dev and I already produce most of my slide shows in Figma. I’m so happy a dedicated product is coming!

I find Figma unmatched for architecture diagrams. It’s nice to have them at my disposal when preparing slide shows.

pm90
7 replies
22h49m

For architecture diagrams Ive found Google drawing will work for my use cases. And if its something fancy, lucidchart.

IshKebab
5 replies
22h40m

I would definitely use Draw.io over Google Drawings. That sounds a bit masochistic to be honest!

danielbln
3 replies
22h17m

Google Drawings was the bees knees 15 years ago, and since it is a dead product and hasn't changed one bit today it isn't.

We use excalidraw a lot, but my excitement has waned a bit there as well.

IshKebab
2 replies
21h8m

Yeah I used Excalidraw for a while, but once the novelty of the sketchy look wears off it's really a very basic drawing program. Not suitable for proper technical diagrams (which to be fair it isn't intended to be).

In a way it felt to me like Excalidraw works around your diagrams not looking very good by just making them obviously not intended to look good. But Draw.io solves that problem by just making them actually look good.

The only issue I have with Draw.io is that it can't export text in SVG properly - every text object is really an embedded HTML element, which means you can only view the resulting SVGs in browsers. They don't work anywhere else you'd want to use an SVG (e.g. embedded in a PDF). https://www.drawio.com/doc/faq/svg-export-text-problems

It doesn't seem like they care about solving that problem properly unfortunately. Their "solution" is:

"Convert Labels to SVG" transmits the diagram to our servers, generates a PDF, then pipes that through Inkscape, and returns the SVG output.

Jesus.

Aside from that it's an amazing program. A worthy successor to Dia.

sho
1 replies
14h6m

They don't work anywhere else you'd want to use an SVG (e.g. embedded in a PDF)

My workflow is exporting to PDF and then just embedding that inside the larger PDF. Works fine?

IshKebab
0 replies
11h55m

Yes but that requires an extra step and we're also using the SVGs with Asciidoc which can generate HTML too. I don't think it even supports PDF images. We'd basically have to do what Draw.io did - export to PDF (very slowly), then covert it to SVG with Inkscape. Gross.

freedomben
0 replies
21h3m

draw.io is pretty good IMHO. The fact that it has a reasonably rich set of built-in shapes, and you can add any arbitrary jpg or png file to your diagram, makes it immensely useful IMHO. I also love that it integrates with Google Drive or you can download/upload an XML file yourself.

mulakosag
0 replies
21h34m

I had never heard of Google drawing until now. Interesting.

flakiness
2 replies
23h10m

Just curious, why do you use Figma over other slide making tools? Just for architecture diagrams, or your familiarity with the tool?

I'm not a Figma user and have no clue, and am wondering if it's worth giving a shot as a new user.

whywhywhywhy
0 replies
7h7m

Ultimately it just feels better, over Keynote I’d say better alignment controls, less defaults to unset, collaboration and sharing which keynote lacks, zoom out to see the whole thing and move things about easier.

Also because it’s already an excellent design tool you never hit the wall where a diagram can’t be created in it like you hit often in Keynote/PPT/Google Slides

(I haven’t tried Figma Slides yet, this is normal Figma)

ThomPete
0 replies
21h25m

visual control

cut3
0 replies
21h1m

With the way figma has been rugpulling free features for paid ones Im worried prototyping will be enshitefied (or some other needed feature) so we can no longer present from designs without paying for slides

chatmasta
10 replies
22h44m

Funny, I was just wondering today why Google doesn’t have an infinite canvas product. All I want is Google Slides with an infinite canvas.

Products like Figma, Miro, and Excalidraw are all great, but they’re not integrated into Google Workspace like Docs/Slides. I like comments, tagging users, auto-completing links to other docs with their title, etc.

dijit
4 replies
22h40m

Google slides has other pretty major problems for presenting things.

Notably if your corporate identity requires the use of a specific font, then its not possible.

Figma is a lot better in this regard, but the pricing is aggressive for the design part.

dbg31415
1 replies
22h34m

Even when you pay for enterprise, Google support will say things like, “Just change your brand font to use a Google Font!” It’s pretty awful and arrogant.

dijit
0 replies
22h32m

I understand a large amount of the technical and legal reasons for this, but I agree.

It hurts my position greatly as an advocate of their services internally and leads to us having to use Powerpoint anyway.

dbbk
0 replies
6h21m

Object sizing and alignment is also garbage, barely functional, and has not been fixed in decades.

Andrew_nenakhov
2 replies
22h15m

Google had something called Jamboard that kinda fits the description. But Google being Google, it was recently discontinued.

azangru
1 replies
9h3m

Jamboard was never an infinite canvas. It was a very awkward thing that didn't allow you to select multiple items at once (or if it did, I never discovered how), or to expand the canvas to accommodate more content.

te_chris
0 replies
5h32m

Agree. The fixed canvas size in Jamboard is incredibly annoying and limiting.

fratlas
0 replies
17h13m

Try Canva whiteboards. You can embed an inf canvas into slides

SkyPuncher
0 replies
22h33m

They do, but it’s not easy to use.

npilk
6 replies
4h43m

What I think a lot of the comments are missing here is that many companies who use Figma are already using Figma to create and present slide decks. (The company I work for is a perfect example.) It's maybe not the intended use of their software, but it's a very popular one.

So the competitive angle here isn't stealing market share from Google Slides/PPT, or trying to get new users to pick this over other web presentation tools. It's adding this as a first-class use case for people already building slides in Figma to further ingrain the 'ecosystem'.

CaveTech
5 replies
4h27m

This doesn't really make sense, there would not be ROI to cater to a market of users who are choosing to already use the product for that use case when it's not supported. They _are_ ingrained in the ecosystem. It is pretty clearly targeted at making this more mainstream and mass-market.

mitemte
1 replies
3h35m

I’ve haven’t worked at a company where Figma is used “correctly”. It’s mostly used as a canvas to dump designs, slideshows, flowcharts and diagrams.

For example, N/Shift+N moves forward/backward a frame. I’m yet to see a Figma file where frames are correctly ordered or laid out, rendering this feature almost useless.

npilk
0 replies
3h19m

FYI - there are plugins that can help you easily order your frames by position or in other ways that make sense (I think the one I use is called Sorter).

But that's another example of the sort of hacky 'workaround' that should have first-class support if enough people need it.

ryanmcbride
0 replies
3h26m

If you don't see how "Our users are using our tool for X, let's make that easier for them" adds value then remind me to never work for you.

filleduchaos
0 replies
4h24m

I'm no product manager, but how on earth does it not make sense to elevate a use case that people clearly want from ad-hoc solution to actual feature?

JCharante
0 replies
2h47m

When you have a thousand engineers who cares about ROI anymore? It's how Google got to be Google. By building cool stuff and letting other teams pay the bills

pwthornton
5 replies
22h35m

All of our serious decks are produced in Figma. Slides and PowerPoint can't make a good enough looking presentation.

Internal stuff, quick stuff to show clients, whatever, use Slides, but for trying to win new accounts, we use Figma.

mdorazio
4 replies
22h21m

Counterpoint: I have never encountered a “designer deck” that I couldn’t recreate in PowerPoint. Most people just really suck at PowerPoint / Slides and, to be fair, the functionality to make things look good is often unintuitive.

Just as a random example, most people don’t know that shapes in PowerPoint are full vector objects with editable Bézier curves and Boolean tools available.

aikinai
2 replies
15h48m

PowerPoint I believe you (or at least don’t know enough myself to argue). But for Slides, there’s no way. How, for example, would you put an outline around text?

ux-app
1 replies
13h40m

Yep, it's the outline around text that won you the client.

aikinai
0 replies
11h49m

Or embedded videos, or non-trivial animations, or non-Google fonts, or transparent strokes, or vector shapes (excluding the workaround I shared above). Sure, you can win clients without any of that stuff. Why do you need anything more than basic text and maybe some pictures?

But there are reasons people and companies strive for more polish and professionalism. There's a reason even Google uses Keynote for the I/O keynote, even though you can technically show the same information in Slides.

earthnail
0 replies
5h3m

Powerpoint's font rendering is horrible. If you care about typography it's a show-stopper. I can tell sth was made in Powerpoint just by looking at the font.

Apple Keynote, otoh, has always been excellent at rendering fonts. The same slide, with a single Arial 80 headline, always looks better in Keynote than Powerpoint. Figma's font rendering is also excellent, which gets me very excited, because Keynote just isn't collaborative.

gherkinnn
4 replies
12h7m

I have fallen in love with the opposite approach: IA Presenter [0] (no affiliation).

It's just markdown and content. The rest is taken from you.

0 - https://ia.net/presenter

wafriedemann
2 replies
8h10m

I read the announcement ages ago. This is it now? Something everyone can replicate with html in less than 5 minutes? Edit: and of course it's subscription-based.

gherkinnn
0 replies
4h8m

What an uncharitable and reductionist take.

You can buy it "like software in a box" and it is certainly more than HTML and five minutes of work. The same way IA Writer is more than just a text box.

earthnail
0 replies
5h6m

Give it a try. It's all about workflow. And they have a one-time purchase option as well; no need to subscribe if you don't like subs (which I understand).

sundry_gecko
0 replies
10h54m

This is indeed awesome. Our design team made a few templates to stay on brand.

It’s a bliss.

politelemon
3 replies
23h3m

It would be good to see some demos of what this can produce, this just looks like PPTX-light on the web, and the slide templates don't really show much.

politelemon
0 replies
22h41m

Understood, thanks.

hardwaregeek
0 replies
23h0m

I would disagree. Figma Slides got maybe the most positive response at the keynote. Most designers I know already use Figma for slides, so to make a first party experience with speaker notes and good UX would be understandably very popular.

sirjaz
2 replies
14h37m

This is just another webapp, please God please can we go back to making true desktop/native apps again. We have these powerful machines that are under utilized for what they are.

wraptile
1 replies
12h34m

While I'd agree with you 99% of the time Figma's web stack is probably one of the very few that can actually compete against native/desktop apps.

sirjaz
0 replies
7h54m

Figma has done an amazing job, I just don't want to depend on a constant connection for my software, and someone else's computer

kshri24
2 replies
21h54m

Its crazy that Figma has time to bring out a completely new product but has no time to just implement a Dark Mode for FigJam [1]. Its been 3 years and counting.

[1]: https://forum.figma.com/t/dark-mode-for-figjam/3147

maximilianroos
1 replies
21h49m

Happy to see them making the correct prioritization

kshri24
0 replies
19h47m

Well in that case many won't be using FigJam which is a real shame because it is an awesome product. The only thing stopping me from using it is that it causes eyesight issues. It is not even some fancy feature. Basic accessibility in 2024 shouldn't be a big ask. Especially considering they implemented dark mode for Figma in 2022 [1]. Extending to FigJam is just a few more lines of code. Shouldn't take 3 years to do this.

[1]: https://forum.figma.com/t/launched-figma-dark-mode-theme/229...

cycomanic
2 replies
21h15m

What does this add over slides.com, pretzi.com or any of the many other presentation tools (for devs there also the many text to slides tools like reveal.js, slides.dev, impress.js)?

I thought this space is pretty saturated is this essentially just to capture and lock in more users into a single tool?

jtriangle
0 replies
21h3m

What it offers is additional market capture, which leads to additional data capture for their AI projects.

bnchrch
0 replies
21h1m

Besides a familiar UI/UX.

It adds that I don't need to reach for yet another tool.

FireInsight
2 replies
7h42m

Tried it, wrote a long comment here, but seems I accidentally discarded that. Here's the gist of it; The product does not from other presentation tools except in that it is integrated with Figma. Only the best parts of Figma, the design things, are very much restricted unless you pay for a subscription that includes design mode. There are still some bugs, and animation support it underwhelming and slide transitions don't work as well as in other applications.

As a casual user, I would have loved something more integrated with the design workspace in Figma. With how the product is now, I might as well continue using Libreoffice Impress and get way more features at the cost of having to use an ugly piece of software.

philjackson
1 replies
6h42m

I'm the CTO of Pitch, so obvious bias here, but have you tried our product? Would love to know what you miss from Impress when using Pitch.

FireInsight
0 replies
3h0m

I don't know if I'm interested on giving you a free UX consultation

Your product to me seems to be just another freemium presentation product meant for sales pitches, a target market I'm not a part of. For that reason, your product doesn't really strike me as any more interesting than Figma's offering, even if it is technically superior. Figma's has a considerable edge too, as I already trust their web-based design products.

mikece
1 replies
23h26m

In what way would Figma be better for creating slide decks than Canva?

benatkin
0 replies
23h24m

Figma components could be used in it.

Penpot has components and is open source and I would like to see slide shows in it. https://penpot.app/penpot-2.0

impure
1 replies
23h51m

iA Writer also added presentations recently. Seems like presentation software is getting popular again.

sho
0 replies
12h57m

I like IA and I'm checking out their new presenter, thanks for the tip. But geeze I wish they'd have a better example in their showreel video. Who, exactly, makes, presents and is presented with these "What is design?" fluff shows with giant "inspirational" pictures accompanied a single line of text? Even Apple has to occasionally show, you know, a slide that isn't just a giant well-chosen picture.

flakeoil
1 replies
23h20m

Their landing page does not really show much about this product. It looks just like boring powerpoint.

knallfrosch
0 replies
11h36m

But it has Presenter Mode (a feature that PowerPoint has shipped with for the last 20 years..) > See your presenter notes and preview the next slide—all within Presenter View

alexb_
1 replies
5h37m

A ton of people in the comments are talking about Google Slides. Does nobody use PowerPoint anymore? What advantages does Google Slides have over good old fashioned PPT?

lexicality
0 replies
4h36m

It's free

zanellato19
0 replies
3h30m

I'm really happy with this, so we can move our company presentations to Figma and move out of Google Slides, specially for Product.

yoshuaw
0 replies
23h16m

I’ve been making my slides in Figma for a couple of years now, and having this supported as a first-class flow will be very welcome!

wtf77
0 replies
22h31m

How much they will charge for something we can already do?

wraptile
0 replies
12h37m

Played around for 30 minutes and it's kinda underwhelming. It works and is pleasant to use but it's very simple and doesn't really do anything any slides software from 10 years ago couldn't do.

turnsout
0 replies
5h39m

Wow… This is going to murder Google Slides in the design industry. We only used Slides because it was remote friendly—designing slide layouts in it was absolute torture.

tianzhou
0 replies
13h41m

Combining the best of Google Slides and Apple Keynote

the-mitr
0 replies
3h18m

I use Inkscape with Sozi to create some nice slides.

stnmtn
0 replies
23h58m

Seems like a slam dunk idea for Figma

steren
0 replies
21h14m

Figma invested years in this super powerful real time canvas, only using it for UX mocks is not tapping its full potential

rylan-talerico
0 replies
23h12m

Figma is already my favorite way to design presentations, but the lack of presentation tools like presenter notes has prevented me from switching from traditional tools.

Happy that the Figma product team identified this as an opportunity worth investing in. Figma's overall product trajectory is exceeding my expectations.

mmckelvy
0 replies
23h2m

This is great. I find I'm using Figma in place of other tools more and more. I could see using Figma instead of Word / Google docs pretty soon as well.

math_dandy
0 replies
23h1m

I know very little about Figma, but if their presentation product can (one day) understand LaTeX math syntax and render it, then I’ll definitely learn it!!

marcinignac
0 replies
23h49m

Now the question is will there be offline mode that works with embedded videos so one can do a proper conference talk.

johnoh_lilysai
0 replies
12h48m

For anyone has hard time watching full figma config conference keynote - I made detailed summary note for that video. Hope this can help you guys.

https://lilys.ai/digest/842857

jimmyl02
0 replies
23h52m

I don't know if the tone selector UX was used by other companies before but it is so simple and intuitive I'm surprised I haven't seen it more. I wouldn't be shocked if it becomes a standard within all the AI tools

Great stuff from Figma, many people I know have already been using it for slides and this is a great next step

jagged-chisel
0 replies
22h47m

Does this export to PowerPoint?

howon92
0 replies
21h59m

Wow this is really cool

gardenhedge
0 replies
5h6m

Does anyone have a good, straightforward guide on how to get the most out of Figma? Whenever I am sent a link, the experience is always a bit jarring.

ffhhj
0 replies
22h45m

Figma, allow us to do local changes even when files are read-only, so we can fix last minute stuff before exporting to svg.

danielxli
0 replies
23h31m

Great way to add new use cases for existing users! Not sure if this will bring people over from ppt but certainly many folks who would rather continue using figma don't have to leave

bschwindHN
0 replies
10h57m

Wow, it supports WebP images.

Google Slides doesn't support WebP, despite google being the company that _invented_ WebP.

brazzledazzle
0 replies
22h51m

Seems like Figma and Miro are converging a bit but from different directions

barrrrald
0 replies
20h20m

Packaging on this is interesting – from pricing page:

How much will Figma Slides cost when it is generally available? Figma Slides will be included in all Starter plans for free or can be purchased for $3 per seat/month on Professional plans, and $5 per seat/month on Organization and Enterprise plans.

Do I need to have a full Figma design seat to use Figma Slides? No, you do not need to have a paid Figma Design or paid FigJam seat to use Figma Slides. You will need a paid Figma Design seat to use advanced design tools in Figma Slides.

bags43
0 replies
20h35m

This does not work in Firefox really well.

artur_makly
0 replies
4h24m

Funny..but I was expecting them to have it all be done with just one Ai Prompt. "Computer.. generate a 10-slide presentation with my branding style in `file-X`, The goal of the presentation is to pitch investors about our startup. Focus on these slides : [Sure! Here are the main section titles for the 10-page slide deck:

1. Title Slide 2. Problem Statement 3. Solution 4. Market Opportunity 5. Business Model 6. Go-to-Market Strategy 7. Traction and Milestones 8. Team 9. Financial Projections 10. Closing and Call to Action]

dont forget the hockey stick figures.

albert_e
0 replies
10h45m

Figma has a reputation with its dark patterns for pricing - people might be wary before adopting their products.

Jiahang
0 replies
6h33m

Make ppt more fun

Aerbil313
0 replies
20h14m

Meanwhile, I use typesetting (Typst) to create slides. I know I should just dump it and use Google Slides but I just can't help myself, as a hacker in spirit. Take a look at one of my school project presentations, Hypnotherapist-GPT: https://typst.app/project/r-gKDYaSo4KvbEJo-LNYTV