- 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.)
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.
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....
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.
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.
I’m sure that won’t be the case next year with this new announcement.
edit: I think Figma slides has an uphill battle ahead for the same reason.
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.
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.
Then there's the terrible animations—a gif of a meme playing in an infinite loop. These make the slide unwatchable for me.
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.
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!
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?
> "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."
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.
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.
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.
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)
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.
And, as if developers use a non-plethora of non-esoteric, non-outdated tooling.
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.
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.
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.
Pretty disappointing and convoluted though.
I find Figma unmatched for architecture diagrams. It’s nice to have them at my disposal when preparing slide shows.
I'm not a Figma user and have no clue, and am wondering if it's worth giving a shot as a new user.
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)
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'.
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.
It's just markdown and content. The rest is taken from you.
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.
It’s a bliss.
Internal stuff, quick stuff to show clients, whatever, use Slides, but for trying to win new accounts, we use Figma.
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.
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.
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.
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.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
I thought this space is pretty saturated is this essentially just to capture and lock in more users into a single tool?
[1]: https://forum.figma.com/t/launched-figma-dark-mode-theme/229...
Penpot has components and is open source and I would like to see slide shows in it. https://penpot.app/penpot-2.0
Great stuff from Figma, many people I know have already been using it for slides and this is a great next step
Happy that the Figma product team identified this as an opportunity worth investing in. Figma's overall product trajectory is exceeding my expectations.
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.
Google Slides doesn't support WebP, despite google being the company that _invented_ WebP.
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.
