This was never the case and in fact a rewriting of history. My first "proper" job in web development was taking a PSD from a designer and turning that into a XHTML template. Quite a lot of the time the designs looked nice in Photoshop but were almost impossible to implement (at least in CSS 2).
I've worked in several since then and most were using Photoshop to create designs or design guidelines to pass over the developers. I used to "cut up the design" and then implement into XHTML template and controls. This was pretty much the norm everywhere if the company cared about how the website / webapp looked.
There were some frontend designer types that would write code, but I've met actually two of them during my career as a dev that was heavily front-end focused until 2023.
I had to do work in Photoshop (or usually Macromedia Fireworks), and then code it up in Cold Fusion.
Sometimes there would be more interaction to have the code output things in a form more amenable to the desired design, but a lot of the time it was really that simple - the designers worked in CSS and the exchange format was divs with well-defined classes. You can do a lot with a workflow that simple.
I imagine it's a bit harder if you're using a modern stack where your code is separated from what's actually rendered to the user by a dozen layers, but designers are quite capable of working with CSS rather than Photoshop.
So someone wrote a bunch of server code (backend) and then handed off for someone to style the frontend. This is what happens now in most teams. The person styling the frontend was never referred to as a "designer".
> Sometimes there would be more interaction to have the code output things in a form more amenable to the desired design, but a lot of the time it was really that simple - the designers worked in CSS and the exchange format was divs with well-defined classes. You can do a lot with a workflow that simple.
I am aware. However that isn't the norm in most places. What happens is that the best dev that can style stuff is lumbered with doing all the frontend work and most of their colleagues don't understand it.
Larger orgs have dedicated frontend/backend teams.
> I imagine it's a bit harder if you're using a modern stack where your code is separated from what's actually rendered to the user by a dozen layers, but designers are quite capable of working with CSS rather than Photoshop.
This are actually simpler than they were back then and there is better separate between the frontend and backend. So it actually easier IMO.
I love Figma’s dev mode. Saves me and the designer time from measuring sizes and eyedropping colors. Figma also allows me to export assets myself instead of waiting for the designer to do it, or do it myself poorly from Photoshop.
The relationship between design and dev is much more collaborative now. It was downright hostile pre-Figma with photoshop and illustrator files. Nevermind versioning, sharing and comments…
I wasn't arguing that the handoff was ever good. I was saying when the person designing the UI also wrote the CSS you didn't need a handoff
In fact, I stopped coding as a job when it became expected that I would do back end database & business logic stuff AND fiddle with front-end code to make it work/look the same in 3 very different browsers, and update the code each time (I'm looking at you Microsoft) a browser vendor would do something stoopid.
This was absolutely the norm at a lot of companies. It was very normal for the developers to work in either PHP or Ruby on Rails and the designers wrote CSS.
It is also true that since the introduction of modern frameworks we see significantly fewer designers who know CSS.
> It is also true that since the introduction of modern frameworks we see significantly fewer designers who know CSS.
None of these people knew CSS at all. I am talking pre-2012. Bootstrap version 1 or 2 was out at the time and 960 grid css was only out a few years before.
And of course that abomination of a HTML tag still works:
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Reference/...
I was procedural programmer (came from Sysadmin - shell and perl) and I had zero desire to learn the whole timeline approach to actions (my memory is fuzzy) but I would give them endpoints to call server side!
"We don't like Figma. We don't like designers and developers being split. So we built and are selling.... Another tool for mocking UI designs"?
I don't know about this startup's product but based on their homepage having (real) HTML/CSS output as a core part of the creation process would have helped me many times. Designers need to be constrained.
Expecting designers to know how to build production websites in html/css/js before designing is apparently a step people skip over these days. It creates meaningless design and dev cycles + tons of extra approval meetings by marketing/execs.
I guess one could create a really good tool where UI designers make a real web reusable pattern language, and UX designers specialize them into a set of templates the software developers can actually apply.
I will definitely be checking Nordcraft out.
It is a very different tool than Figma. In Nordcraft designers and developers work together in the same tool.
> Designers would go into a design team and draw user interfaces. Developers would go into a dev team and write code. And thus, the hand-off was born.
Which is exactly what Figma solves and why it's so valuable.
Figma is the place where the UX team and dev team meet and discuss, specify design and behavior together through back and forth, and helps the dev team move from there with exactly what they need.
Nordcraft might want to be the next Figma, as it's apparently a lucrative position provided you execute incredibly and capture most of the market. But how they describe it they're not properly assessing or representing any of the current reality.
I kinda wonder what it would need to achieve to be significantly different from Figma. Perhaps if it was actually a whole production runtime where designers define front layers and the dev team codes binds them to a backend ? Basically a WordPress competitor ?
I find many Figma designs basically force you to use fancy JS to assemble their UI designs. I know everyone uses React these days but you really shouldn't have to constantly write JS just to reproduce what's in a UI design. It creates so much needless dev and browser overhead.
The excessively fancy UI issue can be avoided if the devs enter the process at the prototyping phase. And Figma can be used for that: start with a wirefame and get everyone's input, comments, or even let the devs make counterpropositions (basically MRs?) by tweaking a copy of whatever screens are worked on. And as the design gets closer to reality the back and forth can continue in Figma.
That requires team collaboration and the willingness to build decent HTML/CSS in the first place, none of which are a given, but for teams working at that level it's a boon.
Nordcraft is a completely different type of tool. It is based on HTML and CSS instead of layers and absolute positioning.
Time for what? To click the "open app" button? Okay, so I clicked.
It doesn't open app. A button labelled "open app" should do what's on the tin. Instead it prompts for sign-up with terms and conditions warnings. I'm out.
Just open the app without sign-in! Why not? Too hard? Too scary? You can haggle for sign-up later. Let's see what you have right now, under the button labelled with a promise that I expect you to keep. Lying to me on page one is not a good start.
Here's an example of a web app that does it right. The button "start using Photopea" isn't a lie: https://www.photopea.com/
If you are just one tool are not going to have meainingful change.
What you really mean is that you’re looking into how you can open source just enough to create a free-to-paid entrapment pathway. You’ll do open source if you can provide a product where all of your users eventually hit a wall and need to upgrade to a paid plan.
A more honest answer from you would have been “we are just looking to provide a solution” rather than pretending to be working on a true open tooling ecosystem.
Don’t pretend to be open source as in Linux or git when you’re really open source as in MongoDB or Chef Software.
If you want to get into the shortcomings of Figma when it comes to hand off, I'm more than happy to have that conversation. Units that aren't valid in the CSS spec? Sure. Vector tools leading to things that are only achievable through clip path and masking? You bet. But claiming that designers and developers should have the same job when they're completely different skill sets and claiming that both roles are using the wrong tools to get the job done is no way to sell your product.
Eventually all roads led to Figma somehow, which honestly I would've never expected. Still surprised Figma became Sketch before Sketch could become Figma.
The solution is to get rid of the design handoff all together. Instead of designing user interfaces in vector drawing tools we need web design tools.
... did this person just start in the industry like three years ago?
It used to be completely normal for companies to have developers who worked in php or ruby on rails and have designers take care of the css.
You are absolutely right that in the early days many UI designers came from graphic design and worked in photoshop. But the fact that they also existed in some companies isn't really relevant.
It is on our LinkedIn profile
