I know that there’s a lot of focus placed on being 1:1 competitive with Figma, but I think there’s something possibly being overlooked.
In our work, prototyping and testing internal enterprise software, Figma regularly gets bogged representing all the different interactions, but Axure handles interaction better
The main difference is that Figma’s great for making visual representations. If I’m trying to show multiple branches of the same interaction, with space for users to poke around, Figma’s ‘make a page for each step’ really struggles with anything non-linear. That greatly limits its usefulness.
Now, if I can set a variable that lets me change the states of the elements on the page based on interaction? Be able to take those selections and pass them to the next page to shape what’s active or not? That’s a game-changer.
I really miss the features that are already present in the figma competitor, such as SAVE GRIDS, variables and the way frames are created (because in penpot to access sizes for Instagram you have to create any screen beforehand for this option to appear later, In figma, just select the tool and the options all appear in the panel on the right).
I heard about improving the Viewport (but I haven’t tested that part).
I REALLY WANT TO WORK WITH PENPOT AND CREATE CONTENT ON MY YOUTUBE CHANNEL but unfortunately until they add these features that figma already has, there is no way for me to migrate because my UI DESIGN work requires these functions a lot.
According to the figma team’s response, they are not motivated to be creating for the LINUX public:
better tools to manipulate vector images (illustrator is king on this). Adding waves, changing styles of the strokes, individual weight for strokes.
individual and additive stroke manipulation (each stroke to have their own setting: color, weight, style)
effects are nice but we are missing some very useful ones like: outline, overlapping, inner glow, putter glow. You could argue you can do this with the current ones but that’s a workaround…
The problem with penpot is that in order to import the font, we have to enter the fonts individually into the application, while in similar software, all the user’s fonts are entered into the application from the user’s computer, and this feature gives a freer space to the designer.
