This is not asking for a specific feature or change, rather a description of how I struggled to share a penpot document – in hope it will be useful for product managers, desginers and fellow users.
I got started by creating a small sketch that I wanted to work on with someone. The connection was loose, we occasionally talk, but are not close collaborators on a specific project.
I looked at the upper right corner of the screen knowing that this was where figma had its sharing settings. There, I found history; a bit more to the left I found this which probably is “me” but it did not react to clicks.
Next I checked the menu
I first looked at the submenus for “file” (where “export” was the closest) and “Preferences” (but they were not file-specific).
I went to the project overview. There, I assumed, I could click on a thumbnail and set sharing there, maybe in the kebap-menu on the project?
…no.
After some more minutes, I figured that I probably want to create a team and invite my collaborator there. But that would problably mean they need a penpot account AND I would need to create some boilerplate structure merely for sharing a file we both look at for 5min or so.
Of course it helps. This is very good exposition of a very typical use case and yes, the struggle is real.
Currently, there are two ways to share the same (import/export is out of the topic here) Penpot files among people: to create a shareable public link or to be members of the same team.
Like in the previous use case, the need to share usually involves doing it with people that are not Penpot users, which means that if you really want to reduce friction the better option seems to be the shareable link. To ease this friction we’ve added options that allow Penpot users that are not at your team to comment and to inspect code, the ability to signup right from the View mode and a couple of auth methods popular among opensourcers (GitHub and Gitlab).
Still, signing up just to take a look at a file is overkill in a lot of cases. Also, shareable/public links can only be created for the View mode. This can be problematic because 1) sometimes what you really want to share is your Workspace and not your presentation and 2) if you spend all your time designing at the workspace you might just not know that you can create shareable links. It is just not there, not obvious.
I think sooner or later we’ll need to implement solutions for this use cases. Some ideas that we have already considered:
Allow to create workspace shareable links. This will need the view-only mode that we’ll publish eventually.
Allow to invite team members right from the workspace. We have some concerns with this as the file is a context that might give the impression that you are inviting only to the file and not to the team.
Allow to invite non- team members to an specific file from the workspace (and not to the team).
We also have evidences that it is expected to be able to share files from the Dashboard and to better manage all your created shareable links. The challenge is there and ideas and feedback like this post will be extremely valuable for us in the process
Allow to invite team members right from the workspace. We have some concerns with this as the file is a context that might give the impression that you are inviting only to the file and not to the team.
I think, this was not the problem I had (it might be useful for others, obviously). I knew that teams exists (or quickly found out), but I did not want to add people to the team, as the relation was not close and permanent (at least for now)
Allow to invite team members to an specific file from the workspace (and not to the team).
Yes. I think you meant “invite non- team members”, correct? This is what would have been a fit for my usecase of “occasional” and “loose” collaboration!
(I think the model that is rather common and will be familiar to many people is the way google drive allows to share files.)
Hi @jdittrich, I went through the exact same process of looking for a way to share a design idea with a client without having to create a team and have her create a penpot account.
I also think it would be great to have this option, also because from what I’ve seen, when you add someone to your team, they always have editing rights (or admin). And in some cases you don’t want your client to mess up with the design, but just to give her/him the chance to have a look at it on their free time.
Thanks @myfunnyandy for your detailed reply, these ideas sound good And thanks to all the Penpot team members for their great work
edit : I actually just tried the link sharing option through the view mode an even if it’s not perfect for the reasons mentioned before, it’s a good workaround and can be enough as long as the workspace around the canvas doesn’t matter
I DO have a feature request. Can we please get shareable URLs for individual boards? This helps me share “this exact thing” instead of having to explain where to find a board. Thanks!
This would be awesome. We need more control over the sharing experience.
Some of the people I share it with are not very technical and I’d like to set the right defaults for them to make sure they see the design correctly.
I would like a way to set the preview to fit the screen instead of the default 100%.
@cobyalmond at the Penpot team we were recently talking about this feature, because we are also missing it pretty much. Especially now, as we are building a new design system for Penpot which is much bigger than the old one.
I’ve added the request to our backlog (here’s the link) and also as an issue at GH as a good-first-issue, just in case it could happen as a community contribution.
My issue is that I design for a specific screen and when I share the design with my clients they see it at 100% which sometimes means not all content will be displayed. They have to select fit to screen to see the full design.
I can see how this default would be great for mobile design, it’s not the best default for desktop design. Could a possible solution be for the design to behave like a max-width 100%? In that case mobile would display fine at 100% size and larger desktop designs would fit the screen.
There’s already a way to share design boards that scale to the browser window:
At the view mode, you can select zoom settings. Scale down to fit seems to be the one that best suits your use case.
Then you create a share link. This share link includes the parameter “&zoom=fit”, which will force the boards to scale to the browser window when opening them (disclaimer: this is not responsive, it is only scaling at the start). This parameter should be included also in the first step but for some reason, this is not happening, so I’m going to open an issue about it rn.
I’ve made this quick test where you can see the result. If you open it in different browser sizes you’ll see how the boards scale to them.
Excellent, thank you. If I may add, this isn’t just a quality of life feature for our team. It’s a table-stakes usability one that we use in Figma today to link boards into our user stories instead of images or clickable prototypes.
history; a bit more to the left I found this
which probably is “me” but it did not react to clicks.
