Figma Slides Is a Beautiful Disaster

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Offline vs Cloud-First & Reliability

  • Many commenters treat talks as “mission critical” and insist on local-first tools (Keynote, PowerPoint, LibreOffice) plus a PDF backup; some even bring a second laptop or phone-based fallback.
  • Recurrent strategy: always export to PDF (often PDF/A) to avoid font/rendering issues and dependence on live services or logins.
  • Cloud-only presentation tools are seen as risky: network outages, overloaded conference Wi‑Fi, firewalled guest networks, or provider glitches can all ruin a talk.
  • Figma’s general cloud model draws criticism for proprietary formats and lack of truly first-class local files; Sketch is praised for a published open spec.

Figma Slides & Product Direction

  • Several people say Figma Slides feels unfinished and unreliable, especially offline, and that core export paths (PDF/PPT) are bloated or broken.
  • Some believe Figma is chasing an “ecosystem” and investor-driven growth (Slides, FigJam, Sites, AI) instead of deepening the core design tool.
  • A Figma PM replies that the company dogfoods Slides extensively and is focused on quality, but commenters question whether internal usage covers real-world offline and export scenarios.

Comparing Presentation Tools

  • Keynote is repeatedly lauded as exceptionally well-designed, “almost perfect,” though its vector workflow and some remote-presentation behaviors are criticized.
  • Google Slides is appreciated for simplicity and collaboration, often used as editor with PDF as final format.
  • Alternatives mentioned: iA Presenter, Deckset, Marp, Reveal.js, LaTeX/Beamer, Miro, Figma+Google Slides hybrids, and new “vibe coding” tools.

What Slides Are For: Aid vs Document

  • Strong disagreement over whether slides should be:
    • Minimal visual aids that depend on the speaker, or
    • Dense, self-contained “reading decks” for corporate and client circulation.
  • Many suggest two artifacts: a clean presentation deck plus a detailed memo or annotated/notes-heavy version.
  • Corporate culture often pushes toward high-information templates, turning talks into joint reading sessions; several lament that slides have become the default report format.

Presentation Craft, Jobs, and Style

  • Jobs/Apple-style talks (one idea per slide, heavy rehearsal, performance mindset) are admired but seen as resource-intensive and suited mainly to big product launches.
  • Others argue that different contexts (internal briefings, technical deep dives) require more detailed slides and that emulating Jobs everywhere is counterproductive.
  • General consensus: content clarity, rehearsal, and knowing the audience matter more than fancy software or animations.