Figma Slides Is a Beautiful Disaster

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Figma’s new Slides feature is being criticized as unreliable, especially in high‑stakes presentations and offline or flaky‑network conditions, prompting many users to fall back on Keynote, PowerPoint, PDFs, or LaTeX-based tools. Commenters broaden the debate to the merits of cloud‑first SaaS versus local‑first software, the risks of vendor lock‑in, and how slide decks are misused as dense documents rather than visual aids. There is also recurring nostalgia for the craftsmanship of older tools like Keynote and a sense that modern products chase growth and AI add‑ons instead of robustness and focused UX.

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.