Comment by TonyStr | Hacker News Reader

Comment by TonyStr | Hacker News Reader

Since this is a commercial product, I'm naturally inclined to compare it to other competing commercial products.

Why would I want to use this over figma? The sidepanels and floating toolbar are ripped directly from figma (to the point I would fear a lawsuit). Figma is already a very clean UI, which tries it's best not to shove too many features in your face. Whiteboard, presentations, dev mode are all hidden behind menus. "no plugin support" seems like a very odd thing to flaunt as a feature. Many of the most popular use-cases of figma, such as interactive prototypes, svg creation, html/css exports are all impossible in this tool.

Then, there is the problem of this being maintained by a single person. Components are essential to any serious figma user, good svg and image handling is important (svg is buggy in my testing), selection colors is vital, color palette is important. When can users expect to see these features if the maintainer is busy hunting down bugs?

This is a technically impressive product, but I struggle to see the market plan. I personally hate distractions in software, I go to great lengths to debloat and disable features to make my computer interactions smoother, yet figma is possibly the last program I would want to clean up.

Thanks for your input. I'm happy that Figma works for you, and I'm not trying to put Figma out of business :) I’m sincerely humbled to be compared to such an iconic product as Figma.

I started this project as a personal endeavour to scratch my own itch during the pandemic, out of a personal desire to contribute to the field of UX design that I’ve always been passionate about, but at the same time I don’t intend on working as a solo developer for much longer.

Some of the features you’ve listed, are currently being worked on, which are going to be launched very soon.

Gotta say I love your humility in the face of challenges from prospective users.

Wishing you the best of success, really like seeing your vision and hope it bears out.

I applaud your effort, and I love to see others practice the love of building. Though my original comment didn't suggest this, I would love to see your project succeed and gather a user base. Competition is always good, and this is a very solid start for a project.

> endeavour to scratch my own itch during the pandemic

Was this an "itch to build something", or an itch as in an annoyance you had with an existing tool? I'm skeptic of whether bloated UI is an itch many users have with figma or similar, which is why I'm critical of presenting this as the selling point for Vecti. If you manage to find an itch many people do have, and you provide the salve, you'll attract paying users.

> The sidepanels and floating toolbar are ripped directly from figma (to the point I would fear a lawsuit)

No, a company can’t sue you (well they can try, but it has no legal standing) because you rip off their side panel design. Thank god the industry doesn’t work like this.

Figma sued AI startup Motiff in 2024 for copyright infringement and won[0]. Motiff had to reimburse figma, and redesign their product.

[0] https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/69166901/figma-inc-v-mo...

Not relevant. Figma v. Motif was over allegations of stealing source code, apparently including known Figma bugs.

The design of the UI wouldn't be covered by copyright anyway; Figma would have had to file and be granted a patent, which has a much higher bar (IMO not high enough, but that's a different discussion).

Adobe sued Macromedia because the floating palettes in Flash worked just like the ones in Photoshop. Flash MX had a much-revised, shittier UI.

Well, sort of. They sued because they believed Macromedia infringed on their patents. That's something else than merely visual similarity.

People ship stuff that doesn't make sense at first blush all the time. But how are they ever supposed to even get into the space if they don't try something? Try to get some customers, see what people want. On day one, he's not saying he's going to compete with Figma. He's just getting it out there. Your comment—You could say you're just asking questions or giving constructive criticism, but it just assumes the negative on so many levels. I can criticize your viewpoint. Why do you think someone should have a product that's ready to compete with Figma on day one? Do you seriously expect him to have an answer for that?

I initially wanted to write a comment applauding the effort (making a performant web-based wireframe editor is a technically challenging task). But after testing the site, I got the impression that this is a commercial product trying to get a foothold (as opposed to a hobby project for the sake of learning).

At the time of posting, there were no other comments with criticism, so I thought it better to contribute some of my thoughts.

My main concern for this project is not that it doesn't have feature parity with figma, but that I don't see a well-thought out business model. Vecti sells a seat-based subscription model (same as figma), has almost directly ripped much of figma's design (a proclaimed ex-figma employee pointed out that this may be cause for a lawsuit in another comment), and the only distinguishing selling point is that it has less features than figma (the tool it's trying to emulate).

My opinion (which may be wrong) is that figma is already very good at stripping away features, hiding them behind modes, toggles or contextual menus. I'm a figma power user, but I have held a course in figma and managed to get 20 non-technical people to grok the tool and be able to create their own interactive designs in half an hour.

This. As a heavy Figma user, I don't see why people want to pay $12/month for this product when Figma is as competitive in pricing and much more widely used

There is space for this. The things you list as negatives are positives. Feature parity or similarity to a big competitor? A plus. Single developer? For a certain kind of consumer, a plus.

I think you’re missing the point a bit. Not every tool needs to be Figma, and honestly, that’s a good thing.

I’ve been using Figma for a while, and true, it’s powerful. At the same time it becomes increasingly complex, difficult, bloated overall. Simple tasks now require navigating through multiple menus, and the learning curve for new users is steep (took me a while to understand it, and the same experience had it acquaintances of mine). Sometimes I just want to sketch out an idea or make a task without dealing with all that overhead.

The no plugin support thing actually makes sense to me. I’ve had Figma slow down or crash because of poorly maintained plugins. Having a tool that just works, consistently, without worrying about plugin compatibility or security issues? That’s valuable. And yeah, it’s a solo developer versus a massive company (that’s my understanding) but that is why it’s beautiful. Also it’s an uneven comparison if you ask me (but didn’t :)) ).

However, the fact that this is even being compared to Figma shows the quality of what’s been built. Not everyone needs enterprise features. Some of us just want a clean, fast canvas without the friction. Every new feature of Figma feels like an attempt to monopolize the entire market.

I think he did an incredible job. Good work. This has value.

> Simple tasks now require navigating through multiple menus

I'm curious which simple tasks you're referring to?

> I’ve had Figma slow down or crash because of poorly maintained plugins

Why not uninstall those plugins? Is no plugin support really the best solution to this problem? Was there not a reason that you originally installed those plugins?

Comparing the tool shared here to PenPot[1] might be more fair.

[1]: http://penpot.app/

> The sidepanels and floating toolbar are ripped directly from figma (to the point I would fear a lawsuit).

This is sort of ridiculous. Apple tried to sue Microsoft for the look-and-feel of their GUI and lost. I think they might have tried to go after Samsung for copying the iPhone GUI? It certainly didn't work if they tried.

We all know Oracle tried to sue Google about API endpoints and lost. That's different from GUI elements, but a more concrete argument and it still failed.

You're just crapping on someone's hard work. If you don't want it, don't use it.

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