Maybe the real webpage also needs a better stack and designers need to worry less about things they can't control and think more about usability and simplicity.
I work on a large web based application, with designers, who use Figma. It's just too easy to lose the plot and come up with things that don't work well. Not because of Figma. Something about the balance between the software stack(s), the domain, the focus of designers today, the front end engineering, and product management is broken. It's interesting that Figma did (IMO) a great job at addressing the stack so they can build a product that does what they want it and then is used by so many to build products that don't always do what their customers want. Asking Figma to use the wrong stack for their product (which is what I'm reading between the lines) is not really the right answer...
Is this alignment the issue with your application? Are there design alternatives that would be impacted less by some rendering engine differences?
What about other browsers? Versions? Platforms? OS? Resolution/screen size? My huge frontend team can't handle this, even before we used Figma.
Isn't the problem trying to get this "web platform" do something it was never meant to do? How would this be solved by Figma using a rendering engine that would grind their product to a halt?
I'm old enough to have done a lot of native platform UI work, the web stack in many ways was a step backwards. It has obviously a lot of advantages (run anywhere) but in some ways it's more like IBM terminals on a mainframe vs. a native UI where you have full control. I (obviously) use and make web apps all the time, but they often suck, and this isn't Figma's fault.
I've been fighting the way figma interprets fonts for years. It's not too bad at my current company, but at my last company things would look great in figma but with the exact same styles applied they'd be wrong in every browser. That's the sort of thing people are complaining about here.
I'm sure there's something fundamentally wrong with the font files. In both cases, they're not standard, widely available fonts. With that said, browsers render the fonts consistently with each other, but not Figma.
There's also a lot of ways that figma can lead designers down the unhappy path. They'll put together two different screens that look great, wave their hands around the idea of "just make it responsive" and when you go in and look, there's nonsensical crap like absolute positioning on elements, or arrangements that don't work with block layouts and force you into convoluted grid stuff.
Figma is clearly built to be useful for web development. It has tons of gaps that lead designers off the happy path. Take out all the "browsers / versions / os / screen size" differences from the argument; my points above would apply to any design tool built for any product. If it doesn't accurately reflect what is possible or how something is done, it's not a perfect fit.
PS: I prefer figma over pretty much every other tool I've used. With that said, there's no pretending that it is perfect, nor any reason to deflect accurate criticism elsewhere.
My solution in these cases was to build prototype sites that sync in real time from the figma file. So the designer can see how their work actually looks, and treat the figma view as just a low fidelity preview.
Could you point to any resources on how to achieve this? At work we're increasing our Figma usage, and this approach sounds like something better implemented sooner than later
I work on a large web based application, with designers, who use Figma. It's just too easy to lose the plot and come up with things that don't work well. Not because of Figma. Something about the balance between the software stack(s), the domain, the focus of designers today, the front end engineering, and product management is broken. It's interesting that Figma did (IMO) a great job at addressing the stack so they can build a product that does what they want it and then is used by so many to build products that don't always do what their customers want. Asking Figma to use the wrong stack for their product (which is what I'm reading between the lines) is not really the right answer...