What is Pixelay for Figma?

Pixelay for Figma is engineered to serve as a conduit between static design mockups and fully functional websites. It allows users to seamlessly compare Figma designs with their real-world web counterparts. What sets it apart from similar tools is its user-friendly interface, featuring multiple overlay options. For frontend developers, this tool is really great for achieving pixel-perfect precision, as it highlights any variances between the design and the coded UI, thereby making the development cycle more efficient and reducing iterative adjustments. Designers also gain by witnessing their concepts come to life in the most accurate way, and QA engineers can quickly spot and report any visual irregularities. This ensures that the final product faithfully matches the original design.

What can it be used for?

  • Ensuring the accuracy of Figma designs. Pixelay assists in confirming that Figma designs accurately represent the intended website by comparing them to the live site. This is beneficial for detecting design errors before their public launch.
  • Identifying discrepancies between designs and the website. Pixelay is also instrumental in pinpointing any differences between Figma designs and the actual website. Such insights can be useful for monitoring website development progress or determining areas requiring enhancement.
  • Obtaining feedback from stakeholders on designs. Utilizing Pixelay facilitates gathering opinions from stakeholders concerning designs. Such feedback is valuable for understanding the overall design perception and spotting areas that may require further explanation.
  • Tracking the advancement of a website redesign. When undergoing a website overhaul, Pixelay serves as a tool to monitor the redesign's progression by contrasting the older website version with the new one. Observing such comparisons aids in assessing the redesign's status and pinpointing aspects that might need betterment.
  • Comparing different website versions. After implementing website modifications, Pixelay can be employed to juxtapose the previous website version with its latest iteration. Observing these comparisons is advantageous for understanding the impact of the changes and determining sections that might require additional enhancement.
  • Evaluating various design concepts. When uncertain about the optimal design for a website, Pixelay can facilitate the side-by-side comparison of different design propositions. Such a comparison aids in discerning the more compelling design, enabling a more informed design choice.

Pixelay's Features

A standout feature of Pixelay is its ability to simultaneously compare multiple Figma designs and website URLs. It offers a range of overlay options, including transparency, split-screen, toggle, drag, and diff, facilitating comprehensive, side-by-side assessments of designs and live webpages. Additionally, Pixelay gives users the flexibility to assign different webpage URLs to individual Figma frames, providing granular control over the comparison process.

For developers who work on local servers, Pixelay's compatibility with localhost is a valuable asset, especially when used in conjunction with Figma's new development mode. This feature enables developers to juxtapose Figma designs with web pages hosted on their local machines, a critical step in the development workflow. The plugin also comes with a companion lightweight Chrome Extension, making it possible to compare designs with live websites. A built-in pixel ruler further refines the comparison experience by allowing users to measure spatial variances accurately.

Overview

Overview

Pixelay operates as a Figma plugin, rooted in a Figma project. When the plugin is activated, users can decide on the screens for comparison and designate a specific URL—be it remote or local—to contrast with the designs. To facilitate this process, the Pixelay Chrome extension is required. After the configurations are in place, a Chrome window appears, equipped and ready for Pixelay's operations.

In addition to the overlay modes discussed in this document, users can utilize the toolbar to alternate between the original design and the compared URL. Furthermore, they have the capability to drag the overlay or activate an on-screen ruler.

Compare multiple URLs simultaneously

Compare multiple URLs simultaneously

Among Pixelay's most remarkable features is its capacity to compare multiple URLs against various frames within Figma, all within a single screen. This capability presents a time-saving advantage for frontend engineers, designers, and QA engineers across diverse scenarios. Its utility becomes particularly pronounced when comparing multistep processes, assessing different states of a singular screen, or evaluating multiple breakpoints concurrently. While doing this, any of the overlay modes provided by the tool can be used.

Overlay mode: transparency

Overlay mode: transparency

This mode operates similarly to the other tools referenced in the primary document. An overlay of the design materializes over the compared URL, and its transparency level can be modified using a draggable control.

Overlay mode: split-screen

Overlay mode: split-screen


Pixelay offers a unique and exciting feature: a draggable vertical control that divides the screen along the browser window's horizontal axis. This functionality proves advantageous in various situations, particularly on pages where multiple modules coexist within the same rows.

Overlay mode: blend-diff

Overlay mode: blend-diff

Pixelay's final overlay mode introduces a blend diff tool, enabling users to swiftly identify subtle discrepancies that might elude the naked eye. This tool is especially valuable when variations are minor and the design is nearing pixel-perfect accuracy.

Pricing

Pixelay offers a flexible pricing structure designed to accommodate different user needs. The Free version is available for individual users, but it seems to be intended as a trial as it has strong limitations. The Pro version is intended for team use and is priced at $15 per user per month. If billed annually, the cost per user reduces to $180, offering a 25% savings. Enterprise licensing is available for larger organizations starting at $2,639 per year.

Conclusion

Upon evaluating Pixelay, I've found that it offers unparalleled utility compared to other solutions in the market. Additionally, the versatile overlay options and the capability to concurrently compare multiple URLs furnish us with robust mechanisms for identifying discrepancies and errors in implementation. I've participated in several projects where substantial time and resources were spent on addressing design-related issues, comprehensive team-based design reviews, and iterative dialogues among designers, QA engineers, and frontend developers.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

My Experience in Sitecore Hackathon 2023

Recently, I had the opportunity to participate in Sitecore’s Hackathon 2023 . It was my first hackathon experience, and I have to admit that I was both excited and nervous about it. The thought of working with a team to develop a simple application in just 24 hours seemed daunting, but I was ready to take on the challenge. The event was fun, challenging, and exhausting, all at the same time. It was a great chance to put my skills to the test and learn from my colleagues. As an associate frontend architect at Verndale , I was happy to see that several teams from our company were participating in the hackaton. This allowed us to compare our experiences and share our knowledge. I participated in the hackathon with Sandy Foley and Cristhian Castro, two colleagues from Verndale . It was the first time that we had worked together, so it was a great oportunity to get to know them and learn about their strengths and skills. We worked well together, and I was impressed by their creativity and d...
Read more

GitHub Copilot: A Developer's Best Friend

I am an Associate Frontend Architect at Verndale , where I currently lead an initiative to adopt GitHub Copilot as an everyday tool. Every developer in the company, including both frontend and backend engineers, are integrating this tool to their IDEs of preference -mostly Visual Studio Code- to evaluate whether if it helps to increase our overall productivity.  I'm positive we are going to adopt it and so far I'm loving it. GitHub Copilot is a powerful AI assistant that can help you write better code. It can generate code suggestions, provide context-aware comments, and even help you debug  your code. If you're a developer, you should definitely give Copilot a try. It could save you a lot of time and effort, and it could help you write better code. Here are some best practices when using Copilot: Use Copilot to generate ideas and suggestions, not to replace your own coding skills. Copilot is a tool that can help you write better code, but it's not a replacement ...
Read more