8 years ago from Tony Gines, Señor Designer
I'm sure there's already work being done on a whole new Sketch version 4.0, but I'd thought I'd ask everyone what features they're most looking forward to seeing. Or, what features you wish were fixed, etc.
I'll start:
I would love to see a dark theme for the UI. Something like Pixelmator would be amazing.
I don't understand why everyone is focusing on a darker UI. That is very low on my wish list.
+1 to master pages.
You can basically emulate master pages using Symbols in Sketch.
Create the template you'd like to use as a master page on an artboard. Then group all of the objects, and turn the group into a symbol. Then lock the layer.
You can do this for as many master pages as you need. If you want to switch an artboard to a different master page, then select the symbol, and choose a different symbol from the symbols dropdown.
That's a good call. You'd end up having a different "master page" depending on the height of the page because of how symbols work right?
At this point I turn the header and footer into symbols and drop them in where they're needed. The more I've pondered this the more I think variable symbols would be 100% more functional than any sort of master page.
+1 for variable symbols.
+1000 for Variable symbols. Those folders drive me crazy!
-1001 for Variable symbols.... because I can!!!
jk jk
+1 for variable symbols. You should be able to define a UI styleguide – objects that can be re-used, and show various states.
I want to take this concept beyond smart object-like functionality.
I find myself with 12+ variations of the same thing (field with checkbox, field with more info indicator, field with two lines of text etc). I want to define them once, and reuse in my app layouts.
Likewise, if I need to make a change, all of the states would update, and all of the instances of the master symbol will update.
Think of React.js components, but for design.
I'd also add to this list: naming colors, instead of just swatches. and said list of colors being available in the gradient editor as well.
Yes!
I bought this up before, but Paintcode has a nice model for parametric symbols
Parametric symbols look mighty useful. Antetype implements this via overrides (conceptually the same as paragraph styles in InDesign for example).
Yes yes yes better typography tools
I would also put dark theme on the bottom of my list. I absolutely love the direction Sketch is moving in and don't want this to sound to harsh but…
Some things I would like to see:
Locking symbols so that accidentally deleting the wrong layer wouldn't destroy the rest of the document.
Locking the text styles so the same thing wouldn't happen to them.
Better resizing
Better rotating (ability to "flatten" the rotation")
Better memory management (so many times just closing and opening Sketch will take the CPU from 110% back down to a normal value)
States for symbols (hover, active, etc.)
On point 2. What I'd like is for text styles to behave like in keynote; if I change the style of one particular text item this will only update all other text items with that style attached, when I choose to do so.
But I love Sketch.
"I don't understand why everyone is focusing on a darker UI."
Darker User Interface is easier on the eyes when designing for long periods of time. We were asked simply to list what we wished for in Sketch 4.0, not to try and understand why people wished for these things and surely not to lessen the importance of other people's choices or requests.
+1 to master pages.
Windows version.
Haha nice
Perfect point. Sadly I'm a Windows user and I need to try to install mac in virtualbox to use Sketch... At least I work with Sketch on my work _^
Undo is sometimes really annoying. Thats only time i see a loader in my rMBP. History panel like photoshop will really help
Dark interface.
Nested symbols
Honestly I can't believe it's been missing this long.
I just want better performance, really. Kinda surprised that no one is talking about undo. Among other performance issues, it's really a huge pain point for me.
Agreed! Undo is really buggy and unreliable.
+1 My Sketch keeps crashing every time I work on a large project with a lots of pages. And also when opening a large .eps vector file (Or sketch didn't support that one?).
Swatches of Custom Color books. That would make my life so much better.
I would love a team Sketch page where we can build a pattern library and share our work with each other.
I currently do that now by sharing a UI Kit file on Google Drive.
maybe a global symbol library.
This could probably be accomplished with templates. Create your pattern library as a set of symbols, text, shared styles then save as template. One (probably minor) inconvenience is that you'd always have to start a new project with that template instead of just cmd+n.
You can add your own Keyboard Shortcuts in your Mac's keyboard settings
https://www.dropbox.com/s/5pdb77lcgwi7cwv/Screenshot%202015-05-15%2014.05.38.png?dl=0
this does not apply to selecting a tool, though. I'd want to disable "v" from enabling the vector tool simply because I press it so damn much out of habit when I'd like to select something.
I'm with you on that one. Can't tell you how many times I've accidentally begun to draw a line...
Just stop using Photoshop :) that muscle memory goes away after awhile…
Would love standardized keyboard shortcuts for alignment; also key objects would be fantastic.
One thing I miss a lot from Illustrator is the ability to press a and get a direct selection tool which I can then drag over an object and select certain points.
Sketch does have a tool but it only work on a single layer, not within groups and you can't assign a keyboard shortcut to it.
I just want a button to toggle all caps / small caps on and off.
Text with no line height so I can measure distances quicker. I know I can achieve this by converting text to outlines but then I lose the ability to edit the text.
How about a sensible approach to pasting something?
There are definitely some pasting issues, but this has gotten so much better in recent updates.
Pasting from one artboard to another seems to be close to perfect now. It's when you are pasting from one document to another, or from outside of Sketch that there is issues.
History panel.
No more cmd+z and cmd+shift+z
In my opinion they shouldn't go to v4.0 until they fix the text editing. Still so buggy.
Yes, text editing needs much work!
Something similar to layer comps from Photoshop! Which in Sketch terms Id like to refer to as "riffs"
Right now, if I want to make a one-off of an image or a button I feel like I need to duplicate the whole art board because I can't export a JPG with the new "one-off" image.
So it would be great if symbols and artboards could have different states and the export option allowed you to choose which states are exported.
After Effects integration
Ha. Good luck with that one. I don't even know how many sketch files I've manually converted to PSD/AI for use with AE. :(
Definitely looking for real better performances. This should affect zooming, CPU's usage, loading & undo speed. That's all I hope for at this moment, before they move onto a new version.
New features:
Annoyances:
• I wish a better performance. Update after update my sketch still use a lot of memory.
• Increase it's user interface customization.
Global Variables would be nice. Better UX for creating & using text & layer styles
I would love to see a Trello board somewhere so we could actually vote on these features or more importantly: bugs.
I find text editing to be the most buggy which is such a shame when everything is becoming so typography driven.
Trying to colour individual words or letters in a text field sentence for example, is way too unreliable. It causes what ever colour you have to fade out in increments (?) and most of the time it glitches and removes any individual styling the next time you load the document.
Selecting text in general is pretty glitchy. It just doesn't feel right compared to other tools.
Fix the font/line-height bugs and I'll be happy.
I love Sketch. It's the go to tool for my web projects. But there are still a few glaringly obvious issues that need sorting out.
For me these are ;
The memory usage. Using Sketch really takes a large chunk of memory, especially when using large images.
The line-height issue. This has affected me on several occasions. It can be almost impossible to use a baseline grid.
File sizes. I may have missed something here but exported file sizes seem to be huge compared to exporting in Photoshop.
Nobody asking to resolve line-height issue? :/
Better zooming. That's all I want.
-Better boolean operations (combining paths/shapes). I run into bugs here a lot.
-Better symbols, which others have mentioned should be more like smart objects. I should be able to nest and do all sorts of crazy shit with these. They could be so powerful.
Other than those two things, I am really very happy with Sketch. But those two things are probably very difficult and time consuming software engineering issues.
Having a toggable spell-checker would be swell
I'd love an isolation mode so I can work on an object without messing with others.
Dynamic dimensions for symbols. So if for exemple, i create a button symbol, i would like it to change width relative to the text inside it.
Definitely better zooming!
Plus possibility to convert a rectangle with rounded corners to a regular shape, so corners' radius would change proportionally while scaling it later (or I'm too dumb to find out how to do this in the current version…)
Focus more on collaborative workflow: • Imported images auto-update when changed (i.e. linked images) • Ability to move pages between documents • Better color palette management (ability to import ASE files?) • Version control
Other nice-to-haves: • Option to resize symbols w/out affecting all instances • Inline character styles • Confirm before updating all text styles • Mask layer only affects one layer above it by default • Ability to change text to title/sentence case
UX considerations: • Don't move + button when clicking on Export • Color palette could use a little love
1) A Dark User Interface Option (Staring at white & light gray all day is hard on the eyes!) 2) Variable Symbols, more like Smart Objects, not folders 3) Ability to Lock Symbols 4) Better Text handling and Styles 5) Ability to Lock Text Styles 6) Master Pages
I wish they'll buy Layervault and create a version control with a conflict resolution system. Might be really powerful to use Sketch in a collaborative way.
I know this is an old thread but having the ability to rotate things in 3d space would be awesome. There are some plugins for that but having them native would be amazing. And yeah +1 for darker UI, my eyes would be grateful.
Please fix the real time Spell Check option as it doesn't work.
These are very important to me: - undocking the pages and the layers palette - they are after all completely different things. also, more screen space (fireworks does this) - undocking the inspector as well - dont dissappear selection borders - if something is an active selection, then it should always have the visual indication that it's a selection - support for text wrapping an image (html does this) - better list support: currently it's very basic - a stepper for text sizes: so they can be edited like any other size/number - the ability to quantize/lock everything to 1px steps. I know that screen sizes vary, but mostly, in html, you don't position items to hundredths of a pixel. - quantize type as well (optionally) - ability to select an object behind an object (like in Fireworks)
android friendly (mirror, assets naming)
Interaction/animation prototyping. …No?
Ok a simpler one: how about just make text layers align properly. Snap to the baseline, and all text size and leading changes happen from that reference point.
Text bounding boxes are so useless.
[off topic] Mirror for Android
All of the above, illustrator does.
easter eggs
sketchtool improvementThen I'll be happy and update my gulp-sketch, too.
Feature in Axure that I absolutely love: selection modes.
The default mode: touch any point on an object, object will be selected
Axure's contained mode: user has to make the drag surface area encompassing an entire object in order for the object to be selected.
^ this becomes ridiculously useful for making quick and accurate solutions, especially with tons of elements and groups on the screen
I mapped Axure's alignment shortcuts (distribute doesn't work) to Sketch and it's pretty great. I also think Axure's model of dynamic panels and states would be a solid approach to Sketch's symbol issues. And yes, those selection modes kick-ass.
Didn't think of mapping Axure's shortcuts to Sketch...good tip
Maybe I'm just attacking type styles for responsive designs incorrectly, but I always end up throwing in the towel after trying for a solid start. Maybe some way to link type styles to certain art board sizes?
+1 for linked images.
The ability to force only full pixels for measurements (unless I've overlooked that feature)
Smart guides could use some love. I keep having elements snap off the art boards for no apparent reason.
Big fan of Sketch though. If I had a good alternative to InDesign maybe I could wave goodbye to Adobe.
Shared layers Master Pages Better symbols Fix zooming with the scroll wheel Stability
– Undo function, but with opportunity to Undo only selected object states, or objects, or artboards ;) – Nested symbols. With inherited properties, like “Based on...” in the InDesign. But may be based on a different principles, like a groups and default/empty/not_overlapping states. – Changing color in the color swatch must change objects color. Swatch must be attached to object.
Does anyone use sketch with a Wacom tablet here? It's positively buggy. Please PLEASE someone at Bohemian Coding get a Wacom tablet and use your own product for a few days.
Selecting text moves the layer a pixel or two in a random direction about 20% of the time. When I want to pan around the canvas, I'll hold down the space bar and have to wait a good second before grabbing the canvas to move around, otherwise I'll grab some random layer and shoot it across the room. Ugh.
Support for relative sizing. You can already set shape's size to x% of the container, but I'd like to be able to make that value stay, so then I can change the size of container (or artboard) and see all the elements resize with it.
I'd love to see some basic animation support. Something like InvisionApp has. Plus some nice and easy presentation forms, eg. HQ animgifs?
I want to be able to define text variables that I can later change and have that change reflected everywhere in the document. Basically text symbols without any style/appearance properties.
The use case here is if I'm doing a mockup for a location, I want to be able to do:
locationName: "Lou's Oyster Bar" locationAddress: "44 Main Street"
etc...
Ability to add hotspots like InVision, Marval, Pixate, or Flinto... or like Keynote...
Individually control the radius of each corner of a shape.
Pretty sure you can already do that.
Double click the shape. Each corner will have a dot that allows you to individually edit it. You can also type for example, 4/2/4/2 in the radius text field.
TIL, thank you.
I now wish for a more intuitive way to edit the radius of a shape.
I would love to see a proper UI. Using the default OS look for a design application is a bit ironic.
Don't you think...
Jesus Christ...
Uhh...
Login to Comment
You'll need to log in before you can leave a comment.
LoginRegister Today
New accounts can leave comments immediately, and gain full permissions after one week.
Register now