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AMA: Adobe XD 2017

almost 6 years ago from , Product Manager for Adobe XD

Hey everyone,

My name is Demian Borba and I work on the Adobe XD team.

Last week, we released another important update to XD, enabling designers to speed up their UX workflows with powerful features such as the new Asset Panel, the first integration with CC Libraries, plus an update on performance. Yes, XD got even faster! You can render hundreds of artboards, and things just work.

We are extremely excited with all the reactions in the community, positive and negative. We continue to focus on solving more and more UX challenges. But it's a long journey, where we are really listening to customers and carefully crafting every single piece of functionality landing in Adobe XD.

Last year, we answered lots of questions from you and we'd like to do it again.

Members of the Adobe XD team and I will be answering your questions throughout the day.

We are happy to answer any questions you have regarding Adobe XD, the team or anything else. What do you wanna know?

130 comments

  • Cristian MoiseiCristian Moisei, almost 6 years ago

    I'll bite:

    Will XD get any new major features or is the plan to just play catch up for the next 2 years and work on figuring out how to do text underline? I don't see XD as design software currently, I use it as a wire-framing tool and I think a good chunk of the community also considers it incomplete.

    Why is the libraries 'panel' a separate window you have to activate via the menu and not an actual panel? Why not do one better and integrate it with the styles panel?

    21 points
    • Andrew Shorten, almost 6 years ago

      We've figured out text underline - agree it took longer than any of us would have liked.

      Yes to new features - we'll be sharing a roadmap soon, so that you'll be able to see what we plan to work on and can provide feedback. At a high level we'll be working on core design and prototyping features, so as to increase the expressiveness of the content you can create in XD.

      Regarding libraries - it's an initial implementation. We're thinking a lot about working with assets, sharing and collaboration, and I expect this to evolve over time.

      Thanks, Andrew (Adobe).

      6 points
      • Cristian MoiseiCristian Moisei, almost 6 years ago

        Just make it a panel, not a window until you figure out better ways to integrate it.

        In Photoshop, I found I'm happy to collapse my panels even if I'd have plenty of space to keep all of them open. It keeps things cleaner.

        img

        2 points
  • Marek LMarek L, almost 6 years ago

    How about the essential stuff like guides?

    18 points
  • Christopher Taylor, almost 6 years ago

    First of all, I want to say thank you to the Adobe team for reaching out to the design community for open feedback. You have taken quite a beating on this thread.

    I have used Adobe XD since it was first released and I feel it has a ton of potential. I agree with most of the feature requests on this thread.

    I think opening up the discussion here was a good first start, but ideally it would be nice if there was some kind of "voice of the customer" page for Adobe XD where we vote up and down feature requests, and have visibility into the product roadmap. This would allow the community the ability to help shape your roadmap.

    10 points
    • Talin WadsworthTalin Wadsworth, almost 6 years ago

      We appreciate any/all of the feedback! Building a design tool for designers is a huge challenge, and honest critique helps us learn and better shape the tool.

      And thanks for checking out XD even in the early days! Have you had a chance to peruse our Uservoice? https://adobexd.uservoice.com/

      The team is very active on the site, and we use topics and votes to help set priorities and our roadmap.

      -Talin (Lead designer, XD)

      8 points
  • Dan RodneyDan Rodney, almost 6 years ago

    Why were character styles implemented so poorly? You can't name them. You can't see what style is currently applied, if you resize a text box, the style connection is lost (with no way to indicate whether it is connected or not). There are no paragraph styles so text alignment can't be saved into a style (plus there's no space before or after a paragraph). Seriously though, Adobe InDesign has awesome style sheets and Adobe XD launches with such poorly implemented styles... it makes me wonder why? InDesign's approach of dealing with overrides, etc is just awesome. This implementation of styles is the weakest of any Adobe app I've used so far, and seems rushed for the sake of getting it to market. That doesn't seem like a good approach as new users are evaluating XD and seeing poorly implemented features... it will not be good for their impression of XD.

    I'll second the comment about CC Libraries being a new window. That's just weird. Everything else is neatly contained in the main window, so should CC Libraries. But why was that feature even implemented now, when basic features like guides and JPEG export are still missing?

    10 points
    • Andrew Shorten, almost 6 years ago

      There's a balance between putting out a feature that is early, but missing capabilities for some, so as to get feedback and build upon the foundation, and developing something for a longer period of time until is "fully featured" and then exposing it.

      We hear you that additional capabilities are needed in relation to working with character styles and we'll be adding those incrementally.

      Regarding CC Libraries - that's good feedback, we'll continue to iterate on that.

      Regarding layout guides and JPG export - both of those are being worked on and hopefully shouldn't be too long before they show up in XD.

      Thanks, Andrew (Adobe).

      2 points
      • Rocket Singh, almost 6 years ago

        That early feeedback line sounds a little like lean startup kool-aid. As I recently heard the Pinterest founder say, sometimes the only thing you learn from releasing a mediocre product early is that people don't like mediocre products.

        10 points
        • Brandon ZellBrandon Zell, almost 6 years ago

          I'll just add this perspective: It seems that Adobe XD is being built fresh, from the ground up, and I think it's an excellent decision. They could have taken a bunch of pieces from InDesign, Illustrator, and Photoshop, but instead they approached everything with a fresh perspective. The result is a much more intuitive application.

          I'm very happy with how Adobe XD is coming together. Their end goal is implementing these features correctly, not just quickly. I believe part of that is implementing a feature, seeing how people use it, gathering feedback, and then improving.

          Like I said: Illustrator and the other CC apps have fully backed features already. Adobe XD could just use those... but I'm so glad they're not.

          10 points
  • Account deleted almost 6 years ago

    Why is development taking so long?

    7 points
    • Andrew Shorten, almost 6 years ago

      Building a high quality and high performance app on multiple platforms does take some time.

      That said, what is it you're waiting for/needing?

      Thanks, Andrew (Adobe).

      1 point
      • Account deleted almost 6 years ago
        • easy image insertion (as Sketch plugin Replaste)
        • nested symbols that actually work without hacking (changing colors etc. without masking symbol that is an actual color)
        • JSON support like Craft offers but better. If JSON has some deep data hierarchy then this plugin is completely useless.
        • crazy good renaming (like Sketch plugin Renamer)
        • exporting to After Effects and other animation apps
        • easy sharing and sketching with other colleagues like Invision Freeform but a version that actually works.
        • developer and marketing handoff (everybody forgets about marketing and copy!!)
        • artboard search, layer search
        • after element is created automatically switch to cursor
        • layout functionality as Sketch has, that is pretty good over there
        6 points
        • Cristian MoiseiCristian Moisei, almost 6 years ago

          I'd be curious to know how you use Sketch Renamer. I tried Renamer plugins in PS a while ago (which seemed to do the same things this one does), and never found them to save me any time. I rename my layers as I create them / before I duplicate them, and I have Append 'copy' disabled, so all it takes is for me to name the first layer 'Item' then all the others will be named Iitem, without the need of a bulk Renamer.

          Does it do anything smarter than that?

          1 point
          • Account deleted almost 6 years ago

            A problem I had 3 weeks ago. I had symbol names like this: name / name / name. And something didn't work right with spaces (can't remember the exact problem) so I had to rename all my symbols. I used Renamer to find ' / ' and then replace it with '/'. Such a time saver.

            1 point
            • Cristian MoiseiCristian Moisei, almost 6 years ago

              That may be a Sketch problem, I never ran into any kind of problems with layer names in PS.

              1 point
              • Account deleted almost 6 years ago

                Ah, Sketch has too many problems... I wish Figma or XD kills it off.

                2 points
                • Cristian MoiseiCristian Moisei, almost 6 years ago

                  One can only dream. Figma took 5 years and $18M to make the version they have now, which is not particularly impressive and doesn't exactly give me hopes they will take the design world by storm with this hugely impressive tool anytime soon.

                  I'd say we're stuck with shitty software for now. XD could become good in say 2 years.

                  2 points
                  • Dylan FieldDylan Field, almost 6 years ago

                    4 years, not 5 ;)

                    Look — if there's one thing I can agree with Adobe on, it's that building a quality design tool is hard work / takes a lot of time. The good news is that now we have a great foundation and we are shipping updates very quickly.

                    I'm sorry to hear you're not impressed with Figma. What are you looking for?

                    6 points
                    • David SvezhintsevDavid Svezhintsev, over 5 years ago

                      I don't know about Cristian, but I've never had any problems with Figma. Have worked in Sketch for 2 years and switched to Figma in one instant.

                      The tool works great out of the box, solves problem of storing files on the computer and therefore saves space. Symbols are here. Prototyping is here, even though it's very basic but at least it works. The only thing with prototype that needs addressed is Figma Mirror support?

                      Are you guys looking into third-party "plugin" support, something like Power-ups in Trello? Craft's features would be badass, specially JSON content import.

                      Thanks for all the hard work on Figma, so far the best tool on the market.

                      0 points
          • Chris KeithChris Keith, almost 6 years ago

            How did you disable append copy?

            0 points
            • Cristian MoiseiCristian Moisei, almost 6 years ago

              Next to the name of the panel 'Layers' there is a hamburger menu. If you click it you'll get a dropdown that has an option for 'Panel Options'

              A couple of goodies in there.

              1 point
        • Mary Cherng, almost 6 years ago

          Thanks for the detailed feedback. Regarding developer and marketing handoff, would love to understand your needs in this area so that it's not forgotten! Can you provide more detail on what would help you with developer and marketing handoff?

          Cheers, Mary (Adobe)

          0 points
          • Account deleted almost 6 years ago

            Well, Figma is on the right track with this one. It would be awesome if somehow marketing team would get the file via browser and then have access to change text layers. Something like that. Now, I put whatever I think it is good and marketing team hardly sees my files because I use Sketch and it is a pure hell to deliver just overview of screens to them. Freeform would be somewhat useful if it worked. The solution has to be simple, a link, no login etc. I have so many tools in my hands right now that I feel sick. Designers need 1-2 tools tops, and now we have a gazillion of useless apps that barely work with each other.

            2 points
        • Joachim TillessenJoachim Tillessen, over 5 years ago

          Great list, Antonia, I'll support every single one of them.

          0 points
      • Scott Perdue, almost 6 years ago

        Out of curiosity, exactly how big is XD's dev team? And do you have a dedicated team for each platform or is there crossover?

        0 points
        • Elaine Chao, almost 6 years ago

          You can take a look at the About box to see the people who are or have been involved with the project. We can't talk a ton about how we organize ourselves, but we have a number of people with cross-platform skills. Sometimes, it makes sense for us to specialize, and sometimes, it makes sense for us to generalize.

          0 points
  • Jonathan ShariatJonathan Shariat, almost 6 years ago

    I know theres a lot of critique here that I agree with but I want to add, were rooting for you. Digital Design has had sub-par tools since the beginning. We need modern tools that help us do our job end to end (wireframe, UI, interactions, animations, transitions, prototypes, collaboration, and delivery to dev.

    Its a tall task, so good luck!

    6 points
    • Mary Cherng, almost 6 years ago

      Thanks for your note, Jonathan! Our top priority is to work with the design community to build XD into a modern tool that meets the needs of the end-to-end workflow.

      If there is anything specific that you need or if you have ideas, please let us know via UserVoice, https://adobexd.uservoice.com/. We use it to help prioritize our product roadmap.

      Cheers, Mary (Adobe)

      1 point
  • Colin HartColin Hart, almost 6 years ago

    Used Photoshop for UI for years, moved to Sketch a few years back, but would love to move to XD fulltime. One of the single most important features of Sketch is the ease of building plugins - they support and have enabled so much more than the core team could implement. Are these on the roadmap in the near-term?

    One plugin in particular, as I'm sure the team is fully aware of is Zeplin. As soon as it supports XD, I'll consider making the switch fulltime.

    Additionally, with Sketch opening up their file format, can we expect to see .sketch import functionality coming to XD soon? This would do wonders for easing people into the tool who are coming from Sketch. I know you can copy/paste exported SVGs, but something more direct would be appreciated.

    All that said, I truly appreciate what you guys are building and hope you succeed. The dedication to simplicity and performance is excellent. I turned to Sketch as it was more focused for the uses I need over Photoshop... but at times now, Sketch feels sluggish and has bugs that persist for months (or years). Hoping that XD can break me away from that.

    6 points
    • Andrew Shorten, almost 6 years ago

      Thanks for the feedback Colin.

      Yes, we're working on plugin support and also plan on making it easier to bring in design work from both Photoshop and Sketch.

      We'll share more on our roadmap soon.

      Cheers, Andrew (Adobe)

      3 points
      • Scott Perdue, almost 6 years ago

        Looking forward to seeing that roadmap. As someone who uses XD daily, it will be very helpful to know what to expect, and when to expect it.

        For example, I've been putting off creating my own formal dev handoff process because I know that XD's solution is "coming soon," but it's at the point where if I know it's still awhile off, I need to find another solution in the meantime.

        1 point
    • Demian Borba, almost 6 years ago

      Adding to Andrew's answer, please upvote the feature request here: https://adobexd.uservoice.com/forums/353007-adobe-xd-feature-requests/suggestions/12945705-allow-adobe-xd-to-have-third-party-plugins-extensi and besides Zeplin, please let us know what kinds of plugins you're looking for. Thanks Colin.

      2 points
      • Miles ReiterMiles Reiter, almost 6 years ago

        Not Colin, but Invision plugin integration would be a big deal for my team as we actually moved from Zeplin to Invision Inspect. The ability to sync prototypes directly to Invision would be the single biggest feature that would help fit XD into my workflow.

        0 points
        • Mary Cherng, almost 6 years ago

          Hi Miles, Thanks for the feedback. As we look into supporting the developer workflow within XD, what are some of the key reasons for switching from Zeplin to Invision Inspect?

          Cheers, Mary (Adobe)

          1 point
          • Miles ReiterMiles Reiter, almost 6 years ago

            One of the big key factors there was that it carried over pretty much all the functionality of Zeplin while also rolling in an interactive prototype into the package.

            In short, sharing an interactive prototype with the developers on my team is just one more way to give them added context for my designs and more insight into how I've envisioned that it should behave. Invision Inspect lets both that and mockup inspection happen in the same place.

            1 point
  • Rishi Luchun, almost 6 years ago

    I used XD for a while, and I'll be honest, I really loved it. Get bit of kit for some simple designs and quick prototyping. BUT there's only so much you can do and SO much you can't do. It's nice to see it being updated, but it feels like an age before the next one comes out with the changes being small in the grand scheme of things. Moved onto Sketch (was formerly a Photoshop user).

    5 points
    • Andrew Shorten, almost 6 years ago

      Glad you liked XD, but understand that you need to pick the tool that meets your current needs.

      We're working hard to add additional depth of features across design, prototyping and sharing - hope you'll take another look at XD in future.

      Cheers, Andrew (Adobe).

      2 points
  • Lucian .esLucian .es, almost 6 years ago

    Core functionality requested by users: guides. Nuff said.

    4 points
  • Nice ShoesNice Shoes, almost 6 years ago

    I agree with most of the comments/questions. With the size of Adobe XD has the potential to be the go to tool. Yet there seems to be a complete lack of understanding about what is needed. And more more and better is expected.

    Not having guides just sums up the issues.

    3 points
    • Cristian MoiseiCristian Moisei, almost 6 years ago

      This is Adobe, what do you expect? I'd say the days of them understanding what the pro market needs are long gone - if you look at their conferences, everything seems geared towards amateur users.

      2 points
      • Interested Curious, almost 6 years ago

        It's not gone, there are pros who still rely on adobe. Other types of design still do exist. I understand there are fewer prototyping tools + purely UX design tools, but even the "top" ones are from companies barely a 10th of adobes age and still need fixes and still all offer different paths, with non truly being all out better than the others. One of the most popular alternatives isn't even available on windows. The adobe is dead thing really confuses me so much because they still have some fantastic tools.

        0 points
        • Cristian MoiseiCristian Moisei, almost 6 years ago

          I am not saying Adobe is dead. Even though Sketch has some 40% of the marketplace for UI and Adobe only 30% (20% for PS 10% for XD), they are still the market leader in many industries and are not going anywhere anytime soon. I am however saying that they have focused heavily on amateurs lately and not enough on the pros (look at the features introduced in PS or the stuff they talk about during their conferences).

          0 points
    • Andrew Shorten, almost 6 years ago

      We've focused our attention so far on providing a core set of design, prototype and sharing tools, on Mac and Windows, together with preview apps on iOS and Android, where quality and performance are the top priority. With that in place, we're now focusing our efforts on additional features in each area - layout guides are currently being worked on.

      Thanks, Andrew (Adobe).

      3 points
      • Cristian MoiseiCristian Moisei, almost 6 years ago

        I hope you understand the skepticism Andrew given Adobe's track record with other programs. The XD team hasn't done a great job of being transparent either - they did try to engage the community but when a lot of our requests go ignored with no explanation, people loose faith.

        I think the attitude towards XD would be way more positive if you took the time to explain why certain things are not getting done (like underline, which last I checked had 700 votes making it one of the most requested features), instead of writing every article to brag about how amazing and perfect XD is.

        1 point
        • Andrew Shorten, almost 6 years ago

          Skepticism understood. Fair comments on continuing to improve transparency and explaining what we're doing/not doing, etc. Will take that on board.

          Thanks, Andrew (Adobe).

          1 point
        • Scott Perdue, almost 6 years ago

          I disagree wholeheartedly that the XD team ignores requests. Much of why I'm such a proponent of XD is their community involvement. I tried Sketch for awhile and was unable to get any response on a simple bug that has persisted for years. The XD team, on the other hand, is extremely active on social media. They even host a weekly Facebook livestream in which they present what's new and field questions. I'm as frustrated as the next guy that we still don't have a few basic features like text underlining and guides, but to say that they ignore their users is entirely inaccurate.

          4 points
  • Willem ShepherdWillem Shepherd, almost 6 years ago

    I guess there will always be a difference between core vs 'pro/power user' features. This exists in Sketch today but is alleviated by the ability to add plugins to enhance the toolset and general workflow.

    Important Sketch 'advantages' and why I have not /cannot move from it at this point include:

    Sketch - Non - destructive symbol overrides - MAJOR (not just text but style, icon, object etc.)

    • (future beta) Linked libraries with external libraries
    • Dashed borders
    • Multiple borders / fills
    • Symbol organization - even thought the / hack is a hack, it works pretty well
    • Multiple pages
    • Character styles
    • Inner shadow
    • Click and drag to change values (i.e. font size)
    • Custom Nudging (8px)
    • Direct select of objects

    Plugins

    • Auto layout
    • Batch create symbols
    • Batch rename layers
    • Distributor
    • Cover artboard
    • Find and replace
    • Dynamic button
    • Select similar * (layers)
    • Symbol organizer
    • Craft and Invision Sync

    Other

    • Character and paragraph styles
    • Global styles, not just colors

    p.s. - if you want to really become a Sketch 'killer' - supporting copy(Sketch)/paste (XD)would be INCREDIBLE

    You're doing a lot really well - looking forward to seeing this become a more fully featured design tool!

    2 points
    • Talin WadsworthTalin Wadsworth, almost 6 years ago

      Thanks Willem! We appreciate the feedback and the detailed list of features you use as part of your daily workflow.

      Some of my favorite features (global color, character styles) just launched with our August update, and there is lots more to come in the following releases.

      We definitely see XD as a "pro" tool. Most of the designers at Adobe are using XD for our daily work. We're designing XD... in XD! We still have a wishlist of features, but still, a lot of great work is happening in the tool.

      Be sure to chime in at our Uservoice https://adobexd.uservoice.com/ or hit us up on twitter if anything else comes to mind.

      -Talin (Lead designer, XD)

      2 points
  • Dominik LevitskyDominik Levitsky, almost 6 years ago

    Any possibility that we might see updates coming out faster?

    2 points
    • Demian Borba, almost 6 years ago

      Hi Dominik. We release XD updates monthly, given a couple of exceptions here and there. Our August update brought bigger features that were being cooked for months and months. Please take a look when you have a chance: https://blogs.adobe.com/creativecloud/august-update-of-adobe-xd/?scid=social73756517 We are working on other major features that will land later, planned to deliver great value on challenges such as versioning, integration with other Adobe apps, improvements to prototyping mode, etc. Hope you understand that building a new tool focused on performance, for multiple platforms (Mac, Windows, iOS and Android) takes time. We want to do it right, excellence over shortcuts.

      2 points
  • Joe CJoe C, almost 6 years ago

    1. I'm extremely curious why underlined text is still not possible? There's enough people on the Adobe forums getting angry about it, but I would geniunely like to know the issues? Is there something with the text handling or rendering methods that makes this diffcult? Pretty much every program I've ever used with some kind of text input has the option to underline, so it's unusual that it's still not included in a 1.5 year old product.

    2. What's been the biggest achievements and disappointments so far, working on XD?

    2 points
    • Andrew Shorten, almost 6 years ago

      We hear you on text underline - one of those things that you'd expect would be built in or easy to do, but it turns out that's not the case, hence the delay. That said, we're making good progress on it now (we have internal builds with text underline enabled) and so hopefully not too much longer. We'd certainly like to draw a line under not have underline ;)

      Thanks, Andrew (Adobe).

      0 points
      • Jonathan De Heus, almost 6 years ago

        We hear you on text underline - one of those things that you'd expect would be built in or easy to do, but it turns out that's not the case

        Would it be possible to explain this in more detail? I'm curious as to what the blocker(s) are that have prevented underline functionality from being implemented.

        2 points
        • Andrew Shorten, almost 6 years ago

          The core rendering engine that we're using for XD didn't support underline, so we needed to implement from scratch - in doing so, there is a lot of detail associated with how underline actually works, especially in regard to rendering the portion of a letter that extends below the baseline. I'll defer to other folks on the XD team to add more detail (I'm not in engineering).

          Thanks, Andrew (Adobe).

          3 points
          • Bear Travis, almost 6 years ago

            Hi there!

            There are a couple challenges to getting underline working correctly in XD, both in terms of its appearance and getting that appearance consistent across platforms. A while ago, Medium posted an article on getting link underlines to look just right, and they explore a bit about what can go right or wrong with underline renditions. For XD, the main things we wanted to get right were:

            1. Creating a single underline for adjacent text runs with different styles (for example, font size)
            2. Creating gaps around font descenders that would intersect the underline

            That in itself wasn't so bad, but unfortunately, as Andrew mentioned, we didn't have this immediately available in our platform, and so we had to build it out. We had to keep it consistent across the editor, canvas, desktop, mobile, and web. And it had to have a consistent round-tripping experience with other formats like SVG.

            All of these challenges are surmountable, especially given that we've started building out the feature in development builds. But because the implementation cost was high, we weren't able to sneak it in earlier, and had to wait until there was a bit more breathing room in our schedule. It's been a bit of a mad dash trying to get everything in XD just right, but we're working on it!

            Thanks for your continued support of XD, and hopefully you'll see underline soon!

            -Bear (Adobe XD Code Monkey)

            6 points
  • Yuming Cheung, almost 6 years ago

    Do you know "XD" is an emoji in Asian countries?

    1 point
  • Taylor PalmerTaylor Palmer, almost 6 years ago

    What can you tell about long-term the vision of Adobe XD? How will it revolutionize the industry in a way other tools haven't? Or will it continue to adopt functionality from other tools?

    • Prototyping tools are all too common.
    • Live collaboration exists.
    • Developer handoff is improving every day with new tools.
    • Component Library apps are popping up everywhere.
    • Versioning/git tools are gaining popularity.

    I know that Adobe XD can gobble these up and put them under one roof (which is very welcome, btw), but what is it going to bring to the industry?

    1 point
    • Mary Cherng, almost 6 years ago

      Great question, Taylor. A key part of the XD vision is to enable design at the speed of thought. What comes up often in internal discussions is how to improve existing workflows so that it's better, faster, and more intuitive for designers. Similar to what XD has done with repeat grid, but at scale for any designer problem. To do this, we have to build a solid foundation first so that innovation can occur without impacting quality. Stay tuned for more roadmap updates later this year.

      Cheers, Mary (Adobe)

      1 point
    • Andrew Shorten, almost 6 years ago

      Thanks for your questions Taylor.

      Our vision from the outset was for XD to provide an end-to-end solution for designing, prototyping and collaborating on user experiences.

      Using the points you made, I’d say there is still a way to go in all those areas:

      • Prototyping tools are all too common, but remain disconnected from design tools
      • Live collaboration exists, but is unproven at scale and within enterprise environments
      • Developer handoff is improving every day with new tools, but does not solve for design and implementation changes over time
      • Component Library apps are popping up everywhere, meaning no standardized way to store, manage and collaborate on assets
      • Versioning/git tools are gaining popularity, but are still hard to use

      Solving for all the challenges listed above are part of our roadmap for XD, with our intent to either solve them directly or to partner with others to do so.

      Beyond delivering features/capabilities, we believe that designers need high quality and fast performing tools so that they can ideate and iterate quickly. We believe that you should be able to work across different platforms and devices. We believe that teams and enterprise organizations want reassurance to know that investments in design tools and systems will have longevity and have broad industry support. With Adobe XD, we’re aiming to deliver all that.

      In terms of what else we can bring to the industry, we’re excited about the opportunities related to machine learning and artificial intelligence, and have a number of teams exploring how that can positively impact design. We’re also thinking about emerging user experience platforms, such as using voice-based user interfaces and augmented reality environments, with a goal to help designers create new types of experiences. More to come on these topics in time…

      Thanks, Andrew (Adobe).

      4 points
  • Goran Tomicic, almost 6 years ago

    Hi. I've been keeping an eye on Xd project since it was released. Must say it looks and feels good, although it's still missing some of the things other tools already have.

    My interest in Xd is mainly based on the prototyping capabilities, since it's pretty trivial and expected that there should be some more features available sooner rather than later in the design segment.

    My question is will there be more advanced prototyping functionality in the near future?

    For example, animating a specific group of objects in the artboard, so that when you make sliding transitions between the screens, some group doesn't animate and the other group slides.

    Thanks in advance for your reply.

    Regards,

    Goran

    1 point
    • Demian Borba, almost 6 years ago

      Hello Goran, thanks for your feedback. We agree there's a lot to do especially when it comes down to prototyping. Now that we have Windows and Mac aligned, we'll be able to invest more time on prototyping features. That doesn't mean there's no progress there, recently we just released an update allowing users to copy and paste interactions. Feel free to upvote here: https://adobexd.uservoice.com/forums/353007-adobe-xd-feature-requests/suggestions/12869229-animate-individual-elements-separately-custom-ani We'll notify you and everyone who votes there when the feature lands. It'll take time, but we'll definitely get there. Thanks for your support.

      0 points
      • Goran Tomicic, almost 6 years ago

        Good to hear! I believe that more advanced prototyping features would make a significant step forward making Xd an 'all-around' platform. Also I'm aware it's quite demanding from software engineering perspective, so it's understandable that it will take awhile to land it.

        Thanks again for your reply, and best of luck with the future updates!

        1 point
  • Mattias HMattias H, almost 6 years ago

    6h since this was posted and you guys still haven't answered any of the questions, wadup?

    1 point
    • Andrew Shorten, almost 6 years ago

      Folks are just getting up on the West Coast, the team will be here all day answering questions.

      Thanks, Andrew (Adobe).

      3 points
    • Demian Borba, almost 6 years ago

      Hello, Mattias. This is a DesignerNews process for AMAs. We were guided to post the night before, for people on the other side of the world to ask their questions, then we start answering in the morning California time. We're on it!

      3 points
  • Konrad HawroKonrad Hawro, almost 6 years ago

    Can we have record option on Windows please :)?

    1 point
  • Jay Tyagi, almost 6 years ago

    Just need Autolayout for Sketch like features and CSS export.

    Thank you.

    1 point
    • Andrew Shorten, almost 6 years ago

      We are working on tools that we hope will help with adaptive and responsive design challenges, as well as workflows that enable developers to extract assets and CSS from XD design documents.

      Thanks for the feedback!

      Cheers, Andrew (Adobe).

      1 point
    • Jason KirtleyJason Kirtley, almost 6 years ago

      Ha - just use sketch :)

      0 points
      • Jay Tyagi, almost 6 years ago

        Using it right now. But when one single app provides you everything you need for UI design, and it does so on both macOS and Windows, I will definitely switch over to that.

        0 points
  • Julian H, almost 6 years ago

    Seeing a lot of competitors rising in the UX field I wonder why a big player such as Adobe is so slow at adding features to XD making it suitable for professional production. Not even speaking of disruptive new features but to get production ready (like Sketch, Figma etc.).

    Working for one of the biggest design agencies in Germany we've been working on our pipeline for over a year now and we were hoping for Adobe XD to become our go to tool for UX design, we're now switching from PS to Sketch.

    1 point
    • Cristian MoiseiCristian Moisei, almost 6 years ago

      That is a fair question given the sort of money Adobe brings in, and given XD has been out for 1.5 years and hasn't done much since launch.

      Image title

      Then again, Figma had 5 years and $18M and came up with an equally unimpressive product.

      1 point
      • Jernej Horvat, almost 6 years ago

        In my opinion there's been a lot of progress from the initial version of XD back in march 2016 to the current one. It could probably be faster but on the other side it's one of the most stabile tools currently available on the market. So not to deal with time wasting bugs is a benefit.

        Also people tend miss the fact that even though Adobe is a large company, projects like XD initially start with a small group of people. The project team starts to grow only after the product has some positive traction on the market. Even then you cannot just add 100s of new members since it could brake the whole product development process. But this is just in general, not sure how Adobe has done it with the XD team.

        1 point
        • Cristian MoiseiCristian Moisei, almost 6 years ago

          What new features have they introduced since March? To my knowledge, they spent the first few months fully implementing the stuff they promised at launch, then worked for half a year on gradually getting the Windows version on par with the Mac one, and then they started introducing common sense things like Layers or Symbols (not the really common sense ones though like guides or underline).

          This in my opinion makes the landscape look like this:

          PS: Old, clunky and slow, full of bugs but sturdy and very capable.

          Sketch: new, unreliable and slow, full of different bugs and not as capable but a lot more efficient for some tasks.

          XD: new, fast and lacking major bugs (to my knowledge) but too basic to do any serious work.

          I'm not saying XD is a bad app, it's just not powerful enough to make a dent.

          1 point
          • Jernej Horvat, almost 6 years ago

            I have used XD on three full projects so far and it worked fine. Had to do some mockups in PS to use it for animations in AE but other than that it was ok.

            As for major updates this year I think you've answered your question and is that not a lot? I mean we could always argue that it should be more especially if someone is missing a particular feature but still it doesn't seem to me that it's a slow product development process.

            0 points
            • Cristian MoiseiCristian Moisei, almost 6 years ago

              Support for windows is not a feature. The repeat grid is a feature. I'm talking about new things that make our lives easier, not things that 30 year old software like Illustrator can do.

              0 points
              • Interested Curious, almost 6 years ago

                Having windows support may not be a proper "feature" but it is in fact something that sketch will need to work towards to accomplish and is an ENORMOUS selling point for some larger brands who aren't going to switch their companies design teams to another type of computer for one program.

                That's pretty huge for already established brands and larger teams who don't all have macs.

                1 point
          • Andrew Shorten, almost 6 years ago

            With the foundation of new technology, performance and high quality, we're focusing our attention on the depth of features provided. You've made a number of comments here, but what would be most helpful is hearing the specific list of things that would make XD your go-to app.

            Thanks, Andrew (Adobe).

            0 points
            • Cristian MoiseiCristian Moisei, almost 6 years ago

              Sure, here's what it would take (for me):

              1. If XD was on par with PS or Sketch in terms of features (which it certainly is not), I would not consider its speed a good enough reason to switch. It would need to bring a more efficient approach to design to make the switch worth it. The repeat grid is a good example of this, it takes a common thing designers do and makes it easy, it's a feature that was designed for the modern world, and something apps like PS or Sketch (which were made for the market of 20 years ago) lack. Sadly, everything else is pretty standard in XD: the same layers panel, the same way to create every shape manually and set properties for each layer.

              Designs are no longer static, we create huge systems that are a pain to maintain with static apps, so we'd need a tool that finds more efficient ways to:

              • Manage styles and components globally (in a live app, if you change the outline colour and padding-bottom value of a field, every single field with that class updates also, whereas in apps like PS/Sketch/XD if you want to increase the bottom padding of fields, you have to move every single one of them alongside everything underneath them down by 10px then crop your art-board to account for the change.)
              • Make it possible and easy to design for multiple resolutions without having to create a different art-board for every single resolution you want to cover.
              • Make it easy for developers to pick up the design. Tools like Avocode do this well, but XD doesn't integrate with them.
              • As per point 2, it would also help a lot if it was easy to share prototypes with stakeholders and gather feedback without having to rely on external tools like InVision, which are based on static images so if I change the colour of my header and my document has 200 slides, I now have to re-export 200 images and upload them all to InVision, making sure they have the same name and no upload failed (which happens more often than you'd think in InVision).
              1. UI Design is never done in isolation, the work needs to be easy to share with stakeholders, easy for developers to take over, easy for other designers to collaborate on. It's also important how invested the community is in a certain tool, because the more people use it, the more resources for it you'll find.

              On this end, I think XD is nowhere nearly widely adopted enough to make it safe to switch. Apps like Avocode don't support it, it doesn't have the powerful exporting tools in Sketch or PS for sharing with others or uploading to InVision. Fragmentation is already a problem - for example I (a PS user) am leaving my company at the end of the week and the person replacing me uses Sketch. This means he cannot rely directly on any of my work, he has to recreate it from scratch.

              All of this means you pretty much have to go against the tide to use XD in a professional setting.

              1 point
              • Interested Curious, almost 6 years ago

                What I've noticed is a lot of UX designers forced themselves into photoshop for things that indesign does.

                Like the global changes for text is pretty easily done with the paragraph styles and character styles for indesign.

                Maybe those can be implemented in XD in the future.

                The support for multiple resolutions is almost there by default thanks to it being a primarily vector based application.

                I won't pretend to be fully entranced in the history of why photoshop was the go to in UX over Ai or ID but it's always seemed curious.

                0 points
      • Mick NMick N, almost 6 years ago

        Then again, Figma had 5 years and $18M and came up with an equally unimpressive product.

        I'm surprised to hear this. Our team recently switch to Figma and it has blown us away with what we can do. We're a remote team so being able to co-design and hand-off to clients instantly has been incredible.

        Exporting assets is a dream as well.

        0 points
        • Cristian MoiseiCristian Moisei, almost 6 years ago

          This is the main reason I heard people switched to Sketch 'exporting assets is easier'. I'd be curious to know specifically what kind of 'assets' do you need to export.

          All I ever need to get out of my PSDs are SVG files for the icons.

          0 points
          • Mick NMick N, almost 6 years ago

            Yep, usually just SVGs, occasionally PNGs or JPGs, or sometimes SVG & PNG sets depending on what we're building. Figma makes this a pleasure to do.

            0 points
            • Cristian MoiseiCristian Moisei, almost 6 years ago

              You would switch apps for the 2 minutes per project it takes to export SVGs? Not to mention you still need to check that everything is correct with that SVG (i.e. it has no borders or artefacts), so you'd have to open it in AI anyway.

              0 points
    • Andrew Shorten, almost 6 years ago

      A lot of the initial work has been foundational - getting a high performance, high quality, native app on Mac and Windows takes time. We hear you though and know that expectations are high in relation to the features that are needed so that you can adopt XD into your workflow - we're working hard on those features and hope you'll keep checking out our progress over the coming months.

      When we meet your needs, we plan to make it easy as possible for you to move into XD, whether you are using Photoshop or Sketch.

      Thanks, Andrew (Adobe).

      0 points
  • Thomas Hallgren, over 5 years ago

    When are interactive overlay layers coming to the public beta app? Like sticky headers and footers for tall scrolling views. Really necessary.

    0 points
    • Demian Borba, over 5 years ago

      Hi Thomas, thank you for the feedback. We are working on overlays as we speak, and scrollable areas for fixed elements will come later. But you can upvote in the meantime to be notified when the features land:

      0 points
  • Levon Cross, over 5 years ago

    As impatient as I am I recognize the focus on quality. I look forward to seeing the roadmap so I can have some idea on how to base workflow decisions in the coming months years.

    Our workflow environment:

    Currently our team (20+) is experiencing "tool fatigue".

    • Mindnode for IA
    • sketch for mid/high fidelity
    • craft prototype, sync upload, data
    • invision for prototyping/testing
    • zeplin for developer handoff
    • Lingo to keep multiple libraries for color, images, symbols, logos and descriptions
    • Principle to mockup simple animations
    • abstract to try and keep files clean, version, and merge multi design changes

    When I can see switching:

    An update involving the versioning and live collab features and allowing for designs to go to other tools (handoff, motion, etc).

    This would consolidate the file backups & syncing, designing, prototyping, and collaboration (live designing/sharing/commenting) which we need separate tools to accomplish. Knowing style guides and hand-off to be coming down the line it would make sense to begin making the effort to socialize, integrate, and switch 20+ people over.

    What I hope to see in the future:

    • Large SVG icon sets through asset library that are maintained through illustrator.
    • Color overrides of symbol assets. I have used shape masking on icon symbols in sketch but it's hacky and seems to affect performance in large files.
    • Prototype hover states. The hover states would also allow for user to stop thinking of how to navigate the prototype. Instead seeing the affordances to recognize interactivity rather than finding the blue hotspots.
    • User inputs. This would win huge when trying to test form designs as users tend to look for prototype hotspots rather than thinking of what they would input or select in the form in context with accurate information.
    0 points
    • Demian Borba, over 5 years ago

      Hi Levon,

      I can imagine the tool fatigue you're facing today. Right out of the gate I can see you use lots of different tools that create friction and slow your team down.

      Even before visual versioning and co-editing land in XD, which might take some time, I believe it can help your team today with:

      • Mindnode for IA: you can use the UI Kits, such as the free WF one that has some connectors that you can use to represent flows. But unfortunately, they don't stay connected like in Mindnode.

      • Sketch for mid/high fidelity: you can copy and paste elements from Sketch into XD (right click, copy SVG) and it remains editable. Once in XD, you can then create symbols to represent your components, and override text and/or bitmaps, preserving the symbol structure. All edits are possible to be made "in-context". When editing a symbol, you don't go to a specific mode that is different from your design.

      • Craft prototype, sync upload, data invision for prototyping/testing: now that XD for Windows and Mac are aligned, we can refocus the energy on shipping more and more features, and we'll invest a lot in prototyping. Stay tuned! For user testing, especially for mobile, you can cache your XD prototypes on iOS/Android devices and do real user testing, even when offline.

      • Zeplin for developer handoff: we're working a bigger feature called Design Specs. The same way you can create a prototype web link for stakeholders to review with comments and pins, developers will be able to access a link with specs (measurements, colors, etc). More news in the coming months.

      • Lingo to keep multiple libraries for color, images, symbols, logos and descriptions: we just released new features (Asset Panel and CC Libraries) that will help with you Design Systems, details here. For now, it's just for colors and character styles, but soon it will work with bitmaps as well.

      • Principle to mockup simple animations: again, we'll deliver more and more features on Prototype Mode moving forward, but I don't think it'll get to the same level of complexity of Principle or After Effects. For that, we plan to rely on integrations with AE for example.

      • Abstract to try and keep files clean, version, and merge multi design changes: we made a lot of progress on Visual Versioning, but it'll take a little more time for it to land. We don't want it to just work, but to work really well, so now we're doing all the hard work to make it happen.

      All of the items you mentioned are areas we're investing time and resources in, but building a solid and performant tool takes time. To stay informed, please upvote the features you need in UserVoice and you'll get notifications when statuses change or when we need more information.

      We'll get there, and we'd love to have you and your team helping us during this journey.

      0 points
  • Stuart McCoyStuart McCoy, almost 6 years ago

    When will XD get guides/ruler and column support? I'd love to see a column/guide feature similar to the[guideguide](guideguide.me) plug-in for Illustraor and Photoshop. I see columns as a transparent overlay to the art board with adjustable gutters and margins. Guides placed at specific intervals could be helpful as well but these should also have a freeform nature to them, similar to how they work in Photoshop, Indesign, Illustrator etc. sans plug-ins.

    0 points
    • Demian Borba, over 5 years ago

      Thanks for the feedback Stuart. We're working on Layout Grid with gutters, hang-lines, etc. Feel free to upvote the feature to be notified when it lands or to provide additional info. As a workaround, for now, you can use the Repeat Grid tool to create columns for example, and lock them. Same for guides, you can draw a line and lock it. Not ideal, but a solution for the short time.

      0 points
  • Anthony DinesAnthony Dines, almost 6 years ago

    Adobe XD has quickly become my favorite design program. I use others throughout the day for specialized tasks, but I find that I increasingly open those less and less each day.

    This is due to the built-in prototyping tools. True, there are times where I wish that I didn't have to use something else to create micro-interactions, I've been realizing recently that the simple click-through prototypes actually meet my needs a vast majority of the time.

    That being said, here are my top requests

    • Plug-in support, specifically from the community. There are several workarounds I have to do today in order to complete my design work in XD. 99.9% of those will go away with plug-in support is my guess.
    • I'd love to see grids and guides added, especially baseline grids.
    • Keep it simple!

    Thank you so much for your work on this program. It's hugely appreciated!

    0 points
    • Elaine Chao, almost 6 years ago

      Yes to all three! As has been mentioned earlier in this thread, we're working on both supporting plug-ins and layout grids, and we're approaching it with the same ethos as we have the rest of the product: thoughtfully crafting clean experiences for a user base that cares about such things. As you probably know, we currently support square grids, which can double up as baseline grids. (As a side note, we'd need baseline snapping to make baseline grids useful.)

      I'm curious about your use of guides; do you normally create columns with them, or are you using them arbitrarily to help you align things?

      0 points
      • Anthony DinesAnthony Dines, almost 6 years ago

        In terms of how I use guides, it's typically closer to the need that a column grid provides... to ensure vertical or horizontal rhythm throughout a page. Sometimes these guide layouts are not perfectly spaced in what a traditional column grid provides, but it's further from the world of arbitrary guides. I usually start by creating my margin lines and other major snap points on a column grid and go from there. In terms of other Adobe products, I've always personally liked how Photoshop's guides are created compared to Illustrator, since they are easier for me to create pixel perfect guides.

        0 points
  • Tyler Shick, almost 6 years ago

    Any plans to open XD up to the open-source community? The product/UX design world moves and changes fast and allowing the community to build features for their specific needs has been critical to the success of Sketch (in my humble opinion).

    Also, any plans to integrate with 3rd-party tools like Abstract? Not doing so could be a deterrent for large design teams.

    0 points
    • Talin WadsworthTalin Wadsworth, almost 6 years ago

      Hi Tyler,

      Yes! We're currently working on plug-in support and integrations with other tools. We'll have more to share on this front soon.

      Thanks, Talin (Lead designer, XD)

      1 point
  • Chris Place, almost 6 years ago

    I've been working with XD since very early beta and integrated it fully into our work stream, between UX / Design and Development. The account guys love the quick visuals they can get to clients, with the understanding they are basic - Which is not proving a problem for most. The dev guys love the speed at which they can pan around files and see the designers vision. The design guys love the speed and lets have it right, doing this stuff in Photoshop is not right and never has been. But where we are struggling is with simple animations, rollover states, feedback animations and the like. It would be great to have Animate CC plug in or similar for preview mode, so we can have a bit more realistic prototyping. Also is there ever going to be a way of exporting styles / CSS for HTML so that the dev teams can just get all Text Tags from the get go? H1, P1 etc etc. Love the work you guys are doing though. keep up the work work work work work :)

    0 points
    • Mary Cherng, almost 6 years ago

      Hi Chris,

      Yep, we're working on plugin support and also plan on making it easier for designers and developers to work together. Stay tuned for more updates on our roadmap soon. Thanks for your feedback.

      Cheers, Mary (Adobe)

      0 points
    • Elaine Chao, almost 6 years ago

      To follow up on Mary's answer, we're also very interested in making more realistic prototyping happen and are working on the problem right now!

      0 points
  • Jernej Horvat, almost 6 years ago

    Q1: Is it going to be possible to import XD files directly into After Effects?

    Q2: Do you plan to expand the functionality of the Adobe XD mobile app so that we could design directly on an iPad or iPhone?

    0 points
    • Cristian MoiseiCristian Moisei, almost 6 years ago

      There's Adobe Comp for that. It's not great but it does exist. I think there were a few other non Adobe attempts at creating design software for the iPad.

      0 points
      • Jernej Horvat, almost 6 years ago

        I use Comp but it's not integrated with Adobe XD on the Mac.

        1 point
        • Cristian MoiseiCristian Moisei, almost 6 years ago

          I wouldn't hold my breath for a cross platform tool that works on every one of our devices. Most dev teams can barely do Mac / Windows right. Figma couldn't even be bothered and made a Chrome only web app.

          We're a long way away from that future.

          0 points
          • Thomas Lowry, almost 6 years ago

            Chrome has good support across many OS' and devices...IMO that is a pretty good starting point to actually have success in building a cross-platform tool.

            0 points
          • Dylan FieldDylan Field, almost 6 years ago

            Hey, Cristian! Check out Figma's native app sometime! https://www.figma.com/downloads

            1 point
            • Cristian MoiseiCristian Moisei, almost 6 years ago

              I was not aware you had a native app. The fact that it was running in a browser was the biggest concern for me: not only does that mean that the entire app is at the hands of the company making the browser, but there are several other drawbacks, like not getting quite the same hardware access, you waste a lot of space for the browser UI and so on. If Google decides to change something to the way they render fonts or change the way some script is loading, the app could easily be affected.

              Is the native one actually native or just a web wrapper? It doesn't help that it completely froze for a full 2 minutes after I installed it on a fast computer.

              To answer your other questions about what I didn't find it particularly impressive:

              Live collaboration and the ability to save your projects in the cloud is great - kudos for that.

              Aside from that though, what exactly can it do that other apps cannot?

              • Allowing you to copy the CSS of an element? PS had that for years and it doesn't exactly replace apps like Avocode who do a lot more like allow you to make measurements easily or extract the SVG / PNG assets you need (that is a developer realises a designer missed an icon and gets it for himself straight from Avocode).
              • Allowing you to create simple prototypes where you can go from one page to the next is hardly enough to replace other prototyping tools like InVision or even better Framer. (I'm going off what your instructions say here, if the prototyping tools can do more, I'm happy to revisit this).
              • Is there anything else?

              Because if not, I can understand this took a lot of effort to create but you have to see it from the user's point of view where you have a (what I thought was web only) app with an interface as clunky as Photoshop's (why not make it so that if you go more than one group deep you can't read the names of the layers anymore or bury everything under a text menu), and not a lot else to offer.

              0 points
    • Andrew Shorten, almost 6 years ago

      Can you tell us a bit more about what from XD you'd like to bring into After Effects and what you'd do want to do once there?

      Regarding device support, we're open to bringing XD to any platform where there is demand from designers. That said, before expanding to additional platforms, there are some core capabilities that we still need to bring to our desktop Mac and Windows apps.

      Thanks, Andrew (Adobe).

      0 points
    • Jason KirtleyJason Kirtley, almost 6 years ago

      There is a plugin/tool in sketch that already let you import into After Effects. Sketch is leagues ahead of XD. Adobe is just playing catchup/follow the leader to Sketch with XD.

      0 points
      • Cristian MoiseiCristian Moisei, almost 6 years ago

        Has Sketch figured out colour management yet?

        0 points
        • Jason KirtleyJason Kirtley, almost 6 years ago

          I've yet to run into an issue with color and Sketch when designing for the web and mobile. Been using it for around 4 years now. Used to be a die hard photoshop user also. Now I use photoshop for its original purpose, deep editing photos :)

          0 points
          • Cristian MoiseiCristian Moisei, almost 6 years ago

            What monitor do you have? The problems are not as obvious on older, less accurate monitors, but on the newest ones (like the 2016 MB or the 2017 iMac) not having colour manage makes a world of difference. There was a thread a few days ago where Marc Edwards explains how it works.

            0 points
            • Jason KirtleyJason Kirtley, almost 6 years ago

              Just out of curiosity? What are you currently using to create your layouts/designs?

              0 points
              • Cristian MoiseiCristian Moisei, almost 6 years ago

                Photoshop. I do have a copy of Sketch which I last tried for a real project 1 year ago and found it too sucky. My layouts, i.e. wireframes or user maps I make in XD and before XD was around I used to do it in AI.

                0 points
  • James Young, almost 6 years ago

    Why did you go for the Mac market first when Sketch is so established and there was potential for you to build a quality Windows tool to rival what Sketch is for Mac when the Windows market is woefully under supported with this sort of design tool despite it becoming a more popular OS?

    0 points
    • Cristian MoiseiCristian Moisei, almost 6 years ago

      I'd say the reason here is that the majority of designers still prefer macs so this would give them access to a larger (albeit more competitive) market. They could then make a Windows version and use the fact that the app is cross platform as a selling point.

      0 points
      • Lucian .esLucian .es, almost 6 years ago

        The only reason I'm sticking to mac right now is Sketch and how spread it is throughout the industry. I've been using it for the last 3 years and I can't see a better alternative or people releasing plugins for adobe XD in the near future.

        1 point
        • Cristian MoiseiCristian Moisei, almost 6 years ago

          I have to admit Windows has become a lot better in the last few years, but it still has its problems, just like the Mac. The app selection is still laughable, where you get to chose between cheap clones of popular apps and rudimentary shit on the Windows Store and the old school software, some of which has gone for years without an update and even those that are maintained are still dated and complicated as fuck (see MS Office vs iWork - which are also free). There are all the privacy concerns with you getting no say on whether MS gets all your data or when updates are installed, the ever changing design language and developers who don't care to adopt it, the lack of devices to communicate with (Macs have a lot of cool features for your iPhone / iPad like handoff, iCloud syncing everything).

          Macs have their problems too, like how restrictive they are, expensive, weak graphics cards and no games, and the worst in my opinion, Apple playing it too safe (MS has touch screens, holo lens, they tried a phone you can plug into a display and turn into a computer, facial recognition, all sorts of convertibles, Cortana 2 years before Siri - at leas they are trying new things).

          0 points
    • Andrew Shorten, almost 6 years ago

      We had to start somewhere. While we always saw the need for a multi-platform solution, immersing ourselves with designers who had an array of different tooling choices for design and prototyping on Mac seemed like the best way to truly understand needs when it came to building a new tool.

      We are building a high quality tool for both Mac and Windows - each is a native app just for that platform. On Windows, we'll be introducing support for pen and touch as a platform specific feature in future.

      Thanks, Andrew (Adobe).

      2 points