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Adobe XD April Update

almost 5 years ago from , Design Product Marketing @ Adobe

Hi Everyone,

Happy April! As follow up to the XD March release, we are pleased to give you the latest April update to XD with time saving features and top requested features from the community:

  • Improvements to opening Photoshop and Sketch files directly in XD

  • Password Protected Prototypes

  • Find and highlight assets

  • Filtered search in the Assets Panel

To get the details on what’s new, check out the release post here . Also be sure to check out the latest features in action on AdobeLive starting today through April 5 from 9 AM - 5:00 PM PDT!

We’d love to hear what you think about this update! Please leave questions, comments, or suggestions below.

Thank you,

Mike from the XD Team

6 comments

  • Riho KrollRiho Kroll, almost 5 years ago

    I'm all for listening the community and asking user directly what they want. I think it's great that you guys are doing this. I also want to prefix this by saying that I think there's a lot of great stuff in XD. Good performance being one thing that I really appreciate, for example.

    On the other hand, it seems to me that prioritising based on community voting breaks down in some cases. Either that, or my priorities for a design tool are just totally different?

    What I would like to see first are what I view as basic functionality for a design tool. These are (in a very rough order of priority):

    • Remembering text style and fill/stroke style is a consistent time waster for me. Can we have it remember last used font/style (when you used the text tool to create a text layer)? Feature request
    • Guides
    • Symbol swapping or better yet, symbol states and more powerful symbol overrides in general. Feature request
    • Resizing symbols independent of the master symbol
    • Responsive artboards / constraints
    • Text formatting Lowercase / Uppercase , More options
    • Styles. Being able to save styles and update those styles is one of the most crucial time savers in Sketch.
    • Layer blend modes
    • More Effects (more than just blur and background blur). What about the filters we have in CSS?
    • Instead of importing PSD contents, what I would like is being able to link a PSD, so I can work on raster editing in Photoshop and live sync that to XD. I don't see how anyone's time is being well spent by importing PSD contents in some manner into XD. But feel free to correct me if someone is actually making legit use of this. Feature request
    • Being able to use fills with background blur
    • Multiple fills and strokes
    • Inner shadows
    • Dotted borders

    There are probably a few more that I can't recall now, but these are the primary reasons why I cannot switch from Sketch for example. I always get a bit excited when I see when you guys posting the updates here, but every time I check the list of features, I get disappointed. I would really love to use your tool, it just doesn't have the basics that I need yet.

    I know that some of the items in the list you guys are already working on, or at least they have been flagged as started. Perhaps we could get a little more visibility into what your roadmap looks like? I would really hope to be able to switch to XD within a year.

    12 points
    • Kyle Galle, almost 5 years ago

      Hi Riho,

      Thank you for the extensive feedback! We're on DesignerNews to hear from you and the rest of the community about what you're looking for in Adobe XD. The team is looking to bring many of the features you listed above to XD. More flexibility when using symbols and improvements to importing PSDs should be coming soon.

      You mention reusing styles. Have you tried the Assets panel to manage colors, character styles, and symbols for your designs?

      0 points
    • Jonathan Pimento, almost 5 years ago

      Hey Riho,

      I'm one of the Product Managers on the XD team. Firstly, thank you for those kind words and detailed summary. I really appreciate you taking the time to help us understand what currently blocks you from adopting XD.

      While the team leverages Uservoice to influence our product strategy, we also rely on a couple of other mediums to help prioritize the features we build. Sometimes the smallest of features take the longest to deliver. Be rest assured that this is only because the team building XD is very passionate about performance, quality and the overall experience.

      For the features you've mentioned, the team is actively working on several of those. We are investing in enhancing the text options and properties in XD which should cover transforms, last used fonts etc. Upcoming updates should make you happy!

      Symbols is another key area where you should see updates pretty soon. Starting with the ability to resize a Symbol.

      We do plan on adding more features like enhanced strokes, shadows, blend modes, blurs and responsive design.

      You can use the assets panel in XD to curate and reuse colors, character styles and symbols within a document. Additionally you can also use the context menu to copy and paste an appearance across elements. Hope this helps solve the challenge around reusing styles in XD. If not, I would love to hear why.

      For the PSD workflow, I would recommend using CC Libraries. You can add the graphic from Ps into XD using the CC Library window. When you edit this graphic in Photoshop, it will seamlessly update in XD. This is the best possible way to have a linked graphic from Photoshop in XD.

      Again, thank you for the feedback!

      Jonathan Pimento Adobe XD

      2 points
    • Brandon CrooksBrandon Crooks, almost 5 years ago

      Agreed… also for the prototyping tool, the main thing missing is fixed header/footer elements or a scrollable view.

      2 points
  • Marek LMarek L, almost 5 years ago

    Blending modes. When?

    1 point
    • Kyle Galle, almost 5 years ago

      Hi Marek, thank you for the note. The team is looking to support this in the future. I don't have a date that I can share just yet. If you haven't, please add your vote here so you can receive a notification for when the team makes progress on this feature.

      0 points