April Update of Adobe Experience Design CC

We are excited to announce the first update of Adobe Experience Design CC since our public preview. The team has been speeding ahead on some of the top voted features by our design community. While many of those features are still in the works (e.g. scrolling, layers), this update should help you create even richer designs more efficiently with new additions like grids!

First and foremost, we would like to thank everyone who downloaded XD and sent us your feedback on how we can do better. We have used feedback from UserVoice, public forums, Twitter, and customer visits around the world to help us prioritize the work that we are doing.

Download the latest version of Adobe Experience Design.

What’s New In This Update?

Support for Grids

With this release, we are allowing you to set a custom grid on any artboard. The option to add a grid was one of the top voted features on UserVoice and we used this feedback to prioritize it. The grid allows you to set up standard spacing across your design enabling more precise layout and drawings. When a grid is enabled on an artboard, objects will snap to the grid.

https://blog.adobe.com/media_957418db35bd3910e821ad1c16115cfa0311c58a.gif

Text Enhancements

This build allows you to adjust the line spacing for an area text component using a control in the properties inspector. Many customers gave us the feedback that this was essential for design. Over the next few updates, we will continue enhancing our text properties to provide additional controls over its appearance.

https://blog.adobe.com/media_9a4c9a40deeea52fcba248f3b8239f2c7a0d0416.gif

Design Enhancements

In the first preview, you could edit the radius of the four corners of a rectangle. You could also edit individual corners via a “alt” modifier. The update now includes the ability to change the corners in the property inspector. To do this, click on this button, https://blog.adobe.com/media_d10a80b1c49a94730f7e613d60084813e1b95a73.gif in the Appearance pane. This will bring up four fields that you can edit individually giving you a more discoverable way to edit individual corners.

https://blog.adobe.com/media_576d0f0698f3d6020d7a7b1c575e1e0601d3fb57.gif

Another productivity feature added in this build is the ability to quickly select anchor points for any path using marquee selection.

You can also access UI Kits from the File menu now! Just go to File -> Open UI Kit.

Drag and Drop Assets

In this build we added the ability to drag and drop images from the browser into your XD design. This should help you get assets onto your canvas more quickly.

Further, you can drag plain text files into XD designs to immediately create an area text or populate the text controls of a Repeat Grid. This method of adding custom text to a Repeat Grid should save a lot of time and maintenance of content.

https://blog.adobe.com/media_be5c200826d7c82abf7586639dfd95d304279661.gif

Support for Embedded Images

If you copy/paste from Adobe Illustrator or import SVG, we will now bring in embedded images. This should increase the fidelity of artwork brought into XD from other sources.

In addition, we have added an option to embed or link images when you choose to export SVG.

https://blog.adobe.com/media_80a59ee569bb5624f4bbf2ff821a5634caaf69c6.gif

With this update, we now offer you a way to share multiple versions of a prototype with a stakeholder. To do this, you can:

Click on the Share Online icon.
Create a link by clicking the “Create Link” button.
Make modifications to your design for a second version.
Click on the Share Online icon again.
Choose “New URL” to create a new public URL.

Now, you will have two public URLs each with a different version of your design.

https://blog.adobe.com/media_3b8778e521ddf557959ceae8e4c7b14df1f67b08.gif

We have also added hotspot hinting to the shared prototypes on the web. If a viewer of a prototype clicks on an area of the screen with no interactions, they will see a rectangle highlighting the areas of a screen that someone can click. This should make prototypes more usable. In the future, we will add options to turn this highlighting of hotspots on and off.

Check out this video by Product Manager Demian Borba giving you another look at the features available in this update!

What’s Coming Soon?

Together with the new functionality highlighted above, the team is working on some other highly requested features to begin filling in some of the gaps to enable richer designs and increased productivity. These include:

Color Picker

A custom color picker is in the works! The color picker will allow you to choose colors, enter HEX values and save swatches hopefully making you more efficient.

Background Blur

Many apps on iOS, OSX, and soon Windows 10 use the background blur effect. Simulating this native blur in your designs will be simple.

Scrolling

Over several releases, we will add the ability for long artboards or any group to scroll. This feature is one of the top feature requests in UserVoice and we want to let you know…we hear you! Our scrolling feature should give the user the ability to have fixed content as well as scrollable content.

Measurements

To enable faster and accurate communication of your design intent, the next update will allow you to see measurements between selected objects.

To better present your designs that have been shared to the web, we will have a full screen mode which will hide the title and all other details that are currently displayed alongside your screens.

Better Fidelity for Imported Content

We are continuing the work to make copied content from Illustrator or SVG assets better. The next release will include support for bringing in shadows as well as support for AI symbols (feedback from multiple users).

We are committed to adding features to Adobe XD every month and hope you continue to travel with us on our journey towards creating an amazing tool!

Want To Send Us Feedback?

With this release, we have also added a way for you to provide us with a rating (0-10) about how you feel we are doing. To do this, click on the conversation icon on the bottom left on the workspace. Also, you can always have a conversation with the team on Adobe Forums or vote up features and file bugs on UserVoice.