April Update and What’s Next for Adobe XD

Header image includes work by Wen Tong.

The “Invisible” Cloud

We have been quietly working toward the vision we shared at Adobe MAX last November: delivering a best-in-class Cloud experience that enables real-time collaboration between designers and other designers, stakeholders, and developers. This experience will also seamlessly integrate our desktop and mobile apps with the Cloud, turning XD into an ecosystem that spans platforms.

Although we have made significant progress in building its underlying foundation, this progress is invisible to you, and it may appear that we are slowing down. We are happy to announce that you’ll start seeing Cloud-based features in the coming months, starting with Visual Versioning, which lets you access past iterations of a document within XD and reuse assets from older versions.

Momentum with Windows

Since we first introduced XD for Windows 10 last December, our monthly releases have focused on aligning features with the macOS version. Today’s update continues that approach with the addition of masking, Boolean operations, and expanded language support. Next month’s release will include Layers and the ability to update shared prototype links, with Symbols following closely behind.

As we mentioned earlier, XD is the first Adobe app developed for the Universal Windows Platform (UWP), and also the first pro design tool of its kind for Windows. In addition to taking advantage of the next generation of Windows-based hardware and devices, our goal is to deliver a great experience regardless if you have a Mac or a PC.

What’s Next for Adobe XD

We are striving to address your input and improve XD every month, to help you create richer and more engaging experiences with the least amount of friction. Now that the gap between Windows 10 and macOS is closing and we have made major advancements in building the Cloud foundation, our team can now refocus on core design features. You’ll start seeing major new features for Mac and Windows very soon:

We are also committed to your feature requests, which will be released month over month. For example, popular requests such as preserving interactions when copying and pasting and overriding specific instances of Symbols will be available soon. Balancing new features with our nearly maniacal focus on speed and quality are essential to making XD work and feel the way it does, but it sometimes comes at the cost of timeliness or having to release complex features in stages (such as Symbols).

What’s New in April?

Masking

Masking is here for Windows! Masking gives you precise control over both the shape of your mask and the objects you place within it. Masks are non-destructive, so you can make adjustments to both the mask itself and shapes beneath it by simply double-clicking. When you layer a shape on top of an object, select both objects and use a shortcut (Shift+Ctrl+M) to mask the image with the overlaying shape. You can also do this by right-clicking to access the context menu. Once you mask an image with a shape, double-click the masked object to reposition the image.

https://blog.adobe.com/media_c6ba9796946e7f143d9b1987397828fbe64b2a59.gif

Boolean Operations

Create and experiment with complex shapes by simply adding, subtracting, intersecting, or excluding existing shapes. Boolean operations are also non-destructive, so every element in the combined shape can be individually accessed and modified. We find it especially helpful when creating icons.

https://blog.adobe.com/media_03c217d5575387dfb5ede37a24d49ea999fdff56.gif

Bring in Images From Your Browser

Found the perfect image online? Simply drag or copy and paste them from your browser into your artboard. If you drag an image into an existing object, the image will automatically be resized to fill it.

https://blog.adobe.com/media_a8a5257887067e0d020d5a06efa012833853a3e8.gif

Support for Japanese and Korean

XD for Windows is now localized in Japanese and Korean, with French and German to follow.

Your Feedback

From our first beta release on one platform thirteen months ago, your voices have shaped XD by helping us validate and prioritize features. You have shared insights into everyday challenges you face as designers, and what your expectations are from us to alleviate pain points. Whether your feedback is posted on our discussion forums, UserVoice, Facebook, Twitter, or elsewhere on the web, we make every effort to read each and every comment.

Continuing the Conversation

Your ongoing dialogue is essential because our success depends on your success. We can’t wait to release the improvements you’ve been asking for, as well as the features we’ve been quietly working on. Please continue letting us know what you want from XD, and if you find these types of blog posts helpful.

Thank for you all of your support!

UX Community

You can follow our handle @AdobeXD for updates or reach the team on Twitter using the #AdobeXD. You can also talk to us using Facebook, where we share videos and updates as well as answer questions during live sessions.

Meet some UX designers who have used Adobe XD. Learn how they got started in UX design and their creative process; check out some of their work and listen to their favorite tunes.

#MadeWithAdobeXD

While sharing your prototypes on Behance, don’t forget to tag them with #MadeWithAdobeXD and select Adobe Experience Design under “Tools Used” for the opportunity to be featured in the Adobe XD Newsletter.