January 2018 Update of Adobe XD
2018 is off to a good start. We’re happy to announce that we are delivering many of the features that you have been requesting, including the ability to use XD with other prototyping and handoff tools, to switch between colour models, to apply radial gradients, and to export objects in a batch.
Check out AdobeLive from from 9am to 5pm on January 23 to 25th to see top UX designers using these latest features in Adobe XD.
3rd-party Workflow Integrations
The ability to bring your XD designs into popular prototyping and handoff tools is one of the top requested features. We heard you, and we are excited to announce that XD now works with Zeplin, Avocode, Sympli, ProtoPie, and Kite Compositor. Start your designs in XD then bring them into your favourite tool to speed up developer handoffs and create advanced animations. Learn more about the integrations here (link to blog post). Please note that these integrations are available on Mac only at this time. If you’re a Windows user, we’d love to hear what tools you’d like us to integrate with!
Breakthrough performance for large files
One of the key XD principles is prioritising quality over shortcuts. As such, we are continuously working hard to keep XD as lightweight and as fast as possible – because no matter how many new features we add, we know it doesn’t matter in the end if you can’t design at the speed of thought. In this release, we are delighted to announce that we’ve dramatically improved the zoom performance so that you can now zoom in and out of canvas with thousands of artboards instantaneously, without any lag.
Dropbox preview for XD files
We’re excited to announce that you can now preview XD files that are saved to Dropbox. Without downloading an XD file, you can see the first artboard in the preview.
Switch between colour models (HEX, RGB, and HSB)
In this release, you can switch between three common colour models (HEX, RGB, and HSB) from the dropdown menu in the colour picker. Before this release, you could only work in the HEX code or HSB value in the colour picker. With this addition, you can effectively communicate your colours to your developers and design teams. This means you can use XD seamlessly with other Creative Cloud design tools like Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign, which support HEX, RGB and HSB.
Radial Gradients
When it comes to design, colour has the potential to make or break a product. We’ve noticed that multi-tone effects are driving modern design in a big way. In this release, we’re introducing radial gradients, so that you can easily create unique colour effects by simulating a light source or applying circular patterns. You can add, remove, and manipulate colour stops with the same intuitive interface as linear gradients.
Improvements to Design Specs (Beta)
We’re happy to introduce a few enhancements to Design Specs (Beta) that let you navigate and use it more efficiently. First, we made it easier to read the measurements by adjusting their placement when inspecting designs. We also added essential keyboard accessibility so that you can use certain keys, such as tab when navigating and +/- when zooming in the browser.
As always, we are continuing to improve and add functionality to Design Specs (Beta), so look out for more future updates.
Artboards Display at 100% in Full-screen
When you share your prototypes, designs are now viewed at actual size in full-screen mode, rather than being scaled to fit the screen. This is particularly useful for web design where you cannot predict a reviewer’s viewport size. At actual size, the prototype will scroll automatically when parts of the design are out of view.
While the scaling of artboards has changed in full screen mode, artboards in the standard view continue to scale to fit. In the future, we plan to make scaling options available to you at publish time.
Batch export
You can now export objects in batches. Previously, you had to manually select the objects each time before an export. Batch export simplifies and streamlines the process of identifying and then exporting select assets. This is especially useful when you need to export them to 3rd party tools or share with developers. Simply mark objects by right-clicking a mark icon on the layer panel or selecting ‘Batch’ option under File > Export.
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To get the latest update of Adobe XD, you can download the January release from your Creative Cloud desktop app.
Enjoy these enhancements and keep creating and sharing incredible experiences with Adobe XD!
UX Community
Let’s keep the conversation going! You can follow our handle @AdobeXD for updates or reach the team on Twitter using the #AdobeXD. You can also chat with us on Facebook, where we share videos and updates as well as answer questions during live sessions.
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#MadeWithAdobeXD
While sharing your prototypes on Behance, don’t forget to tag them with #MadeWithAdobeXD and select Adobe XD under “Tools Used” for the opportunity to be featured in the Adobe XD Newsletter.