June 2019 Release of Adobe XD: Property Inspector in Prototyping Mode, Subscript and Superscript Text Transformations, XD for Jira 2.0, a New Plugins Panel, and More
June is here, and while we’re still celebrating our landmark release last month (which included a set of features to easily create and maintain your own design systems), we’re not slowing down either. In this new release of Adobe XD, we’re bringing a streamlined properties inspector to Prototyping mode, which means it’s easier than ever to keep track of complex interactions. We’ve also added superscript and subscript to your type options and improved the design-and-development workflow, thanks to a supercharged XD for Jira release that includes support for Jira Cloud and Jira Server.
We’re also officially rolling out a new Plugins Panel, which will make it easier than ever to access XD’s growing number of plugins from right within the XD user interface. Read on for more details on the new Panel and other features unveiled in this latest release.
New Properties Inspector in Prototype mode: Easier than ever to keep track of complex interactions
Interactive prototypes in XD offer a powerful way to create user flows and visual experiences you’re looking for. As those interactions become more and more sophisticated, a dedicated properties inspector makes viewing and editing specific settings that much more streamlined.
In previous versions of XD, you’d have to click on an individual interaction to view and modify its properties. Now, the properties inspector is available in both Design and Prototype modes, and that means you can easily select and define interactions across multiple objects at once.
This enhancement will make it easier to keep track of all your interactions across your XD prototypes and allows you to perform changes at scale across multiple artboards and wires.
Support for superscript and subscript
We’ve been making incremental improvements to text transformations in XD over the past few releases, including support for uppercase, lowercase, title case, and strike-through, and in XD 20 superscript and subscript. This can be quite handy when you need to create text elements that include prices, footnotes, or maths equations.
XD for Jira 2.0: Improving the design-development workflow
We’ve made big improvements to the way Adobe XD and Jira work together (both Jira Cloud and Jira Server), and we’re excited to share an update to our XD for Jira integration. This will help you work more closely with product managers, developers, and other stakeholders, as they will now be able to see your XD designs and other information about your XD documents from right within Jira. In addition to a preview of your designs, you’ll now be able to see additional metadata like the number of artboards, the number of comments, avatars for Jira users that have viewed the XD document, and more.
The new enhancements will make for a more harmonious collaboration between design and development teams. Now, when a developer attaches an XD design document to a Jira issue, all team stakeholders will have new levels of detail and context. To learn more about how Jira and XD can be used together, check out our blog post Adobe XD for Jira Software Cloud, Server, and Data Center — Streamline Design-to-Development Workflows or install Adobe XD for Jira via the Atlassian Marketplace.
The Plugins Panel: The power of plugins at your fingertips
Adobe XD has been making great strides in extensibility with more than 150 plugins and app integrations available today. Our growing ecosystem helps you extend the features and functionality of XD and harness the power of complementary apps and services, within XD, to make your workflow easier and help you concentrate on being creative and solving important design problems.
Today, we’re making it even easier to tap into the power of plugins without breaking your creative flow. The Plugins Panel is a new panel, on the left side of your screen alongside the Assets and Layers panels, where you can access and interact with plugins directly within the Adobe XD user interface. That means you can use plugins without having to jump through different menus and see all of your plugins right alongside your designs.
As you can see above, the Plugins Panel displays all your installed plugins, allowing you to quickly launch the plugins you need, and allows you to access each individual plugins’ actions (where applicable). You’ll also be able to launch the Plugin Manager and find and install new plugins, just by clicking the + icon.
This small but mighty addition is just the first in a number of improvements we’re making to the way you can interact with the plugin ecosystem within XD. We know extensibility is important for designers — customising your XD experience, adding new features, and connecting the platform to other tools is key to maximising its usefulness for you. Stay tuned for more news on this front in the near future.
We’re also introducing some updates to our XD Plugin APIs as part of this release to make it easier for developers to build plugins for XD. If you’re interested in building your own plugins for XD, you can visit our developer website for access to quick start guides, documentation, sample code, and other information to help you.
UX Community
We’d love to continue the dialogue! Help us shape the future of Adobe XD by submitting feature requests or file bugs at: https://adobexd.uservoice.com. 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.
#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.