What's bugging me on Adobe XD

[drawnword-napa]

Being an avid user of Sketch and Illustrator, I find quite irritating that some major features are missing on Adobe XD. Somehow I find myself swearing a lot when I try to do stuff with XD.

I made a list of the most annoying findings so far:

• Connectivity with Creative Cloud Libraries - not sure why this is coming so much behind. All the styles created in Illustrator can't be used in the XD. I have to re-create everything. All other Adobe apps can do it well, but not this.
• Importing PSD as an image (I am not after getting all layers in - just getting a good resolution picture with transparencies is enough). Even Autodesk Sketchbook can do this.
• You can't name font styles. One of the best features on Illustrator and Indesign is its styles handling. -Paragraph and Character styles, which ensure the consistency of the artboards. This is where Adobe is far ahead Sketch. It does not exist on XD. Instead, I can create styles, and I have to guess from sizes which one is which.
• You can't name the color swatches. Naming is a bridge to use the same names on code as variables.
• Color swatches on fills have HEX codes, but you can only see them when you have hovered over them some time. When choosing a right color from a greyscale palette, it becomes pretty slow. Being able to name color swatches and showing the name in small size would resolve this.
• I guess, this is a bug: When you select text, and then try to change the style - and if you click the size number on the side, it most often moves the focus to opacity settings. There's a too big margin for errors.
• Layering is too weak. It is difficult to see what is on each layer, and also to keep a good and consistent structure.
• On a small monitor, thick sidebars on both sides make the work area too small. Is this designed for 32 inch 4K screens?
• You can't execute calculations on width. For ex, if the width of a rectangle is 105px, you can't type in 105-5 to make it 100px. This is pretty handy feature when you try to estimate things to fit in.
• Why exporting is so hard? You have resolved all that on Illustrator export. Why does it have to be so simple and stupid that it autogenerates 1x and 2x images. Sometimes you don't want them.
• Shortcut keys don't match with other Adobe apps.
• Resizing an artboard is almost an impossible thing, if you have some graphics covering it all.
• Re-organisation of artboards is missing.

I assume that many of these are coming from the development that is not relying on old stuff, but there are tons of goodies in the old stuff why people use them. I am afraid that XD will not be good enough for production work for another 2 years.

Also, I was never a fan of Fireworks - hopefully you are not fulfilling hopes of that smallish user group, but instead look what Sketch and Invision has done. Right now the only reason for me to use Adobe products is that Sketch is not available on Windows and the company I work builds Windows software.

There are some positives, though. I still keep on using this to get my team to use the same app, instead of several others. Here:

• It is quite fast compared to Illustrator
• Repeat grid is great
• It seems that there is a too steep learning curve for novice users with Illustrator, and this may be easier for them to get to know.
• Seems that font sizes on the XD match with Windows DIP (Device Independent Pixels), which is a big problem with Illustrator. It is easier to get fonts right.

[Preran]

Hi drawnword,

Thank you for your comprehensive feedback. Like you correctly noted, most of these features are under various stages of investigation, and will probably make their way into the product in future updates. Adobe XD has updates every month, and most of these are feature bearing updates. We urge you to continue using Adobe XD, as also voting for requests, and providing feedback using this link Adobe XD Feedback : Feature Requests & Bugs

Thanks,

Preran

[Jonathan_Joshua_Pimento · Accepted solution]

Drawnword,

Thank you for taking the time  to write down these comments. I appreciate the detailed feedback. I'm going to take all of this back to my  team and also try and answer some of them with either existing solutions or workarounds for the short term. 

• Connectivity with Creative Cloud Libraries - not sure why this is coming so much behind. All the styles created in Illustrator can't be used in the XD. I have to re-create everything. All other Adobe apps can do it well, but not this.
  (Jonathan) We do support CC Libraries with XD which would solve your above use case - Creative Cloud Libraries in Adobe XD
  
  
  
• Importing PSD as an image (I am not after getting all layers in - just getting a good resolution picture with transparencies is enough). Even Autodesk Sketchbook can do this.
  (Jonathan) Right now we only support copy pasting Ps layers as bitmap images. We are actively working on a File Import > PSD workflow which will allow you to open a PSD document in XD with layers preserved.
  
• You can't name font styles. One of the best features on Illustrator and Indesign is its styles handling. -Paragraph and Character styles, which ensure the consistency of the artboards. This is where Adobe is far ahead Sketch. It does not exist on XD. Instead, I can create styles, and I have to guess from sizes which one is which.
• You can't name the color swatches. Naming is a bridge to use the same names on code as variables
  (Jonathan) The team is actively working on adding the ability to organize and label content in the assets panel which would cover colors, character styles and symbols.

• Color swatches on fills have HEX codes, but you can only see them when you have hovered over them some time. When choosing a right color from a greyscale palette, it becomes pretty slow. Being able to name color swatches and showing the name in small size would resolve this.
  (Jonathan) The team is actively working on adding the ability to organize and label content in the assets panel which would cover colors, character styles and symbols.

• I guess, this is a bug: When you select text, and then try to change the style - and if you click the size number on the side, it most often moves the focus to opacity settings. There's a too big margin for errors.
  (Jonathan) I've asked the team to investigate this.

• Layering is too weak. It is difficult to see what is on each layer, and also to keep a good and consistent structure.
  (Jonathan) Could you elaborate a bit more on what specific task using the layer panel is tedious or not efficient? We are always looking for ways to improve features we've shipped.
  
  
• You can't execute calculations on width. For ex, if the width of a rectangle is 105px, you can't type in 105-5 to make it 100px. This is pretty handy feature when you try to estimate things to fit in.
  (Jonathan) Upcoming releases should make you happy
  
  
  
• Why exporting is so hard? You have resolved all that on Illustrator export. Why does it have to be so simple and stupid that it autogenerates 1x and 2x images. Sometimes you don't want them.
  (Jonathan) We will continue to work on improving our asset and batch export workflows. With some of that work, I'm sure we can address your above concern.
  
• Shortcut keys don't match with other Adobe apps.
  (Jonathan) While we currently don't support preferences, we do plan on adding the ability to customize them in the future.
  

Thank you & Keep the feedback coming!

Jonathan Pimento
Product Manager (Adobe XD)

[jaredsnider]

^ Concise overview of what is preventing me from moving from Sketch to XD. Would love to switch to XD but its just so much more clunky to design web layouts on, for the reasons listed above.