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Adobe XD update adds design specs, layout grid support, text enhancements, and more

Adobe today updated its new user experience prototyping solution, Adobe XD, adding several helpful new features. XD was first introduced in March 2016 as a beta product, and was formally released last month at Adobe MAX 2017.

The highlight of today’s update is a beta feature called Design Specs. Adobe says the tool will help streamline the designer-to-developer handoff process. Support for design specs has been highly requested by the Adobe user community.

The Design Specs (Beta) feature is an early look at improving the communication between designers and developers. A designer can generate a public URL in XD for sharing with a developer. On accessing the link, a developer can conduct real-time inspection of flows, measurements, and styles of the design.

Also new in the November update of XD are a customizable layout grid to speed up the process of making consistent and organized designs, JPG asset export, improved workflows for text objects, access to the eyedropper in the color picker, and enhancements for Windows 10. Adobe XD is available for macOS and Windows as part of Creative Cloud, as well as on iOS as a companion app. See more details from today’s update below:

Layout Grid

Customizable column grids enable a consistent, organized look across designs with the ability to manage proportions between elements. Layout Grid makes it faster and easier to design for multiple screen sizes, and eliminates the need to use the square grid or manually create a grid.

JPG Export

Assets and artboards can be exported in the popular JPG format without needing to convert them in another app.

Text enhancements

Point text to area text (or vice versa) can be switched with a click of a button, and the last used text properties such as font family, size, and weight are remembered when creating a new text object.

Improvements for Windows 10

Pan and zoom with two fingers is now supported on touch-enabled Windows 10 devices, and design elements from Adobe InDesign CC can be copied and pasted into XD.


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Avatar for Michael Steeber Michael Steeber

Michael is a Creative Editor who covered Apple Retail and design on 9to5Mac. His stories highlighted the work of talented artists, designers, and customers through a unique lens of architecture, creativity, and community.

Contact Michael on Twitter to share Apple Retail, design, and history stories: @MichaelSteeber

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