Global Style/Color Edits
Provide the ability to change multiple objects/elements within a document and/or across artboards.
Example: Ability to increase font size within a button across all artboards (without multi-select)
This is similar to increasing font size within a repeatable grid—all increase.
Another example: replace/swap a theme color throughout the document.
Peter DiBartolo
shared this idea
Hi XD Community,
I’m glad to announce that you could do global character style or color edits in XD through the assets panel. Just add your colors and character styles to the assets panel, and once you edit any of the color / character style properties in the assets panel, those edits will propagate to all objects or symbols that inherit those properties.
ProTip – Color Merging in the assets panel: you could also merge colors in the assets panel by copying the Hex value of one color and pasting it into another. All objects or symbols that have the old color will automatically inherit the new merged color.
To learn more about managing your colors and character styles in XD’s assets panel, please check the following resources:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bu5khe2H2-c
https://helpx.adobe.com/xd/help/assets-symbols.html
If you have any feedback or suggestions around how to improve this feature and other assets panel features, please create a new feature request on UserVoice.
Best,
Sherif Assaf
111 comments
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George P.
commented
Keep the UI simple - I love the simplicity. This type o functionality has the ability to really add complexity. I would also love styles just be mindful of not turning this into another Sketch...
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James
commented
I really dislike the way Sketch has done their styles but the way Google docs does it is fantastic. You basically have a list of style types in a drop down with pre-selected hot keys and you can update them at any stage during a project. Now that I would find really helpful as I could stay on the canvas whilst using keyboard commands to style up my text.
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Max Neuse
commented
Guys, sketch isn't sleepin...
New Update to 3.7 fulfilled all my wishes regarding the usage of symbols (what I've tested yet).
Take a look: https://rink.hockeyapp.net/apps/0172d48cceec171249a8d850fb16276b -
Aleksandar Cucukovic
commented
It would be awesome if you could introduce something like "Classes Panel" so for every object that is repeating a lot, just add a class and you can update it right away.
For example, if you are building mobile app, and you have menu icon on all screens, right now, it's time consuming to go in and change the color on all of them. With a class #menu for example, change the color once, and it updates on all screens.
Also as Travis pointed out in the live show, in the prototyping mode, if you have bottom bar on every screen, it would be awesome to do the wiring once ( for example, home icon will always take you to home screen ), then to wire it multiple times and lose time. Again, with a simple class #home, this could work MUCH faster.
Thanks for making the XD, i can't wait to use it on Windows!
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Dale
commented
In the vein of InDesign, in XD I would love it if every stray colour or typeface (or object?) added to a document could be automatically added to a global style palette. That way when we are cleaning up the design later, we can see every colour or font variation and consolidate as needed (think InDesign colour palette).
Paragraph styles are awesome, but they can be messy and annoying to manage if you want to create variations within the same document. If we could automate paragraph styles a little more it would be awesome. So text styles are automatically added and just like colour, we can consolidate later when the creative stuff is over.
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Dale
commented
I MUCH prefer to use InDesign over Photoshop for UI design because of its global styles. I think its implementation could be improved upon but it's super powerful.
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Paul
commented
I use ID for UI Design all the time because ID makes it possible to create global styles for everything.
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Chris
commented
The real thing missing from Sketch/photoshop (and is in Indesign) is Style sheets that have parent and child - so for example you can set a global style - 'Body' and have a 'body bold style' that changes if for example the size of 'Body' has changed.
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Ryan
commented
I just started using XD and this is something that I would love to have. It should almost be essential.
Right now I'm working on mocking up a website, and I want to have the same footer on every canvas. It would be so helpful to be able to create a footer style, or "symbol" like in Illustrator, where you can edit one object and it will update across the document. The same would go for the header area of the website.
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Summer Philllips
commented
This is the most important feature for me, It has always been a pain to need to change things like color or font or buttons (to only name a few) across multiple screens. I imagine it would work a lot like Sass or how it does in Sketch for example color: set a master color such as $color1=#454545 and then have that $color1 be something I can choose in the color palette, if I change $color1 all the things I've used that color on change too, pretty basic. I imagine for universal buttons you could maybe have a manual input for the prototype and have it link to a specific artboard name. Rather then the basic drag system now (though I love that so just saying as a more then one option kinda deal).
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Anonymous
commented
Best would be something pretty similar to ID. There we have kind of classes and ids and element styles.
ID does that very well.
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Michael Tsimnadis
commented
Being able to change elements globally is obviously of the most glaring omissions at the moment, but if you enable symbols, you almost don't need dedicated paragraph/graphic/character styles.
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James
commented
I see this working initially like illustrator symbols. The character styles element is not so urgent in my opinion as if you click on a text field (with the text styling you want) and then start a new text field, it takes on that styling.
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Adam Pietrasiak commented
I think CSS frameworks gives good idea. Frameworks like Bootstrap etc.
Let's consider button:
You have main class ".btn" that applies some basic styles like border, border-radius, shadow
Then you've got ".btn-lg, .btn-sm, .btn-md etc" for large, medium, small that just modify padding/font size, ant then you've got ".btn-warning, .btn-error, .btn-success" that modify colors and polishing styles.Flat nature of CSS makes classes independent, but you can clearly see that in above case there is some kind of tree. Button > Button size + Button color.
I think it would be good to have the same kind of tree of styles instead of "Button for Facebook login, Button for Confirm registration" (flat nature). I think it would be better to have hierarchy of styles from less to more focused and detailed so I could modify basic styles of all the buttons with some root-level style, but still be able to modify details using sub-tree level styles.
What you think?
I think flat list of styles quickly end like hard to maintain and use (and remember)...
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Aurélie Rémia
commented
Just as some other users, that's an essential feature to me. Must-have for designing big apps.
- Global colors, as in Indesign and Illustrator I believe
- Text styles
- Element styles
- Symbols (group of elements)I work in Sketch, across various Pages.
I usually work on a particular page with symbols and pre-saved styles.
One problem I run across frequently though is to keep everything up-to-date : I have to unlink symbols to make edits specific to one situation.. So if I edit the original symbol I have to go back to all unlinked symbols and make the change there too.It'd be GREAT to have elements unlinked to the symbol for this reason (text, certain elements)
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David King
commented
This feature is a MUST for me to adopt XD over Sketch. When Im working on an app that has 20+ screens, and I need to adjust the size, colour, position, etc. of my universal nav for example, It is a nightmare to have to go though each of my 20 boards and make this change.
Another situation: Show my app prototype to a client. Client wants me increase the thickness of the boarders on the input text fields. I have 60+ fields across all my art boards. With Sketch this can be done in a few seconds by editing the master (and the unique text in each field will not change.). As it stands with XD, I would have to change each of the 60+ manually. What a headache.
Even integrating something like AI's symbol panel would be a huge help. Axure also has a great system where you can save groups of elements as a master, then create children of that master. Editing the master applies the changes to all the children unless you break the relationship manually.
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Erin Standley
commented
I switched away from PS 9 years ago in favor of InDesign (I know...) and Illustrator to design websites. It was great because of master pages, paragraph styles, character styles, artboards and swatches.
These are all must-have features (except master pages since they are essentially symbols, but I like the way that feature is implemented).
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prestonux@gmail.com
commented
We may need to wait before we get layers for this feature as it could cause some accidental changes that might propagate across multiple art-boards.
1. The ability to set a text, gradient, shape object, or a repeatable object, as a "linked / global" element
Use case:
A. Header / Nav / Footer across An App
2. The ability vary / or modify as simple as possible a linked element and create it as new element
3. The ability to save and name these items so you can manage and find them across a project level.
4. The ability delete or remove a global element with the option to remove only a single element.
5. The ability to modify a subset of functions within a global item (text size).
That's just a short run down.
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Anonymous
commented
Use find and replace tools to globally edit elements similar to how it works in InDesign.
Select everything in the document that is the same color, stroke weight etc like you can in Illustrator.
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Katrina
commented
Style management in Sketch is my top pet peeve. I love how styles work in inDesign, and I think you should reuse those concepts..
Here’s a typical workflow for me:
I create a new button style, let’s say with white text on a green background. I call this “Primary Button” and it is saved to my list of managed styles/shapes. I reuse this button on several screens.
I now want to create an inactive state for my button. I duplicate Primary Button and I change the background colour to grey. This action should not change all my buttons to grey. Instead, it should create an “exception”. I should be able to choose whether this exception should be classified as an entirely new style, which I can then choose a name for (e.g. "Inactive Button"), or if it should override the default style. A change to a shared style should never override the default, unless explicitly stated by the user. It is so easy to accidentally change a style, this is my #1 pet peeve in Sketch.