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Sketch 56 Beta is Out

4 years ago from , Lead Designer at POTLOC

With the following features

  • Edit symbols text overrides on the fly directly on the artboards

  • Text auto-height

  • Horizontal & Vertical smart distribute together

  • Smart distribute now work with grouped contents

Better than nothing since some darn important features are still missing

24 comments

  • Andrew FiorilloAndrew Fiorillo, 4 years ago

    Editing symbol text overrides in the canvas is great. My only request would be that it could be done with a keyboard shortcut, not just double clicking. For non-symbol text, just hitting enter is so much faster.

    Also, hitting enter on a symbol shouldn't prompt to detach it at all. I edit overrides far more often than I ever detach symbols. Simply shifting selection to a child layer upon hitting enter, just like a regular group works now, would be far more useful. Hitting enter on any of the child layers could then trigger editing of its override. In the case of text, it would mean hitting enter would edit the text directly in the canvas. All this, without ever leaving the keyboard (which is where my hands are if I'm editing text).

    5 points
  • Simon FSimon F, 4 years ago

    All I want is auto resizable buttons

    3 points
  • Diego LafuenteDiego Lafuente, 4 years ago

    I can't wait to test the contraints features. I'm tired of editing manually all my buttons

    3 points
    • Account deleted 4 years ago

      is it part of this beta?

      0 points
      • Diego LafuenteDiego Lafuente, 4 years ago

        In the last post of their blog they mentioned this feature, but I don't recall if it is on this beta

        0 points
  • Karlo Estrada, 4 years ago

    oh jeez...why figma is slowly beating sketch. It's because of the team collaboration feature.

    1 point
    • Andrew C, 4 years ago

      I don’t actually find the team collaboration feature is actually that useful. Things like their API and connected symbol structure is much more useful.

      1 point
    • Patrick LoonstraPatrick Loonstra, 4 years ago

      Sketch is working on team support also.

      1 point
  • Mattan IngramMattan Ingram, 4 years ago

    Sketch and Figma are slowly recreating every feature of CSS (not perfectly) because they chose to build their own rendering engine instead of just using HTML and CSS.

    This causes so many issues with developer handoff. I see product designers switching to an HTML/CSS based tool over the next couple of years instead of sticking with Figma/Sketch.

    You will get all the other benefits that Figma/Sketch provides, while having all the benefits of a box-model right out of the box.

    0 points
    • Ktrn Dsrs, 4 years ago

      Have some pertinent tools to suggest in that case? I am always interested into learning new things.

      0 points
      • Mattan IngramMattan Ingram, 4 years ago

        Modulz, Hadron, Brook.io, Webflow (sort of but demonstrates how powerful this can be), handoff.design, and many others.

        The counter argument I hear is that people feel they will lose creativity if they can’t position items anywhere they want. But this just tells me they don’t know CSS because position: absolute and position: fixed let you do exactly that.

        My only fear is these tools will over abstract away from HTML and CSS instead of being a means to teach designers these useful skills. One of the reasons we have such a big discussion about design systems right now is because designers AND developers refuse to properly learn HTML and CSS.

        0 points
        • Ktrn Dsrs, 4 years ago
          • Modulz, I'm on the Alpha & Beta. This one is really promising

          • Webflow (I am tempted a lot about this one). Have you tried it as a design tool? How about multiple projects

          • Hadron & Brook, I will take a look at these

          I also totally agree with all you said

          0 points
          • Mattan IngramMattan Ingram, 4 years ago

            Unfortunately I missed the Modulz alpha/beta, but I’m worried it’s not exactly the tool I’m looking for. I’ve been talking to the creator on Twitter and it seems like he is against exposing the HTML and CSS to designers and instead basically just giving them a variety of pre-built components and modules and tokens they can theme.

            0 points
  • Eric Chu, 4 years ago

    What features do you find missing?

    0 points
    • Ktrn Dsrs, 4 years ago

      I'm just being really picky but here they are:

      • Sketch Cloud: Comments using pins with a possibility to reply

      • Prototypes: Individual Vertical & Horizontal scrolling for symbols on prototypes

      • Prototypes: Overlay on click

      • Styles: Separate even more styles for a true design system (Ex.: Remove colours & Alignments from Texts)

      8 points
      • Andrew C, 4 years ago

        I'd add Prototypes: Timers as well (which in InVision are the only way to accurately displaying transitional states during tests).

        0 points
      • Bilal KhettabBilal Khettab, 4 years ago

        Strongly agree with the last point We need overlay too Basically it would be great to centralize all stuff in Sketch instead of syncing to Invision

        1 point
        • Corin EdwardsCorin Edwards, 4 years ago

          I'm not sure that's fair. I would like sketch's prototyping features to be further along, but I don't think Invision's syncing problems are problems inherent to syncing, I suspect they are problems inherent to invision the company

          0 points
    • Harper Lieblich, 4 years ago

      The ability to "Fix position when scrolling" on an element in the background.

      1 point
    • Jan SemlerJan Semler, 4 years ago
      • symbols docking, dock/lock symbols together so when you change the size other connected symbol will move aside depending on change

      • prototyping within symbols

      • symbol templates/styles, create one Box and Text, use it for Buttons, Inputs, just switch style

      • easier way to use text styley, still a pain to „design system“ fonts

      1 point
      • Ktrn Dsrs, 4 years ago

        Way to go! Those would be some real deal breaker features.

        But before everything else: Faster versions & features iterations!

        1 point