Is Adobe XD a time saver?
After enjoying the easy flow of prototyping (especially for mobile apps) with XD and feeling really comfortable with it, I am now realizing that, in fact, I am ending up to spend more time than just using Illustrator, Photoshop, or even prototyping in InDesign for the following reasons:
- XD is not capable of showing mouseovers (something I used to easily do in InDesign), so it fails in that most basic interactive prototyping and I need to go back to good old InDesign.
- It does not produce CSS or any image assets for HTML or WP. So I have to export it as PDF, open it in Illustrator, release clipping masks, retype all the text as it breaks words up exporting to PDF, and most of the time I have to clean up the layers and export Illustrator to Photoshop for flattening any transparencies created in XD. Forget about creating any shadows in XD; that will turn into a nightmare in PDF/AI. Essentially, I may as well create the whole thing from scratch in Photoshop or Illustrator for generating assets.
- Lack of any full-screen web view without a black frame all around for the desktop view (and I am not even talking about responsive) forces me to export my desktop comps as full-width PDF from XD. But generating PDF sizes that are small enough to email is not easy for lengthy pages with many transparencies and masks.
I have no complaints about the mobile view with the exception of not being able to have a fixed top that won't disappear in scroll. I really enjoy numerous live YouTube Adobe session on XD too. It has definitely brought UX and UI designers together while they are all learning and experimenting with XD. But I just wish Adobe had moved little faster on finally gave us a good web/app asset generator. I am tired of right clicking on layers and copying and pasting CSS from Photoshop 2017 and 2018.
Love to hear alternatives that other designers use for the time being.
Cheers
Abol
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