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jeroenr92072295
jeroenr92072295
Inspiring
January 23, 2020
Question

[Design]-UI text fields in XD break every once in a while.

  • January 23, 2020
  • 2 replies
  • 5082 views

For some versions of XD already, I often am faced with text fields (e.g. width field, height field, layer/state text field when renaming layer/state, etc.) in the UI of XD that can't get focus, can't be tabbed to, don't allow to highlight text and don't get updated when I press keys on my keyboard to edit its value. Though that I can't interact with these text fields, somehow the rest of the UI of XD is blocked as well. So everytime this happens, I get stuck.

 

This also applies to text layers on canvas/artboards when I want to edit the text content of this layer.

 

At the time that I am faced with this, the inputs are not disabled or read-only for that matter. They should be editable. The only workaround for me, is to minimize the XD window and revealing the app again. This can't be intended behavior, something must be broken here.

 

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    2 replies

    jeroenr92072295
    jeroenr92072295Author
    Inspiring
    August 11, 2021

    @HARSHIKA_VERMA @Rishabh_Tiwari I am getting increasingly frustrated with the total dumpster fire that is the UX of text editing inside of Adobe XD. Instead of helping me design UI/UX like a power user, I am constantly being held up by the application. It's riddled with bugs! The frustrations are reaching a boiling point now. I have had contact about some of the issues way back, and they just don't get resolved. I collaborated with Harshika Verma on this issue, but no resolution was found. Although I started out with a mindset of "we're going to solve this together", nothing helped. I got tired of it and gave up. I thought, until Adobe reached the point of being able to fix this by themselves (or by accident), I would be able to work around the issue.

     

    But this is not the case.

     

    The text issue is really impeding my workflow. I take at least twice as much time to deliver a design, and that is an optimistic estimation. Text editing (anything that involves editing text, cursors, text highlight) is just broken. Selecting text and trying to edit it is a mine field. I can't be sure that whenever I click a text box or text layer, that I am actually editing the text in it. What's worse, (over)writing text and removing text is totally disconnected. So I may be editing text in one field, but if I press backspace, the text in another field gets removed. This applies to the property panel and the canvas. It's so random that rolling dice is more predictable. Making Adobe XD come to senses when this happens is harder than trying to unlock a vault. I'm not kidding, there's no logic to escape this buggy behavior.

     

    Please, anything! How do you guys work on bugs? By now, it should be clear that, over the course of Windows and XD versions, this is prevalent in any of them for over a year at the very least. And still is on the latest versions.

     

    To answer  @Rishabh_Tiwari's questions, these are my specs. But they don't even matter. You can use any version of Windows 10 and application to try and replicate it. And it happens on both my devices.

    • Device: Surface Book, as well as Surface Studio (both generation 1)
    • OS: Windows 10 Pro 21H1 (both)
    • XD: 42.1.22 (both)
    • GPU driver latest version?: Surface Book: yes, Surface Studio: don't know, but most likely yes.

     

    Please tell us something about this issue. Are you able to replicate it? Which steps did you undertake to do so? Is it on your engineering team's backlog? Does it have any priority at all? What can we do more to help you solve this issue, or even just replicate it?

      HARSHIKA_VERMA
      Community Manager
      HARSHIKA_VERMACommunity Manager
      Community Manager
      January 23, 2020

      Hi Jeroenr,

       

      We are sorry to hear you are having trouble using XD. We would like to know a few more details like-

       

      • Would you mind sharing a short video of the workflow capturing the same behaviour for better understanding?
      • We would also like to know if it's happening with all the files or with a specific file.
      • Are you working on the latest version of XD?
      • Have you tried rolling back to the previous version of XD and let us know if you're experiencing the issue.

       

      We will try our best to help.

       

      Thanks,

      Harshika

      jeroenr92072295
      jeroenr92072295Author
      Inspiring
      January 23, 2020

      https://we.tl/t-2RIeqsjo7v

      Here is another one, demonstrating weird input behavior from the point that the text layer on the canvas became unresponsive (not being able to highlight text on this layer).

       

      After the text layer became unresponsive, I tried out editing the text fields in the XD UI. What happened then, is that I could click the inputs, after which the cursor appears. However, the input does not get a blue underline to indicate it is active. Then, I repeated clicking a few inputs with the same effect. At the point that clicking the input automatically highlighted the value of the respective input, all the inputs started to act weird together as a collective. In multiple inputs, the values highlight and remain highlighted, even though I click on other inputs.

      HARSHIKA_VERMA
      Community Manager
      HARSHIKA_VERMACommunity Manager
      Community Manager
      January 28, 2020

      Every issue that I mentioned before seems to happen at random, but any of them can happen independently. As a consequence, you'd end up with multiple issues combined.

      1. Being unable to highlight text in a text layer.
      2. Being unable to edit a text layer (happens often in conjunction with being unable to highlight a text layer).
      3. Sometimes, when editing a text layer, I'm not only unable to edit the text or highlight text, but also would I then be unable to click away from the text layer. The said layer retains focus whatsoever, no way to escape, but also no way to actually edit something or highlight something.
      4. Being unable to update a value in the property panel (e.g. w, h, x or y). This happens often after I notice that I can't edit a text layer anymore.
      5. Being unable to highlight text in a text field in the property panel (mostly in conjunction with being unable to update a value in the property panel).
      6. When focusing on a different text field, the highlight in the then-active text field isn't removed (I managed to end up with highlights in every text field in the property panel, which is super confusing: what am I editing?).

       

      The issues mentioned above do not happen in order, as any of the above can happen independently.


      Hi Jeroen,

       

      Sorry for the delay in response. We have an latest update available for XD 26. Would you mind updating XD and let us know if that helps?

       

      Thanks,

      Harshika

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