Skip to main content
S
Sweeteez_Design
Participant
January 6, 2020
Answered

How to justify the text in XD?

  • January 6, 2020
  • 6 replies
  • 62642 views

Hello guys,

Is it possible to justify the text in Adobe XD?

 

Thank you

 

<The Title was renamed by moderator>

    Correct answer Peter Villevoye

    It's not possible in XD, and highly warned against in general for web and app design !

    Most browsers are equiped with lousy hyphenation and justification algorithms, especially in many non-English languages. So text lines are wrapped in incorrect ways, rendering very illegible columns of text. Having justified text might look very straight and appealing, but from a reader's viewpoint, it's often a bad thing...

    6 replies

    Guymark
    Guymark
    Participant
    March 25, 2024

    Hi Adobe team. This has been a frustration for such a long time, and it is quite unclear why you still exclude such a basic first level text alignment feature. Is it that it is super hard to include? It is a feature that is available on all other adobe software without the need for upvoting. How come it is not available in XD in the first place. XD is a briliant tool with such an unneccessary flaw. Please just fix it.

      Chris W. Griffith
      Community Expert
      Chris W. GriffithCommunity Expert
      Community Expert
      March 25, 2024

      Sorry to burst your bubble, but XD is dead. Adobe is not investing in the product any more, so this feature will never be there. In fact you should probably look at other design /prototyping solutions for future work.

      A
      ainigma
      Participating Frequently
      November 21, 2020

      @Peter Villevoye I disagree. Adobe Xd has so many "convenience"-features, this would just add up perfectly. So many customers asked "why can't you justify it?" - and then i go back to Illustrator or Word. Really? Is that the answer? If customers demand it, there's no excuse to not implement it. This is a basic feature.

        Peter Villevoye
        Community Expert
        Peter VillevoyeCommunity Expert
        Community Expert
        November 22, 2020

        The rationale of Justification being a convenience feature for the designer doesn't work for me. When I Google "web design justification text" the whole first page of results is filled with blogs, articles, and examples advising against the use of justified text. I know, Google often tries to offer results that fit a person's confimation bias, but I can't believe they've included this preference in my profile... 😉

         

        So I think it's fair of the development team to prioritize other features and leave this request unfulfilled, in stead of spending a vast amount of resources on hyphenation algorithms and standard and custom vocabularies in 60+ languages, with the notion that it won't work properly in many browsers and websites.

          Q
          quyt13762645
          Participant
          June 10, 2021

          Thanks for your correct and kind reply. You've summed up the pros and cons very neatly.

           

          This matter is being discussed at lentgh in some other threads and a UserVoice request. In one of them, contributors are even rallying against me for not endorsing their claim or understanding their wish.

           

          I'm not advocating against text justification in general, but only explaining why I can relate to Adobe's attitude or even momentary inability (due to development constraints) to simply shove some half-baked algorithm into XD, slap another alignment button onto the panel, and call it a day. Would users be happy with another flawed solution like that List plugin ?

           

          Let's wait for a better take on the whole text engine, Adobe has been promising (for a few years now...)


          lêu lêu

          des.hk
          des.hk
          Participant
          September 17, 2020

          Justify does not favour English text in responsive design. However, it favours text such as Chinese, Korean. text which mixes with few numbers and english characters. 

          M
          Misael5C17
          Participant
          September 4, 2020

          Puedes probar con este plugin que esta en version veta, me ha funcionado muy bien, saludos https://github.com/amirhosseinhpv/adobe-xd-justify-it

            Peter Villevoye
            Community Expert
            Peter VillevoyeCommunity ExpertCorrect answer
            Community Expert
            January 6, 2020

            It's not possible in XD, and highly warned against in general for web and app design !

            Most browsers are equiped with lousy hyphenation and justification algorithms, especially in many non-English languages. So text lines are wrapped in incorrect ways, rendering very illegible columns of text. Having justified text might look very straight and appealing, but from a reader's viewpoint, it's often a bad thing...

              Wolfgang.H
              Wolfgang.H
              Inspiring
              August 12, 2020

              Thanks @Peter_Villevoye, thanks for that explanation.

               

              I'm new to typography, but I've seen a different kind of style where hyphens aren't used.  Instead, the spacing between each word is increased such that the final character of each line is right aligned.  Is this a different style of justification, or is there a different term for that.

              Peter Villevoye
              Community Expert
              Peter VillevoyeCommunity Expert
              Community Expert
              August 13, 2020

              There are indeed several typographical settings available in text justification, both in print as in web media. E.g. in Adobe InDesign you can specify the desired and tolerated spacing between characters and/or words, and even allow horizontal character scaling as a method in the setting. These values can subtly alter the overall 'look' of a text, to make it appear more newspaper or magaine style.

               

              In web design such CSS settings are also available:

              https://www.w3schools.com/cssref/css3_pr_text-justify.asp

               

              But as I said earlier in this discussion: due to lousy or even missing dictionaries, the algorithms of capable browsers perform a very rough or wrong hyphenation, leaving very large gaps (the space left by every wrapping whole word) to be spread over a text line. Maybe that's not such a big deal in English (which uses far more separated hence smaller words), but it looks horrible in many other languages.

               

              And there's a more disturbing problem: most browser don't support any advanced justification settings:

              https://caniuse.com/#search=text%20justify

                Harshika Verma
                Community Manager
                Harshika VermaCommunity Manager
                Community Manager
                January 6, 2020

                Hi 

                 

                Thank you for reaching out and sharing your feedback. We have seen a similar request has been raised here: https://adobexd.uservoice.com/forums/353007-adobe-xd-feature-requests/suggestions/16278061-full-justification-for-area-text. We would request you to please submit your feedback and upvote the request to add your voice.

                 

                Hope it helps.

                 

                Thanks,

                Harshika

                Terms & ConditionsAccessibility statement
                Using the community Terms of use Privacy Cookie preferences Do not sell or share my personal information ad choicesAdChoices