No sidehandles on box

[perrybrus]

When I add a box to my artboard and try to re-scale it the side handles are gone, I have only corner handles. When I fiddle around with the height by dragging the corner handles then suddenly side handles on both sides of the box appear - then they vanish for some reason. Seems very random and unstable. This is very annoying cause whenever I need to adjust the width manually I have to repeat this process but dragging corner handles and that affects the height and everything. Looks like the side handles are badly implemented or something cause I have no clue when to expect them. They come and go randomly. Looks like I'm forced to have a very tall box in order to get side handles. Very odd.

[Randy Edmunds · Accepted solution]

In general, the side handles are hidden when there's not enough room to display them. Which OS are you using?

The easiest workaround is probably to zoom in a step or 2. You can also edit in PI which supports up/down arrow keys with shift key acceleration.

Randy

[perrybrus]

There's plenty of room for a side handle at same height in the other Adobe apps, so I think you should revise that feature in Xd. It's quirky to use the corner handles to make the box wider all the time. But I really don't think the handles are stable cause as mentioned the side handles doesn't always appear when the box is higher. The manner they appear is kinda hard to predict. Often a sign of instabilities. I'm on W10.

[Randy Edmunds]

Thanks for extra info. I opened an internal issue to take another look at this.

Thanks for reporting issues,

Randy

[Peter_Flynn]

perrybrus​: You should be able to predict it based on the object size.  If either width or height is < 64px on screen, some handles will be hidden.  Even more handles get hidden when the size drops below 32px.

Windows is more aggressive about hiding resize handles than our Mac version, in order to be touch-friendly.  If that bothers you, I've created this request which you can upvote: Resize handles disappear when object is still pretty large (Windows only) – Adobe XD Feedback.  This way we can see how many people would like the behavior to change.

Thanks for the feedback!

[perrybrus]

Thanks. Common sense would be to follow the same principles that's used in other Adobe apps if you ask me. That's a pretty well proven concept. Don't know how many people use touch screens to design their layouts but surely it can't be the dominating group. I'm at an design agency and we're all kinda wondering why the handles are acting this way.

After testing Xd for a while I see that the app has a very long way to go before it can even be defined as an alternative to the established Axure or Sketch, but please keep on developing it, although I believe you guys need to speed things up if your ever gonna convert users from the other tools mentioned. The gap is just too large right now. Would like to see Adobe up there hopefully Q1 2018, or else I honestly believe the preferred prototyping tools are Axure and Sketch for the years to come. You need to cover some major ground in a short period of time in order to beat the competition. It's all about the lack of interactive features, that's where Xd is too thin as of now. Can't simulate interactivity, it's static. It's a prototype of a prototype tool ironically. But if someone should succeed it's Adobe! You need to throw a lot of money and manpower on this thing - then miracles can happen   

[Peter_Flynn]

Thanks for the feedback.  If you can, please take a minute to upvote your top missing features on https://adobexd.uservoice.com/

For what it's worth though, I do think it's important for XD not to just blindly emulate the UI of any specific tool, including earlier Adobe apps.  We want to be sure we're taking a fresh look at everything to build a clean, modern app from the ground up.  But in this case, I certainly agree with you we should not be so focused on new/unproven touch workflows that it hurts usability for more prevalent mouse usage.  I'll see what I can do to get the handle show/hide thresholds tweaked for a future release.

[perrybrus]

Thanks. I'm at the uservoice from time to time, I'm observing many similar comments there and that's good. It's very admirable that you guys have chosen to release the beta Xd and get your future customers on board already. I know Adobe made a failed attempt at buying Sketch and when looking at Xd you can clearly see the early similarities in terms of UI layout and tone of voice. Not necessarily a bad thing as Sketch have done plenty right. However, I think the unique seeling point for Adobe is to merge the CC apps and make them correspond for the sake of workflow. Sometimes I can't understand why Adobe still chooses different solutions for the same features in PS and Illu. It's like the developer teams are competing instead of collaborating. So, sameness is GOOD if you ask me. I don't wanna press space bar to move around in Xd and not being able to press H for hand tool for instance. Guess you get my point there.

If Xd get's all the interactive features implemented that we see in Axure for instance, I would consider emigrating. If you also get full native Adobe file system support with PSD, illu so one could switch between the apps like I do when designing in InDesign - that would be the winning recopy. If you develop Xd as this new odd and quirky relative I think most people would just keep on using Sketch and Axure comfortably without feeling loss. But the most important factor is still interactivity. You need to be able to simulate real life actions so scripting is crucial. In Axure you have full on javascript and html support. WOF as well. Also there's full video support for YouTube and Vimeo integration. I can simulate actions like using forms, build interactive menus for web and mobile, import Google maps etc. In other words: it's alive!

We will be watching you...

[Peter_Flynn]

I don't agree with everything you've written there, but again -- thank you for the feedback, we really do appreciate every bit of it.

Having multiple graphic design apps, it is certainly not always easy for Adobe to strike the right balance of specializing each app for its target uses, while also ensuring the apps feel very similar in areas they overlap.  I hope we will keep improving!

For interactivity, there are several items on our UserVoice feedback site that it'd be great to add your vote to if they're relevant for you:

Animate individual elements separately (custom animation transitions / microinteractions)

Text input field with actions based on value

Interactive form elements (more general)

Import Videos & Animated GIFs to show in interactive preview

Fixed elements in scrolling artboards (header, nav bar, etc.)

Thanks again.