App feedback coming over from Figma

[bryce (Bryce Lewis)]

Here’s a list of some small gripes and friction points I’m finding as I’m using Sketch for the second time. I tried to recreate a simple WatchOS widget for the practice and just sharing some frustrations to hopefully help fix things.

I can’t find where all keyboard shortcuts are - I’m basically discovering them by accident.

There’s a way to drill down a frame hierarchy to its children, but I can’t see how to go back up the list. I learned that I can use enter to drill down from a frame to its children, but I can’t figure out how to go back up the scale. In Figma that’s ""

I can’t figure out how to enable sub-pixel precision in a file. Apple’s own guidelines call for WatchOS widgets to be 191 x 81.5px for instance, but I can’t set that size.

When I’m editing text, I need to confirm my edit instead of just clicking away

If I’m clicking and dragging and object, position values only update when I’ve released the object

It’s weird that frame height and corner rounding are tied to each other. Just give a person free entry on corner rounding and anything higher than 50% of the frame height always looks round.

I can’t switch color picker mode to HSL or other choices

When using absolute frames positioning, I can’t figure out how to set left+right or scale for resizing

I couldn’t find basic tools at the start, like rectangles, text, frames. I had to manually add these to the toolbar, which is weird for discovery.

I would expect to set a relative width in % or something, but it just stays as the pixel value

I’m not sure what the units are for character spacing…sometimes it’s em, %, px. I’m just guessing its pixels because all the other text values are in pixels.

I do love the “preserve space when hidden” setting, Figma doesn’t have that and very much needs it.

Perhaps the most annoying thing: when I click into a property to change a value, it just puts the cursor where I click. Just select the whole cell. Say the size is 15 and I want to change it to 17. I end up writing 1517 by accident. Otherwise I have to press delete and 7, which is the same number of keystrokes. This is even worse for opacity because it’ll throw an error if I enter a value above 100% by adding extra characters.

I can’t use the eyedropper tool unless I enable screen recording?

Why does the trash can to remove a fill or border only show up if I uncheck a fill or border?

The only way to find out that I have libraries of symbols installed and usable is to press command +K and go into symbols, but there’s this whole left “show components” column that says there are no symbols, even though I know there are. It’s of course referring to local symbols, but this should be used as another method for discovering and displaying your libraries.

[paulozoom (Paulo Pereira)]

Hi @Bryce and welcome!

@bryce

I can’t find where all keyboard shortcuts are - I’m basically discovering them by accident.

We’ve just updated our Mac app shortcuts page. You can also get there from the Help > Keyboard Shortcuts menu.

@bryce

There’s a way to drill down a frame hierarchy to its children, but I can’t see how to go back up the list. I learned that I can use enter to drill down from a frame to its children, but I can’t figure out how to go back up the scale.

Press Escape

@bryce

When I’m editing text, I need to confirm my edit instead of just clicking away

This is not the case when editing text on the canvas. After you type you can just click away. Could you elaborate or demonstrate?

@bryce

If I’m clicking and dragging and object, position values only update when I’ve released the object

This shouldn’t be the case, could you show this happening for you?

@bryce

It’s weird that frame height and corner rounding are tied to each other. Just give a person free entry on corner rounding and anything higher than 50% of the frame height always looks round.

We’d like to improve this to be more explicit but you can type a very large number, and as long as it’s larger than half the layer’s shorter side, it’ll appear fully rounded.

@bryce

I can’t switch color picker mode to HSL or other choices

In the color picker, hover below the RGB fields, right over the letters R, G, or B, and you can click there (a chevron appears) to change to HSB or HSL.

@bryce

When using absolute frames positioning, I can’t figure out how to set left+right or scale for resizing

To pin a layer left and right, use the pins control in the inspector, click the left and right bars around the center [A ]. To have a layer proportionally resize when its parent does, choose Relative size for Width and Height — you’ll probably want to fully unpin as well.

@bryce

I would expect to set a relative width in % or something, but it just stays as the pixel value

Indeed, it’s all pixels. Something that’s on my mind.

@bryce

I’m not sure what the units are for character spacing…sometimes it’s em, %, px. I’m just guessing its pixels because all the other text values are in pixels.

I believe so yes.

@bryce

I can’t use the eyedropper tool unless I enable screen recording?

Correct, we use the macOS APIs for color picking, which allows Sketch to pick colors of anything on your screen, even outside the Sketch window, and macOS requires your permission to do so.

@bryce

Why does the trash can to remove a fill or border only show up if I uncheck a fill or border?

It’s just the design we’ve had for a long time, but noted! For what it’s worth you can right-click a style and hit Remove in the menu that appears.

@bryce

It’s of course referring to local symbols, but this should be used as another method for discovering and displaying your libraries.

There is, you can check available libraries to install in the app’s Settings (⌘,) or your document’s Document Settings (⇧⌘,). You can also open the workspace window (⌘O) and browse Libraries there, both the ones in your Workspace, and some starter ones we’ve made.

[leohans (Leonardo Hancevich (Leo Hans))]

@paulozoom Regarding line spacing, it would be interesting and very useful to have the ability to set it relative to the text size, so that when the font size is changed, the line spacing remains consistent.

[bryce (Bryce Lewis)]

Thanks guys, really appreciate you chiming in here!

Noted on escape, exactly what I was looking for.

On the editing text, looks like I had a locked text layer. As I tried to record a video for you, it was functioning as expected.

I did include a video of those position values not updating

On the corner rounding, got it! Looks like only the slider is tied to the frame height, but I can freely enter any number I like.

Thanks on switching to HSL/HSB, perfect. Also thanks on achieving scale and using relative there. Now that I know, I’ll play around a few times and have it figured out.

I saw this tip about adjusting values by 0.1 in any numerical field and thought “I might be able to set the size of my widget to that 81.5px value” but it seems not to work for that particular numerical cell.

Amazing you have that % utility for setting values…that’s really useful.

Ok, getting used to things here and there. While I have you, three more questions:

1. In Sketch, what’s the difference between a symbol and a component?
2. Does Sketch have variables in the sense of being able to define values and attach them to semantic names? Like cornerRounding.button.large is defined as 16, and I can set different frames to the same value. Or define a set of primitive tokens and then link those to semantic names.
3. What’s the preferred way to do light/dark mode switching for design?

Appreciate it,
Bryce

[paulozoom (Paulo Pereira)]

@bryce

I did include a video of those position values not updating

Thanks! Unusually choppy there, but later this year this is going to be instantaneous.

@bryce

I saw this tip about adjusting values by 0.1 in any numerical field and thought “I might be able to set the size of my widget to that 81.5px value” but it seems not to work for that particular numerical cell.

I believe it’s a constraint of top-level frames/graphics, which are always sized to full pixels. I believe it exists for good reasons but it’s possible we no longer need that constraint, I’d have to check.

@bryce

In Sketch, what’s the difference between a symbol and a component?

Symbol is what Figma calls a Component. In Sketch nomenclature, a component is any of the reusable design system elements — symbol, style, color variable, etc. We know it’s not standard nomenclature at this point, but we added Symbols wayyy back when. We’ve discussed changing it but there’s just never been a good time. Still on the wishlist though.

@bryce

Does Sketch have variables in the sense of being able to define values and attach them to semantic names? Like cornerRounding.button.large is defined as 16, and I can set different frames to the same value. Or define a set of primitive tokens and then link those to semantic names.

No, only possible variables are color variables.

@bryce

What’s the preferred way to do light/dark mode switching for design?

Probably just make a sibling symbol with the dark theme alongside the light. We don’t have modes so you can’t really have the trickle down effect of variable modes that Figma has.