A much-needed, and much-requested, improvement to Text Styles — alignment and color are now optional properties.
“Merry Christmas, Kevin”
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I use it a lot when making vst UIs, specifically in sprites when there’s, like, a hundred states of a knob rotating from 0 to 120 deg.
Also for icon design sometimes.
For apps or web no, not really.
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Some really great things in here!
The first piece of feedback I have is on the 2 column grid for Command Bar. It’s incredibly difficult to skim this list. This is especially the case when you have symbols, styles, colors, text styles that are in odd number groups (e.g. light, medium, dark). The challenge with that is you must skim to find the of an item kind (e.g. blue light) but that might be in the second column. If there’s 3 version of blue, then the next color’s first of kind will be in the first column. You end up playing an unnecessary game of colliding patterns (e.g. new colors start every other row, in alternating columns). This is an absolute waste of time.
Just use a single column list view. If you want to support a grid view please make the number of columns adjustable, but you could do away with grids altogether and be fine. You’ve already done this in the color picker. Keep it consistent.
This has also been a struggle for some time in Sketch’s components view. There the grid is 4 up, creating even more complex colliding patterns.
I realize that another option is to create subgroups using “/” in the name of an item. However, this not ideal in many cases as you’re punished for doing so by then having to navigate the hierarchical path whenever you want to use an item.
Linked symbols, styles, colors, and text styles are at the core of what makes Sketch useful. Please don’t mess this up.
Here’s the two column Command bar… Yikes
Here’s the same option shown in a nice single column color picker drop down,
Here’s the same problem in the component view… why a grid of 4???
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A post was split to a new topic: Smart Layout feedback
Hey @everydayslang
Thanks for looking at the new beta features and providing feedback. You’re making an interesting case, and a single-column list view makes sense. We will consider it.
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In the 102 beta, I noticed that some of my nested symbols have a border that I can’t figure out how to turn off.
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Hey @Paulius thanks for the report!
The team is aware of the issue, and we’re currently working on a fix. There seems to be an issue with how the migration of the document happens to the new document model that adds Borders to some Groups.
The issue should be fixed for new documents being opened (in the latest beta), and updated to the 102 Document model, and the team is currently looking for ways to fix currently affected documents.
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Hey @here — dropping by to let you know that this beta period will be longer than usual. Partly due to the upcoming holidays, and partly because there are more features we want to add to this release. Also, we’ll be making further improvements to the Command Bar, based on your feedback (thank you for that)!
You may see a slower pace of beta updates for a while, that’s expected. We’ll still release one every time we have significant updates or improvements to share, and we’ll pick up the pace again in the new year.
As a reminder: because this version of Sketch requires you to update documents, we don’t recommend using it with production files. Always make a copy first!
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Ironically, we did just release a beta update with a few Command Bar-related improvements:
- We’ve added the ⌘F shortcut next to the path bar (it’s always existed, we’re just making it easier to learn) — you can hit that to navigate through the various groups and sub-groups.
- You can now ⌘-click on any group in the path bar to go straight to the group itself, rather than navigate its sub-groups.
- If you search for a component inside a group and there are no results, we’ll show a button to search all components of that same type instead of just in the group.
- We’ve split out state restoration (returning you to the same group you were previously in) for inserting and replacing, so if you insert a Symbol from Group A and replace a Symbol from Group B, we’ll restore you to their respective groups when you next insert/replace, rather than the same group.
We’re continuing to work on the Command Bar, keeping in mind all the feedback you’ve shared here, and will have more updates soon!
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Just want to share that I love the new command bar! Yes the information is less dense but for symbols it’s much easier to find what you’re looking for with the larger previews, so I think it’s worth it.
For text styles I agree it’s maybe still a bit too sparse and wonder if there would be a way to make it more compact. Is the preview text always the same value as the text under it? If so you could rearrange things like this maybe?
For colors I agree the 2 columns are hard to parse, I think a simple grid with smaller previews would work well, something like this
In all layouts, unless you’re already inside a group, I think it would make sense to show groups as section headers rather than flattening everything like you currently do. Maybe search can keep things flattened as well.
I see that trying to replace a symbol currently launches the Command Bar. Same goes for text styles. But not for color overides? Is there a reason?
I also agree with some people here that that needing to click “Replace” every time is a bit annoying. Maybe it’s just a question of habit but I’m not sure why I would click an item but not want it to be used as a replacement. I can see how navigating using the keyboard you want a way to highlight before confirming replacement, but maybe clicking should automatically replace?
With all this work going into the command bar, I wonder… why have a different design in the components view? The way you layout symbols in the command bar is much more efficient than in the Components view. Whatever you end up doing for text styles and colors should apply to the Components view as well. The components view could essentially be an expanded version of the command bar where you can navigate groups but the display of content could be the same as in the command bar.
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Glad to hear you love the new command bar, @samvermette and thanks for taking the time to provide feedback! We appreciate it.
Make Text Styles more compact: That’s an interesting point—we’ll consider it.
Color Vars into a grid: We’re working on a new compact UI where this will be presented as a list, so I expect this may address it for most people. However, if it continues to be an issue, we’ll consider further adjustments.
Section Header: Noted, thanks.
Click “Replace” every time: Internally, we’re quite happy with the double-click or pressing return option. What are your experiences with these options so far?
Color Overrides: We need a better color picker with improved color variable support for this to work effectively. We’ll address this later.
Components view changes: That’s a fair point, and I’ve noted it. While it’s not currently within the scope of the command bar, I think we may be able to improve certain things there in the future but not for the next version unfortunately.
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Color Vars into a grid: A list for colors is probably the best possible layout so I look forward to it!
Click “Replace” every time : So far my experience has been that I select an item, nothing happens, and then I think “ah yeah that’s right I have to double click it”. Again maybe it’s a question of habit, but I just don’t see the use case of clicking an item but not wanting to do anything with it.
Color Overrides : that makes sense. Excited to see what you come up with!
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Hey folks 
Happy to share a nice update to the Command Bar/swapping components based (in part) on some of the feedback you’ve given us here! @baxterma (one of the developers behind all of this) has shared a full sneak peek:
I think you folks will be particularly interested in the video there from around 08:30 onwards, where he demos the improvements we’ve made to swapping Components in the Inspector.
Thanks again for the feedback — keep it coming, either here or on Alasdair’s sneak peek topic, depending on where you feel it makes sense. Either way, we’re happy to hear it.
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I noticed the description section for symbols in the video. I think this is as important as the new features. But it’s not available in latest beta right?
Well spotted! It’s implemented in the UI there, but not hooked up to anything (yet), so the description doesn’t save, carry across versions, or into the web app. It won’t appear in this beta, or in the next release, I’m afraid. In this case, it’s just one of those unfinished things in our development builds that slipped through into a video.
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Update: The new Component swapping popover I posted about the other day is now available for testing! You should be prompted to update next time you (re)open the beta.
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This update is FANTASTIC, amazing work!
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Let us know if you have any feedback! Our team loves the comments!
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Any idea when this beta will go into production? This update will be such an improvement to our work, but we’re not comfortable converting our main design file to it.
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So far the swapping popover…thing is such a vast improvement over the previous menu it’s a real game changer and almost every little edge case I had in mind is covered, so bravo! Not only is the new command bar amazing with all of its additions, this is just amazing.
Two things I’d love to see which I feel would make this perfect is:
A. In a lot of my projects I use the same tailwind colour library (Which I have on GitHub and would love to add to the main plugins repo if you can provide some advice) to set colors, so I jump into it all the time. Pressing alt and clicking on a symbol override now pops up the new thing (Which is great!) but it’s not the most discoverable. I would add a toggle or some indicator to the top of the standard colour picker to switch to that mode to aid in discovery.
The second thing I’d love to see, which is a longer standing desire is having a search bar in the colourpicker
These are just icing on the cake things, once again, bravo! This is such a good beta!
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