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- Adobe XD User Guide
- Introduction
- Design
- Artboards, guides, and layers
- Shapes, objects, and path
- Text and fonts
- Components and states
- Masking and effects
- Layout
- Videos and Lottie animations
- Prototype
- Create interactive prototypes
- Animate prototypes
- Object properties supported for auto-animate
- Create prototypes with keyboard and gamepad
- Create prototypes using voice commands and playback
- Create timed transitions
- Add overlays
- Design voice prototypes
- Create anchor links
- Create hyperlinks
- Preview designs and prototypes
- Share, export, and review
- Share selected artboards
- Share designs and prototypes
- Set access permissions for links
- Work with prototypes
- Review prototypes
- Work with design specs
- Share design specs
- Inspect design specs
- Navigate design specs
- Review and comment design specs
- Export design assets
- Export and download assets from design specs
- Group sharing for enterprise
- Back up or transfer XD assets
- Design systems
- Cloud documents
- Integrations and plugins
- Work with external assets
- Work with design assets from Photoshop
- Copy and paste assets from Photoshop
- Import or open Photoshop designs
- Work with Illustrator assets in Adobe XD
- Open or import Illustrator designs
- Copy vectors from Illustrator to XD
- Plugins for Adobe XD
- Create and manage plugins
- Jira integration for XD
- Slack plugin for XD
- Zoom plug-in for XD
- Publish design from XD to Behance
- XD for iOS and Android
- Troubleshooting
- Known and fixed issues
- Installation and updates
- Launch and crash
- Cloud documents and Creative Cloud Libraries
- Prototype, publish, and review
- Import, export, and working with other apps
Learn how to view and inspect attributes such as colors, text, measurements, component states, interaction highlights, and more in design specs.
In a shared design specs link, you can view and experience the prototype, add comments and feedback contextually, and choose to get measurements and specs information for the design.
Design specs link opens in the prototype mode by default. To get the properties and specs info, switch to the design specs tab by clicking the icon in the right rail.
Upon switching to the design specs tab, you can select elements and inspect them on canvas to get attributes such as colors, text, measurements, states, and other properties displayed in the Property Inspector.
Click the {} icon to switch to the variables tab. This tab is available when the designer publishes a design specs link for web. When the designer defines variable names for colors and character styles in a design, you can view the design token information in the variables tab.
Read on to learn how to view and match the attributes in a design specs.
Screen details view
When you click outside an artboard, you are in its screen details view. In this view, you can inspect the screen and details like interaction highlights.
Screen details and properties
A. Screen details: View dimensions of the screen.
B. Colors: View colors marked for export.
C. Layout grid properties: Toggle to view the grids.
Use the Opacity slider to control the transparency of the colors.
If you mark a layer for export in the XD app, colors used in that layer won't appear in the screen details view.
Overlays
Click Interaction highlights to view artboard details, styles, design and viewport size, overlay position, colors, character styles, and target information for the applied overlay.
Interaction highlights
Press and hold the shift key to view the interaction highlights. To inspect them, click the displayed artifact in the Interactions section, or Shift-click the interaction highlights.
Layer details view
When you select a layer on an artboard, you switch to the layer details view. In the Property Inspector, you can view the layer name, and properties like dimensions and appearance.
Text and appearance
A. Text properties: Select a line of text to view text properties appended with default units such as px, pt, and dp.
B. Appearance: View colors that are used in an object or text in the Appearance section.
Shapes
Select a shape to inspect its following attributes:
- Width, height, and rotation.
- Appearance attributes, such as colors, border size, dash, gap, strokes, and opacity.
Images
Select an image to inspect its following attributes:
- Width, height, and rotation.
- Opacity.
Videos
Select a video to inspect its following attributes:
- Width, height, and rotation.
- Poster image name.
- Autoplay, loop playback, and audio settings.
- If the video is to be trimmed, it shows the time at which the video clip should start and end.
- Opacity.
Subrange text
Hover over subranges within a text element to highlight similar subranges within the text element.
Hyperlinks
Object hyperlinks
- When you select an object on an artboard, you see all its hyperlinks in the Interactions section of the Property Inspector.
- Hover over a hyperlink in the Interactions section to identify the associated object on the artboard.
- To copy a hyperlink URL to the clipboard, in the object details section, click the hyperlink.
- When you click a hyperlink in the Interactions section, the link opens. To copy the hyperlink URL from the Interactions section, right-click it.
- In the Interactions section, when you click a hyperlink that has a protocol other than https or mailto, doesn't have a protocol, or has an invalid domain, the URL does not open. You get an error message at the bottom of the screen.
- If multiple hyperlink interactions are defined on an object, you can't copy them from the object details section. Right-click the hyperlinks in the Interactions section to copy them.
Text hyperlinks
- When you select a text object on an artboard, the Property Inspector (both Interactions and object details sections) shows any hyperlink interactions defined for that object as a whole.
- You can inspect hyperlink interactions defined for the text object like you inspect any object hyperlinks.
- When you select text (subrange text) within the object and if that text has a separate hyperlink, the object details section reflects that hyperlink URL. However, the Interactions section continue to display hyperlink and other interactions defined for the object.
- To copy a subrange text hyperlink URL to the clipboard, click it in the object details section.
To learn about hyperlinks in XD, see Create hyperlinks.
Code snippets
CSS code
- To generate the CSS code, in XD app, select Export for Web in Share > Development, and publish the design specs.
- You can view and copy CSS code of your design from the CSS snippets section.
- To copy and paste the code snippet, press and drag the snippets, switch to your code editor, and paste it.
HTML code
- To generate the HTML code for Lottie and video files, in XD app, select Export for Web in Share > Development, and publish the design specs.
- You can copy the HTML code from the HTML section of the Property Inspector.
- To copy and paste the code snippet, press and drag the snippets, switch to your code editor, and paste it.
Component states
- Select an object in the artboard and if the selected object is a component, you can inspect its multiple states.
- To view the different states of the selected component in the artboard, click the options under the Component list in the Property Inspector.
- From the Interactions section, view the interactions associated with the active state of the selected component.
- Click the inactive state of the component from the list to view the states on the artboard and its interactions.
- If the component name is lengthy and you can read only a part of it, select the name in the Property Inspector to copy it.
You can download all the states of a downloadable component. In the XD app, if the designer marks multiple instances of a component for export, only the last instance in the Layers panel will be exported.
Hidden layers
- Hover and right-click over the specific area to display the list of layers and its contextual details at that pixel point.
- If the name of the group is lengthy and you can read only a part of it, select the name in the Property Inspector to copy it.
Learn more
To learn more about inspecting design specs in XD, watch this video.
Viewing time: 8 minutes
What's next?
We've got you started on how to view and inspect design specs. Take a step forward and learn how to review design specs and extract assets from design specs.
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