This month we've introduced some killer features for bridging the gap between design and development teams. From Handoff, to Jira and Confluence integrations, collaboration between designers and developers is going to be so much more productive using Marvel. In addition to this, we've even made it a possibility to prototype for the new iPhone X, so it's fair to say September has been a massive month for updates.
If you've missed what's new, here's a roundup of everything we've released this month:
Handoff
Gone are the days of redlining PDFs and spending time putting design specs together. Why should a designer waste their time on such monotonous tasks? This month we introduced Handoff, a better way to collaborate between design and development. You can now generate code, specs and assets for developers from your designs and prototypes in Marvel!
Change your prototype, and Handoff updates everything for you - no more rework. Your developers can easily grab everything they need in a few clicks.
Prototype for iPhone X
The iPhone X was announced by Apple this month, getting a pretty big reaction from the design community (hello 'notch'). With all the iPhone X designs popping up on Dribbble and the UI Kits being put together, we thought we'd make possible to design for the iPhone X right within Marvel.
To use it, just select iPhone X from the options when creating a new project.
Read more about our iPhone X update.
Marvel for Dropbox Paper
Lots of teams these days are using Dropbox's beautiful collaborative writing tool, Dropbox Paper to work together on project documents (e.g. brainstorming notes, specifications). Itâs much easier to understand a complex interaction through experiencing it via a prototype than it is from reading a long description, so we teamed up with Dropbox to make an integration that lets you embed Marvel prototypes directly in your documents.
Just paste the link to your prototype into your document, and it'll be automatically embedded, enabling your team to experience your fully interactive design without having to leave Paper. With this feature, there becomes less of a need for verbose documentation, as the prototype becomes the documentation itself.
Read more about our Dropbox Paper integration.
Marvel for Jira and Confluence
To make collaboration even easier, we've made it possible to embed your Marvel prototypes within Atlassian's awesome project management tools, JIRA and Confluence.
Spend less time describing development tasks in your specs and bug tickets - embed a prototype to really get the point across. Just like our Dropbox Paper integration, all you have to do is paste in the link to your prototype, and it'll be transformed into a rich embed with your fully interactive prototype.
Read more about Marvel for Jira and Confluence.
Design Tool Updates
As well as the major features we've released this month, we've continued to make changes elsewhere. Our Design Tool, for instance, is always being enhanced to make designing in the browser faster and easier. Here's a quick summary of those improvements to the Design Tool too:
Edit Uploaded Images
The Design Tool can now be used to edit any existing screens in Marvel. This means any images you've uploaded from your desktop can now be opened up online within our Design Tool, giving you the chance to edit any of your designs using features of the Design tool.
Image Fill
Image fill is similar to masking an image with a shape in Sketch, but the image always fills the shape proportionally. A common use case is creating circular avatars out of square profile pictures. Basically, paste an image into a shape and it'll fill it with that image.
Asset popovers have replaced the sidebar
The sidebar which used to take up about 20% of your screen has been condensed into two floating popovers - one for wireframe assets, and the other for images. You can now enjoy a cleaner interface.
Delete Button
We've now added a delete button to the Design Tool UI to give you another option for deleting elements (in addition to using the delete key on your keyboard).
iOS App Release 6.5.6
This month we've also made some updates to the iOS app, including:
- Optimisations for the new iOS 11
- Printable paper can now be found in settings.
- Added a prototype frame for the new iPhone
Check it out on Apple's App Store.
Thatâs everything for this update, get in touch if you have any questions. If you have any feature requests, add them to our public board.
If youâre on our company or enterprise plan, contact your dedicated account manager for more details. We release product updates like this every month, so sign up to the newsletter below if youâd like to be notified. In the meantime, have fun prototyping!
