/Fluid-for-Sketch

[Sketch Plugin] Sketch-flavored Auto Layout-like Constraints
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README
Constraint Demos.sketch
README.md

README.md

💧 Fluid for Sketch 1.6.1

A collaborative project brought to you by Matt Curtis & Cat Noone

Fluid is a Sketch plugin that provides a means to create more constraint-based, responsive designs. It is based on Auto Layout constraints.

📦 Download Plugin (.zip) ⭐️ Changelog ⬇️ Download the Demo Sketch Document

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Installation

NOTE: For the time being, installs via Sketch Toolbox do not work, and you must install it manually.

  1. Download the .zip above and extract it.
  2. Double-click Fluid.sketchplugin.
  3. ???
  4. Profit!!!

A small number of people have experienced a rare bug where Fluid does not install successfully and commands do not work. If you think you might have this issue, please follow the instructions in this issue here to help us fix it.

Updating

  1. Restart Sketch after installing an updated version of Fluid's .sketchplugin.

Features

  • Pin, Offset, Center, and Size relative to Parent Group, Parent Artboard, or Previous Sibling Layer.
  • Utilize simple mathematic expressions as values**, such as 50% - 10
  • View your artboards at different sizes (Mobile, Tablet, Desktop) using Preview Mode **
  • Constraints are stored directly on a layer, so no worries with layer names.

Usage

First and foremost, we recommend downloading the example Sketch document included in this repo (linked to it above). There are several examples included there, and examining the constraints used and playing around with the different options (i.e. Changing constraints, re-sizing artboards and pressing Update Layout) makes things clearer.

There are 4 primary actions: Show/Hide Toolbar, Update Layout, Edit Constraints and Preview. All of the features the plugin provides are available via Plugins > Fluid for Sketch.

Show/Hide Toolbar (⌃ + ⇧ + T)

For convenience, the plugin provides a toolbar that floats above the current document, giving you quick access to all of the above actions.

Toolbar

Edit Constraints (⌃ + ⇧ + C)

Constraint Inspector

This option shows the Constraint Inspector popup. Here you can edit all of the constraints for the currently selected layer.

Next to each section (Align, Fixed Size and Pinning) is a dropdown button. Pressing it opens a menu where you can set relativity:

Constraint Inspector Relativity

Update Layout (⌃ + ⇧ + L)

Adjusts the layers in the current artboard to reflect your constraints.

Preview (⌃ + ⇧ + P)

Preview Mode

Opens a window that allows you to preview the currently selected artboard at different sizes (Mobile, Tablet, Desktop). See notes for more info.

Additional Notes

Preview Mode

Preview Mode is rather limited at this time, as it only allows you to preview artboards at a preset number of sizes: Mobile, Tablet and Desktop. Expanding it to include more presets, custom sizes, zooming and more are WIP.

Width & Height

If you have Fixed Width or Fixed Height checked, and leave the value blank, the plugin will lock the width or height to whatever the current height or width is in Sketch. This is useful in some cases where you want to ensure the height and width do not change.

Groups

Since the width and height of Groups in Sketch are dependent on their sub-layers, Fluid does not actually resize the height or width of a group, as that causes Sketch to distort the layers within it. Rather, it simulates that sizing when calculating the geometry of sub-layers.

Symbols

It's worth noting that while constraints you set on a Symbol itself will not propagate to other instances of that Symbol, any constraints you set on its sub-layers will.

Text

If you set the width of a text layer but not its height, the plugin will set the height of the text layer to the height of the text after reflow.

Proportions (Aspect Ratio Sizing)

In order to achieve this, the easiest way is to use the aspect ratio lock in Sketch's Layer Inspector, and set your constraints to change width or height. (Only height works at the moment)

Mathematic Values

All of the values in Fluid support mathematic expressions, such as 20 * 2 or 50 / 2 + 10 and so on. This becomes even more useful when you add percentages to the mix.

Percentages are relative to the dimension of the axis they're on. Here's how that shakes out:

  • Using 100% as your fixed width equals 100% of the relative layer's width
  • Using 100% as your fixed height equals 100% of the relative layer's height
  • Using 100% in the top or bottom pinnings equals 100% of the relative layer's height
  • Using 100% in the right or left pinnings equals 100% of the relative layer's width

One neat application of this is that it enables padding between sibling layers, e.g:

  • Parent Group or Artboard
    • Layer B (top pinning = 100% + 20, relativity = Previous Sibling (Layer A))
    • Layer A

Contact

If you have any questions, comments, become attacked by technical bugs, or have ideas to improve the plugin, ping us on twitter: @matt_sven and @imcatnoone.