Introducing Zeplin Extensions
Thanks to the amazing community built around them, plugins are one of the main reasons we love working in Sketch. We’re huge fans of such community driven apps, it’s remarkable to see how third parties add so much value to an app. When you think about it, Zeplin’s journey started thanks to Sketch being extensible as well!
Today, we’re very excited announce that we’re taking our first step into making Zeplin more extensible.
How it all started
A few months ago, we released our React Native support, generating JavaScript code snippets from design resources in Zeplin. To be honest, as a small crew, we were not too familiar with React Native and its best practices back then. We poked React Native developers we trust, worked on a few projects, done a ton of research before we decided on the snippets we now have in Zeplin.
In the end, reactions were overwhelmingly positive. In fact, after its release, we started getting a lot more requests from developers on Zeplin, on supporting other languages and frameworks.
As most developers do, we love challenging ourselves, learning about new technologies, tools. *cough* Our recent Adobe XD CC integration is built on Rust. *cough*
That said, it’s just impossible for a team to stay up-to-date with all the intricacies of every new technology out there. That’s why we decided to bring Zeplin’s developer community on board!
Extensions, to the rescue
We’re super excited to announce that starting today, you can build your own Zeplin extensions and share them with hundreds of thousand of developers using Zeplin everyday.
We started by detaching existing code blocks that generate code snippets into separate extensions. They’re now curated at extensions.zeplin.io, allowing you to pick and choose which extensions you’d like to use in your projects.
What exactly is an extension?
Zeplin extensions are JavaScript modules that generate code snippets from various design elements. All the way from a simple extension that counts the characters in a text layer for your copywriter, to a full-fledged extension that generates code snippets from layers, colors, text styles; extensions can examine pretty much all the data you see in Zeplin. In fact, all the built-in code snippets currently in Zeplin are implemented as extensions, using the same infrastructure.
Explore the documentation and start working on your Zeplin extensions today. We also prepared a short tutorial to guide you through.
We can’t wait to hear what you all think—ping us with any suggestions/questions at extensions@zeplin.io.
Cheers! 👋
Zeplin is a connected space for product teams where they can share designs, generate specs, assets and code snippets, tailored for iOS, Android and Web.
