Guide

An actionable variant has been added to the notification component. Actionable notifications allow for interactive elements within a notification, like buttons. Actionable notifications can be styled like an inline or toast notification.

See Carbon’s actionable notification usage guidance for more information.

Popover is a new component we have added to our system. A popover is a layer that appears above all other content on the page and is used to display additional details for specific elements whether it be text or interactive elements.

See Carbon’s popover usage guidance for more information.

The tooltip component has been refactored to use the popover component under the hood to improve accessibility.

See Carbon’s tooltip usage guidance for more information.

Definition and interactive tootips now use the toggletip component to achieve accessibility standards. Toggletip uses the disclosure pattern to toggle the visibility of a popover. This popover may contain a variety of information, from descriptive text to interactive elements. Further guidance on the toggletip component is coming soon.

See Carbon’s toggletip usage guidance for more information.

The tab component variant names are changing. Default tabs will become Line tabs and Container tabs will become Contained tabs. There are three new modifiers—tabs with icons, icon-only tabs, and secondary labels. Additionally, there is a new third alignment option for tab that allows for auto-widths where each tab size is determined by the label length.

See Carbon’s tab usage guidance for more information.

The UI shell is now themeable and has been updated to use inline theming. The UI shell uses Carbon theme tokens instead of component specific tokens and the color will follow each themes styles.

All size properties for components have been renamed to be more consistent with the pixel/rem value that it is paired with.

The two v10 type sets—Productive and Expressive—have been blended together to work as a unified collection in v11. As a result of this convergence, type token names have been renamed to better define their relationship to one another and reflect its styling.

See Carbon’s typography guidance for more information.

Some tokens now have a compact designation, meaning the only difference it has with the token of a similar name is a variation in line height.

The four body styles stay the same but their names have been updated. The long styles are now simply just body, while the short styles are now body-compact.

Productive and expressive while still a concept used to express different “moments” are no longer used in the type token header names. There are two new classifications—Fixed and Fluid.

Fixed headings, for the most part take the place of what were the v10 productive headings. The first two v10 expressive headings are also now included in the fixed type set. They are called “fixed” because they do not change sizes across breakpoints and always remain a single fixed size. However, the term fixed is not included in the token name but simply named heading.

Fluid headings take the place of the v10 expressive heading. These headings are responsive and the type styles change size at different breakpoints.

Existing color tokens have been renamed to better reflect their usage. In addition to renaming existing tokens, new tokens have been added to fill gaps in the color token system and fix complex layering logic.

Previously, in v10 many color tokens had numeral endings, now in v11 only layering tokens will have this distinction. All other tokens have been given an adjective descriptor in place of the number ending to help users better understand how a token should be used. The new naming convention is as follows: [element] - [role] - [order] - [state]

See Carbon’s color overview guidance for more information.

We have introduced two new types of color token for the layering models—Layering tokens and Contextual layer tokens. The two types of tokens will produce the same visual effect. The difference between them is a technical one and largely a developer concern. In Sketch, and other design tools, designer will only use the layering tokens to design. The layering tokens replace what were the ui color tokens in v10 and are used in a similar way.

See Carbon’s color implementation guidance for more information.

Inline theming is available to use in your product. Inline theming is used when a section of a UI needs to have a different theme from the rest of the page and allows themes to be nested within each other without needing custom styles or overrides. In product, a common use-case for inline theming is applying a contrasting theme to a UI shell and side panels.

See Carbon’s inline theming guidance for more information.

Light or dark mode has been newly introduced and is a theme setting that allows the end user to choose a UI that is either predominately light or dark in color. The UI will automatically switch from using light color backgrounds with dark color text to using dark color backgrounds with light color text.

See Carbon’s light or dark mode guidance for more information.