Top 12 new web design tools for July 2017

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One of the most interesting web design tools to surface this month might be ARKit, an augmented reality toolkit in Apple's iOS 11 that has some exciting and powerful features for building AR into your projects. We also like the look of Paralayout, a tool designed to make UI design easier. 

Read on for loads more useful web designer tools released this month.

• Web design inspiration: 28 outstanding examples of CSS

01. API Fortress

Set up your testing via a dedicated interface

According to this organisation, only 10 per cent of API errors are caught within the first day of launch, so longer term monitoring is needed to make sure everything is working properly. This service provides live monitoring and thorough testing of your APIs, and you can set everything up using an interface as opposed to wrangling with code.

02. Paralayout

Create iOS layouts quicker

The Cash iOS team at Square found Apple’s Autolayout frustrating, so they built their own layout helper, Paralayout, and kindly open-sourced it so that the rest of us can benefit. It focuses on making your process for creating layouts fast, maintainable, readable and performant. Read more in this Medium post.  

03. BetaTesters

Get feedback on your beta designs quickly and easily

It can be a struggle to get beta testers for your site or app, so this platform provides a handy way to get a bunch of people using your app and giving you helpful feedback. It’s also great because you’ll hopefully get a user base established prior to launch.

04. fractures

fractures aims to make UI design simpler

fractures is an atomic CSS toolkit for bootstrapping your projects. It aims to make UI design simpler by providing a set of utility classes. Plus it’s good for fast prototyping and can also be used for production.

05. SiteStacks

Dig into the technical stack for any website

This site enables you to have a look at the tech stack for any website. If the URL is already listed (its database includes hundreds of thousands of sites) the process is instant. If not, don’t worry: submit the site you want and the creators say they’ll do a quick check straight away and a more detailed one within two weeks.

06. SQLify

Convert your JSON files to SQL

This service has a simple function: it enables you to convert any JSON or CSV file to SQL – or indeed any text format. There are also other options here to convert to MySQL, SQLite and more – just check through the 'Other versions' list in the site's footer.

07. Style Guide Guide

The latest from Brad Frost

The father of Atomic Design has put together a boilerplate template for building style guides for design systems. Brad Frost’s Style Guide Guide imports and displays HTML from a separate pattern library, and updates instantly. Usage guidelines are added in Markdown, making it simple for your whole team to contribute. Find out more in this Big Medium post.

08. ARKit

Explore augmented reality effects on iPhone or iPad

iOS 11 has a cool new tool called ARKit for creating augmented reality effects on iPad and iPhone. There are some clever features, such as the ability to detect planes and surfaces in the surrounding area, and also light levels, so the correct lighting can be applied to virtual objects. Looks pretty fun to us. Read more about iOS 11's new features in our iOS 11 preview for designers post

09. UX Flow

A library of wireframes, ready for customisation

UX Flow is a huge library of wireframes and flowcharts for Sketch that enables you to quickly create great-looking prototypes for web and mobile. You can style them up and customise them any way you want, making it easy to plan your projects in a smart way that’s great for presenting to clients.

10. Drag

Drag is a free Chrome extension that transforms your Gmail into organised task lists. The makers liken it to Trello, for Gmail. It's perfect for users whose inboxes are filled with requests that quickly end up at the bottom of the list.

11. Remote Starter Kit

Keep things running smoothly when working remotely

Chances are, your dream team for a project is not comprised of people who happen to live in the same place. If you’ve put together a remote team for the first time, figuring out your processes and tools is key to getting things running smoothly, and this roundup of resources will help you get off to a cracking start.

12. Canivete

A helpful collection of multipurpose JavaScript functions

This is useful if you’re fairly new to JavaScript (and possibly even if you’ve been coding for a while): it’s a collection of generic, multipurpose JavaScript functions. The name means ‘swiss army knife’ in Brazilian Portuguese and it’s great for getting a look at efficient ways to do things.

Read more: 

• How to convince users your site is faster than it really is
• The best free graphic design software
• How to code an augmented reality marker

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