August brought bunch of new tools and exciting updates for web designers and web developers.
We composed a list of the most interesting news for the month of August and hope it will help you keep up with the latest trends in web design and development.

Bootstrap 4 Beta

After two years of making Bootstrap 4 Beta was released! The new version has number of significant improvements moving this popular framework from good to great.
The main changes include:

• moving from Less to Sass stylesheet language which allows faster compiling of CSS.

• Flexbox and better grid system. Bootstrap now uses flexbox almost everywhere and they added new grid tier for mobile devices.

• New content container called Cards. Cards replaced wells, thumbnails, and panels.

• Dropped IE8 and IE9 support and moved to rem units for component sizing.

You can read more about changes and new features of Bootstrap 4 Beta right here blog.getbootstrap.com

Node.Js 8.0 released

One of the most popular server side JavaScript frameworks recently got a major release - version 8.0. The main changes include:

• Latest npm Version 5.0.0 which is significantly faster and more reliable.

• JavaScript engine V8 5.8 update that ensures major improvements in performance and APIs

• Node.js API that will allow to develop native addons.

• WHATWG URL parser that matches the URL implementation and API available in modern Web Browsers allowing code using URLs to be shared across environments.

• async_hooks diagnostics API

• Improved Buffer safety

Read more comprehensive article and get more details about new Node.Js features at nodejs.org/en/blog/release/v8.0.0/

Firefox 55: first desktop browser to support WebVR

Now the latest version of Firefox supports WebVR standard. WebVR is an open standard that allows to experience VR in your web browser, no matter what VR device you have. It can be used to create virtual tours, first person games and interactive apps. Applying WebVR in a web browser opens up a lot of possibilities and it is really important step to mass adoption of VR. Find out more about WebVR and Mozilla at medium.com/mozilla-tech/

InVision introduced Freehand

Freehand is an entirely new way for real time collaboration in InVision app. Now you can do wireframing, planning, making presentations and getting feedback in real time. In its tool belt Freehand has Drawing, Writing, Sketching, and Commenting functions what makes real time collaboration easy and fun. Check out more about Freehand at

invisionapp.com/blog/craft-freehand

New tool for trying and buying fonts - Fontface Ninja

Fontface Ninja is a free browser extension that lets you inspect, try, bookmark and buy any fonts on any website. The Fontface Ninja plugin can be installed on Chrome, Safari or Firefox. If you like to try this great tool you can find it at https://fontface.ninja/

Dribbble introduces Scout

Dribbble makes a move to make finding and contacting designers easier with its new Scout functionality. With Scout you will be able to filter designers by criteria, skills, experience, rate, location and etc. Sounds great but it comes at a price of $199 per month. Here you can find the full list of Scouts features and presentation how to use it dribbble.com/scout/info

Fall of the Design Inc

Design Inc was a community that helped companies and individuals to find greatest designers and freelancers. During its short existence Design Inc helped over 900 companies who completed over $4 Million worth design projects. And thousands of freelancers found work here. Click on the link below to read the full story how and why it had to close down hackernoon.com/the-success-and-failure-of-design-inc

Release of The Interface font family

The name of Interface font talks for itself. It was created to make easy to read interfaces. This font is under Open Font License 1.1 so it is free to use even on commercial projects.

You can download it here https://rsms.me/interface/

WordPress Gutenberg

A new Visual editor for WordPress was released.

It’s main purpose is to allow creating rich posts effortless and without the need to use shortcodes or custom HTML. The new editor will simplify post and page building experience.

Gutenberg is still in a beta version and testing phase. It was released as a plugin. Find out more about Gutenberg at kinsta.com

New Flash alternative - Wick

Wick is a free browser-based toolkit that could be the new Flash alternative. Wick can be used to create games and animations. And the best part is that you don’t need any additional software to run items created with Wick, just your usual web browser. That means you can run it on mobile devices too.

Read more about Wick at creativebloq.com

New app building tool Supernova Studio

Supernova aims to bridge the gap between developers and designers. It allows to turn Sketch designs into working native apps, delivering the UI part of development and accelerating whole app development process. Read more about Supernova at medium.com/@appsupernova

Lottie - new way to create animations

Lottie is an iOS, Android, and React Native library that renders After Effects animations in real time and allows apps to use animations as easy as static images. To render animations Lottie uses JSON files which can be created with After Effects open source extension Bodymovin. Bodymovin also includes JavaScript player so you can run animations on the web. More about Lottie at http://airbnb.io/lottie/

JPNG.svg - New tool to compress PNG like JPG

This tool allows to compress transparent PNG images using SVG format. It allows to drastically decrease the image size as if the image would be compressed using JPG format. That allows using big transparent images on your website without worries about size and loading speeds. You can check out this tool at https://codepen.io/shshaw/

We listed the most interesting news during this month, but if we missed something write us in the comments section and we will be happy to include it in the next post. If you liked this blogpost you are welcome to share it. See you in the next monthly news post!