📝 Issue #473: Exciting New Tools for Designers, Winning Social Media Strategies, Rebranding Post-Covid, Ponicode, and more…

Every month we round up a collection of the most exciting new tools, apps, and resources for designers and developers. To make it even easier, this month, we’ve broken it down into sections with a few top picks, six productivity boosters, a couple of incredible icon sets, some tutorials, and some great free fonts.

Unit testing code is time-consuming, expensive, and tedious, which is why it is so frequently skipped. Ponicode is an excellent AI-powered extension for VS Code that does your unit testing for you. You can use it to test Javascript, Typescript, and Python projects, track down bugs and eliminate dead-ends in logic.

For many businesses succeeding on social media can be the difference between making it or not. Tackling the tricky world of social media engagement is much simpler thanks to this handy guide covering the essentials you need to take care of from defining your brand, to creating custom graphics, and creating templates.

Jitter is a simple tool for creating rich animations for the web. You can animate almost anything, from individual letters to full lines of text, from illustrations to UI components. There are presets built-in to get you started, and you can export to both HD 60fps video or animated Gif. Jitter is currently in beta, and you can try it now.

Google has announced that the next major version of the Chrome browser — the world’s most popular browser — will abandon third-party cookies, and with them the ability to track users across the web. Matt Burgess looks at what’s coming and questions whether the apparent win for privacy is actually a power-grab by Google.

Companies everywhere are looking to relaunch products and services as we (hopefully) turn the corner on the seemingly never-ending pandemic. In this snappy post, Deborah Schroeder-Saulnier questions whether we should consider rebranding at this time and provides eight tips for anyone who does.

Uizard is an AI-powered design tool that lets anyone test ideas and share them with a team. Drag and drop standard components into place, or sketch out a design on paper, then photograph it. Once it’s in the app, you can transform it into a working prototype. Theming and collaboration are included. There’s a free plan available.

If 2021 is the year you’re going to launch your startup, then it’s a great idea to consider how you need to grow alongside your fledgling business. Dayna Winter looks at the five types of founder and asks what steps each type should be taking to evolve this year. From reducing clutter to setting measurable goals.