Tips and tools: How to edit any website; tutorials for non-developers; Mac’s new screenshot feature; and more

Here are some great resources we have recently shared with one another

(We don’t profit from recommending things. We just love sharing things we think you’ll appreciate. You can see our other Tips and Tools articles here.)

A fantastic new tool for editing any website in your browser

Screenshot of Visbug in action
Mmm, I wonder what Google would look like with a “night-mode” background. Visbug allows you to edit any website in your browser.

Most modern browsers support a little known spec called “design mode,” which allows you to edit any page in your browser. We use it a lot. It allows us to quickly change the text on a page. For example, we can play around with headlines without needing to have access to the server, or needing to delve into Chrome DevTools. We activate Design Mode using the “Edit this website” bookmarklet.

Now, Google engineer Adam Argyll has created VisBug, a point-and-click web design extension for Chrome. It’s described near the bottom of this blog post and in this 30-second video. VisBug has a point-and-click, drag-and-drop interface that lets you do the things a DevTools expert could do:

  • Quickly explore the styles used on a website
  • Change colors, text, and images
  • Move elements around
  • Make small tweaks

…all from within your browser, using your mouse or keyboard.

Framer X, another great design tool

In our last article, we mentioned the new design tool Figma. Framer X is another exciting new design tool. It’s used by companies like Twitter, Pinterest, Airbnb, Snap, Uber, and Dropbox.

Animated GIF of Framer X in action.
Framer X is one of the latest generation of design tools.

How HTML, CSS, and Javascript work

If anyone on your web team doesn’t know how to code, it’s worth ensuring they at least know the basics of how HTML, CSS and Javascript work—otherwise, they’ll create problems downstream for your development team.

Jake Wright created a series of great videos that explain the basics of HTML, more HTML, CSS, and Javascript—each in 12 minutes. (The CSS video is awesome—to the point that we’d recommend you start with that one.)

Screenshot of the “Learn CSS in 12 minutes” video.
Jake Wright’s “Learn CSS” video covers a lot of material in just 12 minutes.

Those 48 minutes of video may prevent your marketing and design team from adding hours of headaches to your developers’ backlog.

A new way to capture screenshots and screen recordings on a Mac

If you’re like us, you’re constantly saving screenshots of websites, to remember great examples of copy or design, or to share feedback with a colleague. In macOS Mojave, Apple has introduced a useful screen capture tool that allows you to take screenshots and then annotate them.

An example of how the screenshot tool can be used to annotate images.
The tool can be used to annotate screenshots. Like, for example, if you want to show off to your colleagues that you’re living on the edge.

You can activate the toolbar (see below) by typing Command+Shift+5. In addition to screenshots, it also lets you take screen recordings of all or part of the screen. Sometimes screen recordings are more useful than screenshots—especially when you’re discussing animations, interactive page elements, or flows between pages.

Not easy to get: A screenshot of macOS Mojave’s screenshot tool.
macOS Mojave allows you to take and annotate screenshots, and to take screen recordings.

You can learn how to use the new screenshot tool here on Apple’s website.

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