Bye bye code

ICYMI: the last total solar eclipse viewable from the US until 2044 happened yesterday. Here are some photos in case you weren’t in the line of totality, and make sure to check out this easter egg from Google. 

The headlines: 

📸 TikTok has confirmed a new Instagram competitor is coming soon.

🤖 Google has open-sourced a number of tools to support AI development. 

🕵️ Hackers stole 340,000 social security numbers from a government consulting firm.

You had an idea, now what? Well, build it, of course! Usually, that starts with some kind of design work before moving over to building the UI with technologies like React, HTML, and CSS.

This can be tedious, especially if you’re just trying to build an MVP to see if your idea has merit and even more so if you’re a non-developer trying to go it alone. What if you could just tell the code what to build by using English? 

That’s the idea behind OpenUI. Built by Weights & Biases founder Chris Van Pelt, OpenUI makes going from idea to site easier by allowing developers, designers, and even non-technical folk to build a site just by using plain English — with a little help from AI, of course. 

When you load up OpenUI, you’ll notice a ChatGPT-style interface with the addition of a viewport and code inspector. From there, you can type out a prompt like “build me a flashy landing page” or use one of the pre-populated templates to create things like multi-step forms or responsive navigation. 

Once your new site is generated, you can continue to edit it by adding things like animations, changing colors and fonts, and even telling the AI to make it responsive across different screen sizes and export your shiny new code. 

If you already have a design, you can drag and drop it, and the AI will do its best to turn it into a site that is ready to be deployed. 

So if you’re tired of begging and pleading for your code to just work, you should…

• ScreenSnapAI is a tool for capturing, organizing, and searching screenshots.
• Reflectr AI is an interactive journal complete with AI-powered friends. 
• Buckist lets you create and manage a list of things to do before you die.

Building a mobile app? One of the most popular shoutouts in the mobile app category is Flutter, Google’s open-source app-building framework that lets you create everything from one codebase. 

Here are some recent apps that use it: 

🧽 Goaly, an app that teaches kids the value of chores and money.

✍️ Reflectr AI, a social-based journaling app with AI companions.

💰 Expense Ease, an app to track and manage your daily expenses.

• Odaptus uses AI to help your team conduct user research.
• Atomize is a design system to quickly build attractive interfaces. 
• Shorebird helps you fix issues in your Flutter app faster.