Another week, another newsletter. Let's get to it!
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Bun hype. How we learned nothing from Yarn – Jared Wilcurt gets spicy with Bun. I'm curious what your thoughts are on the post. I'm excited about Bun as it will push other things to be better, but I'm also waiting for it to mature a bit before I consider it for anything production grade even though they hit 1.0.
I was thinking about how I could toggle a theme in VS Code based on the time of day, and of course there is an extension for this. I found Theme Switcher from Sávio Santos Serra. It works really well. Give it a go if you’re a fan of VS Code. I haven’t posted VS Code tips in a while, but if you’re interested, here’s my back catalogue of VS Code tips
Before we get started, some news. Friday was my last day at Netlify. I’ve decided to join a startup as a founding engineer! I’m nervous and excited at the same time. Check my socials for the announcement tomorrow. 👀
And with that, another week, another newsletter. Let's get to it!
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Use Grep like a Boss — I’m OK on the command line, but grep is one of those tools I don’t know that well, so this was a nice find for me.
Chris Sev has released a bunch of his courses for free. If you’re looking to learn some React, Tailwind or become more productive with VS Code, check it out!
Islands & Server Components & Resumability, Oh My! — My very recent old co-worker Ryan Carniato dives into a lot of concepts that have popped up in the frontend space over the past couple of years. Definitely worth a read.
Partykit releases their new API Party.Server to make it even easier to create multi-player digital experiences.
Another week, another newsletter. Let's get to it!
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This seems pretty new, but this new array method, .toSorted() allows you to get a copy of a sorted array instead of mutating it when you run Array.prototype.sort()
I meant to share this in a previous newsletter, and it got lost in the sea of things I bookmark. Ahmad Shadeed has a great post on the virtual keyboard API.
Bun hits 1.0! If you haven’t heard of Bun, here’s the TLDR;
Bun is a fast, all-in-one toolkit for running, building, testing, and debugging JavaScript and TypeScript, from a single file to a full-stack application.
I got to hang with Daniel Roe from the Nuxt core team recently on my Twitch stream, and we briefly discussed server components in Nuxt. Here’s a full write-up on Nuxt server components for anyone interested.
Congrats Astro team on your launch week, which included launching Astro 3.0 and Astro Studio!
Fresh 1.4 just landed with faster page loads, layouts and more! Marvin has been on fire since becoming a maintainer for Fresh. Fantastic to see all this goodness!
NativeWind – If you're a fan of Tailwind, or even if you aren't this project seems pretty compelling for React Native developers.
NativeWind uses Tailwind CSS as scripting language to create a universal style system for React Native. NativeWind components can be shared between platforms and will output their styles as CSS StyleSheet on web and StyleSheet.create for native.
Another week, another newsletter. Let's get to it!
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Lifting Off with Astro — I’m a fan of Astro and Brian Rinaldi gives a great breakdown of the framework.
There's currently no official devtools for React Server Components (RSCs). This browser extension by Alvar though looks compelling.
The TypeChat project looks super interesting. I heard about it on the Hanselminutes podcast this week. TLDR; TypeScript lending a hand to improve prompt engineering, reduce AI hallucinations, etc.
Use knip to detect dead code and types – I'll be honest, this is the first time I hear of knip even though I've been using TypeScript for quite a while now. I was unaware of even its predecessor, ts-prune.
Looking for libraries that support React Server Components? Lee Robinson has you covered. Check out this discussion in the Next.js repository, Libraries that support React Server Components.
Storbyook 7.1 dropped this week! Lots of fixes and improvements, along with some other goodies like improved Vue support and zero-config styling support.
Another week, another newsletter. Let's get to it!
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Modern Font Stacks because the fastest fonts are already on your machine.
I discovered namae while watching Daniel Roe's Twitch stream this week. He mentioned it in the chat during a conversation about Nettle tea. Namae is a useful tool for checking social handles, website domains, and more in one place.
I was chatting with a co-worker about browser caching this week, so this post on stale-while-revalidate came to mind. Even though we use frameworks, it's important to understand cache headers.
I still need to check this out, but Panda, a universal styling solution for the modern web, recently dropped. It's touted as a CSS-in-JS library that bundles at build time, is type-safe and is scalable. Panda works in Next.js 13 App dir, Astro, Qwik, Solid, and more. Check out the demo.
My co-worker, Ryan Carniato, gave a great talk at BeJS, Revolutionary Signals. Check it out to learn more about signals.
The Astro team released v2.6 this week. Lots of goodies in there: middleware, hybrid SSR output mode, custom client directives, CSS inlining and more!
I caught Chris Coyier’s talk at RenderATL 2023. It was really great. He’s now written a blog post based on his talk. Definitely check out Modern CSS in Real Life
Remix 1.6 just dropped. TLDR; lots of stable CSS features goodness: CSS Modules, Vanilla Extract, CSS Side-Effect Imports, Tailwind. Also, improvements to hot module reloading (HMR) and hot data reloading (HDR).
Check out Keith J. Grant's post Scoped CSS is Back. @scope is only in Chrome, but native-scoped CSS is starting to become a reality. Hopefully, other browsers will follow suit.
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If you’re on Bluesky, I’m @nickyt.online. I’ve been enjoying the new social network, but it’s still early days. Kudos to the team working on it. Wes Bos created a nifty CLI tool for it using the new AT Protocol API. You can post to Bluesky, see your timeline etc.
Devon Govett recently mentioned the React Aria NumberField component on Twitter. It looks pretty awesome and reminds me I must build something with React Aria. New to React Aria? It’s a library of React Hooks that provides accessible UI primitives for your design system. Check it out!
I really enjoy Jack Herrington’s content, and he posted a banger of a video recently, How To Fix NextJS 13’s N+1 Problem. It was a great video, and I also discovered a new tool called oha! I recommend you check out both.
For folks interested in all things AI, which is a lot of folks these days, my co-worker Matt Kane created a template for an OpenAI chat bot app, built with React, Tailwind and TypeScript. Check out daneel!
As someone who works on the frameworks team at Netlify, it’s in my best interest to check out new frameworks. There’s a new kid on the block in frameworks land. modern.js is a progressive React-based framework. Maybe take it for a spin yourself!
This came across my radar on Friday. UnoCSS is an instant on-demand atomic CSS engine.
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Around the Web
Jack Herrington has amazing YouTube content and the last two videos of his that I've seen, he talks about the Console Ninja VS Code extension. I installed it this week and have been enjoying it so far.
I came a across framework.dev this week. Lots of great resources in there for all the latest and greatest frameworks out there.
Some great tips here from Andy Bell's latest article, Some simple ways to make content look good. I know I struggle with this. I'm also the person who takes two days to figure out if a font looks good lol.
Just a heads up that there will be no newsletter next week as I’m on vacation. This one’s coming to you a little earlier as I’m off to snowboard. Regular programming will resume the following week.
And with that, another week, another newsletter. Let’s get to it!
Another week, another newsletter. Let’s get to it!
Around the Web
Matt Pocock of TypeScript fame dropped a fantastic package this week. You’ve heard of CSS resets, but now there is ts-reset. More things will likely be added over time, but you can drop this in your project today. Note it does change the return types of certain things, so definitely test it out first!
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Deno allows you to create command line interfaces (CLI), but I didn’t realize you could use web prompts for the, i.e. alert('completed')! For more info, check the examples for input prompts.
Another week, another newsletter. Let’s get to it!
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Deno 1.30 is out! With support for built-in Node modules and more! I think we’re going to be seeing a lot more adoption of Deno in 2023.
I didn’t drop this in last week’s newsletter because everyone was probably posting about it, but Netlify, where I work acquired Gatsby! I’m excited for what this holds for the future of Netlify and Gatsby. Composable web ftw!
This is one of the best things I’ve read in a while. The case for frameworks by my co-worker Laurie Voss, a.k.a. @seldo. It’s a bit of a long read, but very much worth it.
Congrats to the Hydrogen team! Hydrogen is now using Remix. For the full update, check out the Hydrogen Updates page.
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Around the Web
A great read from Chris Coyier on command bars making their way to the web. I love command bars. I was a big fan of Alfred but have since moved on to Raycast. Command bars everywhere! They’re in browser dev tools and even in my browser of choice these days!
Rachel Andrew has a new resource to learn all about images up on web.dev. Images have never been my strong suit, so this is definitely something I’m going to check out.
Today we have launched Learn Images! In our newest course learn about image formats, compression, responsive images, and performance.
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The Astro 2.0 Beta has a great new feature called Collections that let you manage Markdown and MDX content in your project. This interests me as an Eleventy user since they also have the concept of collections.
Congrats to the Deno team on a great year. Lots of goodness in this in year review post. It’s exciting to see npm package support in there, along with the Fresh web framework and more! If you still need to give Deno a look, I encourage you to check it out.
We got a lot of snow in Montreal over the past week and I did a little too much shoveling. I tweaked my back, but thank goodness for a great physio. I’m not 100% yet, but at least I can tie my shoes now lol.
And with that, another week, another newsletter. Let’s get to it!
I like the new way of cloning objects in JavaScript and Steve Sewell’s blog post, Deep Cloning Objects in JavaScript, the Modern Way, is a great run through on how it used to be done and how you can do it with modern JavaScript.
This site has been around for a while now, but I’ve been enjoying CSSBattle on Fridays with folks from my Virtual Coffee community. Check it out if you want to test your CSS skills/improve them.
Hey folks! It’s 2023 and I’m back from PTO. I had a great time chilling in Costa Rica recharging and enjoying warm weather. With that, another week, another newsletter. Let’s get to it!
Before we go through the usual sections, I was curious if folks are enjoying the content of the newsletter. I have had folks reach out to me to tell me they do, but at the same time, I’m still working on making it better. If you have any feedback, feel free to let me know.
Around the Web
I came across Intl.Segmenter recently. This could have interesting use cases for content like determining word count. I’m sure there are others but that’s what popped in my head immediately. The only downside is it’s not supported in Firefox. Having said that, you can definitely use it in Node.js and Deno.
Speeding up the JavaScript ecosystem - one library at a time by Marvin Hagemeister (Preact core team member). A great read on performance improvements and also a reminder to understand the language you’re using better. I also love that Marvin has pull requests for what he’s talking about that improve the various projects. ✨
I had Brian Rinaldi on my Twitch stream this week (see below). He wrote a really great article about serverless edge, Does the Serverless Edge Live Up to the Hype?, that I highly encourage you to give a read.
I’m still off for the holidays, but just dropping one last newsletter for the year. It’s a little shorter because I’m recharging for 2023. 😎 With that, another week, another newsletter. Let’s get to it!
Around the Web
I love this pixel art studio from Michelle Barker! Go draw something fun and grab the CSS it generates and pop it on your site or blog!
I’ve been learning Rust on and off as work has been keeping me pretty busy. I’ve gotten the updated Rust book for my Kobo which is great, but I came across an awesome YouTube channel recently called Let’s Get Rusty! I love the way they break things down. I recently caught the episode on ownership in Rust and it’s 🔥! Check it out!
This one is coming to you a little earlier this week as I’m off for the holidays, and I know some of you are as well. With that, another week, another newsletter. Let’s get to it!
As more and more folks leave Twitter, they’re looking for a new home. Some are considering Mastodon. If you’re not sure what Mastodon is or are looking for tips, check out Fedi.Tips
Loved this conversation with Brian Douglas, a.k.a. bdougie, about DevRel, contributors, metrics, & Open Sauced
how I can basically create more advocates of the product I’m working for, as opposed to being the face of the thing I’m talking about
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It’s getting close to the end of the year. If you have an education stipend at work, use it! Josh W. Comeau has a great thread on where to use that stipend including his own course which is amazing btw!
All the Jamstack Conf 2022 videos are up! I was working virtually for the conference as a moderator online and can say there were so many great talks. Check ‘em out!
So I’m back on buttondown.email. It was great when I was using it before the brief move to Substack and then the move to Revue. The only reason I moved to Revue was because it was tightly integrated to Twitter in what appeared to be a good thing. Twitter followers could discover my newsletter a lot easier. Fast forward to 2022 and it looks like they’re phasing out Revue at Twitter.
Sorry for leaving you Buttondown! 😎 Alright, with that, back to regular scheduled programming.
Another week, another newsletter. Let’s get to it!
