This wasn’t the intro I planned to write.
Last Sunday morning, I ended up in the hospital. I finally made it home Thursday afternoon. Don’t worry – I’m recovering. But in that time I was gone, I had to cancel a virtual meetup and an interview show I co-host, postpone this newsletter and find coverage for the in-person meetup I run, to name just a few things. These are just things outside my regular, full-time job.
This made me realize that perhaps it’s time to reevaluate some of my extracurriculars. This newsletter started in March of 2020 and quickly grew to ultimately hitting around 3,500 active subscribers that year. Despite some efforts, it has pretty much been there since. That’s not nothing, but it’s also not what advertisers are looking for (they want 10k at a minimum). And the thing is, newsletters are a ton of effort and relatively expensive to maintain.
The point is, Jamstacked isn’t dying because it became irrelevant. We may not see the term Jamstack much anymore, but everything under the Jamstack umbrella is more popular than ever. I have loved gathering this info and sharing what I learn with you these past 4 years and I thank you for reading.
– Brian
What’s Good
Netlify Launch Week Announcements
Netlify’s Launch Week started with announcing that Netlify is (once again) Astro’s official deployment partner. The main takeaway here is that Netlify is funding Astro’s development ($12.5k/mo) and seems to be betting on Astro as the framework of the future (or at least the one that can best compete with Next.js). To that end, they also pushed a tutorial and example of Astro’s new server rendering (we’ll talk about that more in a bit).
But they also introduced some other features including a new Frameworks API intended to make integrations with Netlify easier for framework authors and a new Durable Caching Primitive that makes on-demand incremental static regeneration (ISR) available for any framework.
After a Decade of React, Is Frontend a Post-React World Now?
In a word, no, but this is an interesting look at a decade of React – how it has changed, some of the critiques and defenses and some React alternatives that are gaining momentum. If you’re curious what are the top SSGs using React, Crystallize recently updated their recommendations for 2024.
Richard MacManus
Island Architecture with Web Components
Astro isn’t the only framework enabling an islands architecture. This post looks at how it works in Enhance and the benefits of a web components-based islands architecture.
Simon MacDonald
How to choose the best rendering strategy for your app
There are so many weird acronyms flying around rendering that it’s easy to get confused. This guide, mostly centered in Next.js rendering options, is a really good breakdown of each type and what it is useful for.
Alice Alexandra Moore
Tools, Resources & More
The biggest announcement in Astro 4.12 is experimental support for server islands, which lets you generate most of your page statically and serve it from cache, while still server rendering components that contain personalized content.
Hono v4.5.0 adds three new middlewares and support for React 19.
Z.Js Framework is a new web application framework that aims to offer less mental overhead, particularly for simple apps.
You can now access the incoming requests IP Address and geolocation as well as system environment variables in Vercel Functions
NextRadar is a useful resource for keeping up with the latest news, tutorials and videos about Next.js.
Brian LeRoux, founder of Begin which created Enhance, was interviewed on Podrocket.
Tidbits
Scheduling Hugo Builds with AppScript and Node
An interesting solution for scheduling rebuilding of a Hugo site based upon future dated content that works with any host that supports webhooks using Google AppScript.
Mani
How to Optimize Next.js App Performance With Lazy Loading
Explores lazy loading techniques in Next.js for client component loading optimization. Also check out how to optimize File Management in Next.js using Edge Store.
Tapas Adhikary
You’ll Write Less Code With Svelte 5.0, Promises Rich Harris
An overview of recent information Svelte creator Rich Harris has shared about the upcoming release.
Loraine Lawson
The View Transitions API, the Navigation API and the SPA vs MPA debate
How these new APIs impact the debate over whether a single page app or multi-page app is the better choice.
Ollie Williams
Improved error messaging for require(ESM) in Node.js
Zach walks through how he added a custom error message to help folks migrating to Eleventy 3.0.
Zach Leatherman