The last issue was all about hoping for a return to simplicity, and this week leads with a similar argument. It feels as though many developers are taking stock of where we stand in the current state of web development and lamenting how we allowed things to get so complicated.
The important question is, does this added complexity of creating the site result in a better experience for the site’s users? If yes, then the complexity, while lamentable, is necessary. If not, it’s probably worth asking if you are using the right tools for that particular job.
– Brian
What’s Good
Web Development Is Getting Too Complex, And It May Be Our Fault
This is a lengthy manifesto for using the right tool for the job by reducing our dependency on JavaScript frameworks, fighting against vendor lock in and, ultimately, making choices that lower the complexity of your codebase.
Juan Diego Rodríguez
Sponsor
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Astro Creator: New Web Metric Will Hurt JS Framework Sites
Next month, Google will introduce Interaction to Next Paint (INP) to web core vitals. Fred Schott, creator of Astro, tweeted some charts illustrating how that might impact sites built with frameworks like Next.js and Nuxt, though these frameworks have newer features that help mitigate the impact. This post discusses what INP is in detail.
Loraine Lawson
The Current State of React Server Components: A Guide for the Perplexed
This is as good an explainer as I’ve seen yet about the current state of React Server Components, their purpose, the role of Next.js and why they haven’t received more adoption yet.
Kathryn Grayson Nanz
Tools, Resources & More
Astro 4.4 includes performance audits for the dev toolbar, improved streaming performance and the ability to automatically infer the dimensions of remote images.
Vercel has released a major updated to their Vercel Functions offering with increased concurrent invocations, web standard Request/Response APIs, zero-config streaming, long running functions and more.
The Remix team has open sourced the Remix Website to provide a real-world, in-production Remix web site for the community to learn from.
Hono.js v 4.0 includes a new static site generation (SSG) capability as well as file-based routing.
Tempo is a new date library for JavaScript. The creator, Justin Schroeder, explains some of the capabilities that make it different.
FreeCodeCamp just released a new 2 hour free course on SvelteKit taught by James McArthur.
Netlify added support for the Observable Framework, a static site generator tailor made for data reports and dashboards.
Tidbits
What’s Next for Jamstack? (Panel Discussion)
Salma Alam-Naylor, Cassidy Williams, Bryan Robinson, and Zach Leatherman join Mike Neumegen to discuss what the future is for Jamstack. Also check out Salma’s summary of the session and her thoughts on it.
The Future of Jamstack
JavaScript on Demand: How Qwik Differs From React Hydration
An explanation of Qwik’s “resumability” and how it compares to hydration in a React application.
Paul Scanlon
Starlight vs. Docusaurus for building documentation
Comparing and contrasting the two different documentation tools (Starlight is built on Astro and Docusaurus on React).
Kapeel Kokane
Eleventy - Create a global production flag
Shows you how to add a global flag to control certain activities in dev mode such as minifying assets, showing draft posts and more.
Rob O’Leary
Setting up image transforms in Eleventy
Image transforms are a new feature in the Eleventy v3 beta and Cory shows how easily he got them set up.
Cory Dransfeldt
Code Browser with Gatsby
Andrew shows how he built a code browser to explore a full directory tree of example code (like CodeSandbox) as a Gatsby plugin.
Andrew DeLisa