Friday Issue Nr. 94 | 5/01/2024
A fantastic post about RSC. Can we build JavaScript without a build system? 6 CSS snippets for every front-end dev, weird hacks history, an example of JS generators and more. Also, checking Rising Stars on the FE trends and weird HTML hacks history is fascinating.
JavaScript News
React Server Components
This differs from the usual observation of what RSC is and how to use it. This is instead an observation of where ReactJS is today and what the Framework is missing now. React forms were always a pain to build, but in this post, I realised how easy it is to make the form with full validation in Svelte (w/out JavaScript) compared to React. Also, the nonsense of “use client” and “use server” is very confusing.
It is a fantastic post to read, even if you disagree on some of the points.
https://www.mayank.co/blog/react-server-components/
There is more about Hydration in the link below. Also, the comments section is solid gold.
2023 JavaScript Rising Stars
I'm not sure how important it is to compare projects by GitHub stars, but probably it shows the trend. So, React is still upfront. However, htmx, Svelte, Million and Vue follow up. Also, Astro seems to take over Next. Bun is the most loved bundler. Sadly, about Angular, there are only two references, and this one sums it up: “Angular 17 introduced significant improvements in performance, refreshed documentation, and a new branding (including nice colours for the logo)”.
https://risingstars.js.org/2023/en
How to consume a paginated API using JavaScript async generators
Writing JavaScript without a build system
I agree with the pain of tiny projects you might or might not touch in the next two years. Or moving the project from Gatsby to NextJS and from NextJS to Svelte. However, that example with Vue is excellent only if the user has JavaScript enabled. Also, I like preload, caching and CDN. Still, sometimes I wish there was no need for a build.
https://jvns.ca/blog/2023/02/16/writing-javascript-without-a-build-system/
Lightweight JavaScript libraries
CSS News
6 CSS snippets every front-end developer should know in 2023
Those are great snippets. However, my favourite is that you can use padding: 2ch 1ch for the buttons. That makes sense. The bigger the button, the more space you want. If you use px or rem, the distance from the text to the end of the button won’t change, but with ch, it will. It is a straightforward concept, but I didn’t think about it.
https://web.dev/articles/6-css-snippets-every-front-end-developer-should-know-in-2023
The truth about CSS selector performance
Case study to improve performance using Microsoft Edge dev tool.
https://blogs.windows.com/msedgedev/2023/01/17/the-truth-about-css-selector-performance/
Mixed News
Y2K Bug
https://time.com/5752129/y2k-bug-history/
Weird HTML hacks history
This post makes me feel very old. This was my daily job with some of the hacks mentioned in the post.