Friday Issue No. 157
This week is a neat slice of where the front end is heading in 2026. Remix 3 appears as a beta preview with a strong full-stack story and a dangerously scrollable website, JavaScript’s latest features get a clear walkthrough, and TypeScript 7.0 beta plus Astro 6.2 round things out on the tooling side. There is also a deep dive into async patterns that goes beyond the usual callbacks versus promises debate and a lovely history piece on how old favourites like Bluebird and MooTools nudged the platform forward.
On the platform side, CSS keeps expanding into territory that used to belong to JavaScript, from anchor based positioning and popovers to scroll linked effects. Images get easier to reason about with sizes="auto" and lazy loading, there is a gentle defence of big long pages, and a hopeful look at native randomness in CSS. Mixed in are reflections on what “product engineer” means in an AI-shaped world and a goblin-themed peek behind the curtain of GPT 5.1 for when your brain needs something lighter. Have fun exploring these links!
JavaScript News
Remix.run
Remix 3 is available for testing as a beta preview and is still a pre-release, so it is not yet production-ready. I am sure it will be superb, but the new site is so mesmerising that it is hard to read anything; I mostly want to scroll around and poke at it. Have a look, the smoothness and speed are ridiculously good.
Blog post with details on what the Remix 3 beta preview offers: https://remix.run/blog/remix-3-beta-preview
What’s new in JavaScript (2026)
A handy reminder of what is already available in JavaScript in 2026, plus a short explanation of how features actually land in the language. The post walks through iterator helpers, Set methods, JSON modules, Promise.try, RegExp.escape and more, with clear examples.
https://neciudan.dev/whats-new-in-javascript
What Async Promised and What it Delivered
A superb post that is not your usual callbacks versus promise chains versus async or await comparison. It goes into detail on each approach, the ergonomics and the trade-offs, and how they shape the way we structure asynchronous code.
https://causality.blog/essays/what-async-promised/
TypeScript 7.0 Beta
TypeScript 7.0 has reached beta, and it continues the journey towards the future Go based compiler while adding plenty of language and tooling improvements. The announcement post is fairly detailed, so if you are already thinking about the jump from 6.x, it is worth a careful read.
https://devblogs.microsoft.com/typescript/announcing-typescript-7-0-beta/
Astro 6.2
Astro 6.2 lands with a new SVG optimiser API, an experimental logger and a bunch of smaller quality of life improvements around the dev experience. If you are already on Astro 6, this is an easy upgrade that adds a few more useful knobs.
https://astro.build/blog/astro-620/
When the Web Platform Was Influenced by Libraries
A very good read that doubles as a little history tour. If you remember Bluebird, MooTools and jQuery shaping how we thought about the DOM, you will probably enjoy this look at how popular libraries informed what ended up in the web platform.
https://jadjoubran.io/blog/web-platform-influenced-by-libraries
HTML & CSS News
The Great CSS Expansion
CSS really is eating JavaScript one animation and interaction at a time. This post takes a tour through anchor positioning, popover, dialog and scroll linked effects, and shows how far you can get with a CSS first approach instead of sprinkling JS everywhere.
https://blog.gitbutler.com/the-great-css-expansion
Image sizes
Browsers are starting to support sizes="auto" together with loading="lazy", which lets the browser decide which image source to load and when, based on the actual layout. You can start using this today with good backwards compatibility, and the nice part is that you do not need to hand craft complex sizes values for most images any more. The main exception is images above the fold that you do not want to lazy load, where you still need to be explicit.
https://piccalil.li/blog/the-end-of-responsive-images/
About long pages
A nice reminder that long pages are not a problem in themselves. The article walks through when a longer page is actually better for users, how to structure them so they are not overwhelming, and why we sometimes over optimise for splitting content across multiple screens.
https://amyhupe.co.uk/articles/dont-be-afraid-of-the-big-long-page/
Randomness in CSS
I fully agree with the author: having a native random() in CSS would be lovely. The post explains why randomness is useful for more organic layouts and micro details, and looks at how close we already are with current specs and workarounds.
https://css-tricks.com/the-importance-of-native-randomness-in-css/
Mixed News
The Last Software Engineer
A provocative title, but a reasonable and grounded post from Kent C. Dodds on where things might go for engineering in an AI-heavy world.
“That technical grounding is what separates product engineering from product management. A product engineer is not merely deciding what would be useful. They are deciding what would be useful given the shape of the existing system, the cost of the change, the risks of the implementation, and the experience users will actually have once the software exists (and as it changes over time).”
https://www.epicproduct.engineer/the-last-software-engineer
Story about Goblins
A funny little story about goblins and why they showed up in GPT 5.1.