Tanner Linsley, creator of TanStack Query and TanStack Router, continues expanding the Tanner-verse with a new TanStack Start framework. It’s a full-stack React framework powered by TanStack Router, Vinxi, and Vite, and boasts all the mainstays of a JavaScript framework today, including SSR, streaming, server function support, RPCs, and more. With the release of the new Apple operating system, iOS 18, comes new updates to the Safari browser and its WebKit rendering engine. A couple notable highlights for Safari 18 are “distraction control” where users can hide distracting items on web pages like sign-in banners, cookie preference popups, and newsletter signup overlays, and iPhone mirroring and remote inspection.And the Astro team is at it again with the release of Astro 5.0 beta. This new release introduces the Astro Content Layer, a flexible, extensible way to interact with content in Astro, no matter where it comes from. And for the Fire Starters section of the show this week we learn more about the writingsuggestions attribute. News:Paige - TanStack StartJack - Astro 5.0 Beta ReleaseTJ - WebKit Features in Safari 18.0Bonus News:Next.js SaaS starterFire Starters:writingsuggestions attributeWhat Makes Us Happy this Week:Paige - Bad Monkey show and Carl Hiaasen books in generalJack - iOS 18 and Sony Alpha 7C II - Full-frame interchangeable Lens Hybrid CameraTJ - Bookshelves Thanks as always to our sponsor, the Blue Collar Coder channel on YouTube. You can join us in our Discord channel, explore our website and reach us via email, or Tweet us on X @front_end_fire.Front-end Fire websiteBlue Collar Coder on YouTubeBlue Collar Coder on DiscordReach out via emailTweet at us on X @front_end_fire

Big news this week when it’s announced that OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, has moved ChatGPT from using Next.js to using Remix. While both metaframeworks rely on React under the hood, Remix seems a bit less opinionated about how teams might want to structure their projects to best suit their unique use cases and needs.TypeScript has also released v5.6, and amongst the many improvements is one many day-to-day TS users will benefit from: disallowed nullish and truthy checks. Although the name sounds impressive and confusing, what it boils down to is: if TS identifies an if statement that will always evaluate to true or false because a dev forgot to actually invoke a function or misplaced parentheses or [insert many, many ways we introduce bugs into our code], TypeScript will now throw an error. Because the JavaScript gods demand at least one new framework or meta-framework each week, this week’s tribute is HonoX. We previously discussed new framework Hono back in episode 32, when it debuted as a lightweight framework built on web standards and able to run on any JS runtime, and now it’s back with meta-framework HonoX.And the team introduces a new segment this week called Fire Starters. Each week we’ll try to find a more obscure bit of HTML, CSS or JS info from around the web, and talk about it so we can all learn something new. The first topic is CSS property initial-letter.News:Paige - HonoX meta-frameworkJack - OpenAI moves ChatGPT from React to RemixTJ - TypeScript 5.6Bonus News:OpenAI o1-previewVinxi is another alternative RSC serverFire Starters:initial-letterWhat Makes Us Happy this Week:Paige - The Offer miniseriesJack - The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power series TJ - The Perfect Couple limited seriesThanks as always to our sponsor, the Blue Collar Coder channel on YouTube. You can join us in our Discord channel, explore our website and reach us via email, or Tweet us on X @front_end_fire.Front-end Fire websiteBlue Collar Coder on YouTubeBlue Collar Coder on DiscordReach out via emailTweet at us on X @front_end_fire

Kicking off the discussion is the release of Vue 3.5. Although it’s not a major release, Vue 3.5 packs some great new features and optimizations like: reactivity system improvements (up to 56% less memory usage for apps than before), reactive prop destructuring stabilization (it’s simpler to declare props with default values), and SSR improvements like lazy hydration for async components.RedwoodJS is also out with a new version, and 8.0 packs a wallop. It makes RedwoodJS the third framework to support React Server Components behind Next.js and Waku.The shadcn CLI has gotten an update as well where it can spin up a brand new Next.js app with shadcn and Tailwind configured and ready to go. Additionally, shadcn has integrated more tightly with Vercel’s v0 AI code generator, and now every shadcn component is editable on v0, so users can customize the components in natural language and paste it into their apps afterwards. Pretty amazing!The TC39 Committee responsible for evaluating what new features get added to the JavaScript language has added a new intermediate step for proposals: step 2.7. By the time new proposals reach step 3, they must already have full test suites to support their implementation, and if, for any reason, they must go back to step 2 to rethink things, a lot of that work can be for naught.News:Paige - Vue 3.5 is outJack - RedwoodJS 8.0 and shadcn CLI updatesTJ - JavaScript Standard Gets an Extra StageList of ECMAScript proposals on GitHubBonus News:Laravel raises $57 million series ASSR benchmark wars update (author Matteo is the Fastify lead maintainer)What Makes Us Happy this Week:Paige - House of the Dragon season 2Jack - Raspberry Pi TJ - Linkin Park is back!Thanks as always to our sponsor, the Blue Collar Coder channel on YouTube. You can join us in our Discord channel, explore our website and reach us via email, or Tweet us on X @front_end_fire.Front-end Fire websiteBlue Collar Coder on YouTubeBlue Collar Coder on DiscordReach out via emailTweet at us on X @front_end_fire

We’ve got a good show for you today! It’s chock full of new build tools, better date handling in JavaScript, and SSR benchmarks to prove which framework is truly the fastest.The rust-ification of JavaScript build tools continues, as next generation build tool Rspack hits v1 and claims it’s ready for primetime. Rspack boasts (almost) complete compatibility with the webpack API while also being 10x faster.JS dates are about to be fixed thanks to the new Temporal API proposal, which is currently in stage 3 of the TC39 process of adding new features to the JavaScript language.A new benchmark war has erupted online: this time benchmarking which JavaScript SSR frameworks are the fastest. Benchmarking results are dubious at best because everyone’s application is different, and has different requirements, but this one got a lot of heat due to the author using an LLM to generate the code to run in these different frameworks (React, Vue, Svelte, Solid, Fastify, etc). Finally, the CSS Survey 2024 is out now! Fill it out, be amazed at how much more there is to CSS than you previously thought, and write in Front-end Fire in the podcast section of the survey if you like our show. We greatly appreciate it!News:Paige - Rspack v1.0Jack - The SSR benchmark wars of 2024 beginTJ - Temporal Dates Coming to JavaScript and temporal polyfillBonus News:CSS Survey 2024 — write in Front-End Fire!What Makes Us Happy this Week:Paige - Photoroom photo editing appJack - 1password password managerTJ - Bench power supplyThanks as always to our sponsor, the Blue Collar Coder channel on YouTube. You can join us in our Discord channel, explore our website and reach us via email, or Tweet us on X @front_end_fire.Front-end Fire websiteBlue Collar Coder on YouTubeBlue Collar Coder on DiscordReach out via emailTweet at us on X @front_end_fire

On this week’s episode, a new software licensing term has emerged in the development world: Fair Source Software (FSS). The error and exception tracking software company Sentry added some legal protections to their Codecov product last year (they are a business trying to earn money, after all), which technically meant it was no longer open source. In order to keep sharing its code with the community, Sentry created a new “Fair Source” licensing category that shares similar values to open source, but also allows companies to enforce non-compete clauses to protect its business interests.In other news, even though the React Native framework is already 10 years old, the team just launched v0.75. While this isn’t a major release, it lays the groundwork for v1 by reporting that the “new architecture” required for support of new React 18+ features like Suspense, synchronous layouts, and concurrent rendering is now stable.News:Paige - React Native reaches 0.75TJ - Fair Source Software (FSS) licenseWhat Makes Us Happy this Week:Paige - Origins Crisp Citrus Hand CreamTJ - Risky Business PodcastThanks as always to our sponsor, the Blue Collar Coder channel on YouTube. You can join us in our Discord channel, explore our website and reach us via email, or Tweet us on X @front_end_fire.Front-end Fire websiteBlue Collar Coder on YouTubeBlue Collar Coder on DiscordReach out via emailTweet at us on X @front_end_fire

AI is the main topic of conversation for this week’s episode. Between continued advancements in the technology and governments trying to put safeguards in place to prevent a Terminator-style future, there’s plenty going on.OpenAI has introduced a new feature of its API called “structured outputs,” which essentially lets developers pass in a valid JSON schema that guarantees the model will always generate responses that adhere to it. No omission of required keys, no extra values you weren’t expecting, no need for strongly worded prompts to achieve consistent formatting.On the flip side, the European Union has introduced the first legislation to develop safe and trustworthy AI within its borders. This legislation includes a 4 tier risk classification system for all AI products ranging from minimal risk to unacceptable risk, and a 3+ year timeline for companies developing AI products to comply with these new regulations.The React core team announces the changes to Suspense will delay the release of React 19 for a bit longer than originally planned, but should ultimately lead to a better end user experience for devs and library authors alike.And the news rounds out with a game of “guess the CSS usage statistics” compiled by Chrome’s anonymous usage statistics. Ever wondered what percentage of websites are styling scrollbars, or how many set height? Not to mention the amount of CSS properties we’ve never heard of before: font-synthesis-small-caps, anyone?News:Paige - EU rolls out first-ever legal framework for AIJack - OpenAI Structured OutputsTJ - Chrome CSS usage statisticsBonus News:React 19 release delayedWhat Makes Us Happy this Week:Paige - Deadpool & Wolverine movieJack - Facebook MarketplaceTJ - The Lord of the Rings film seriesThanks as always to our sponsor, the Blue Collar Coder channel on YouTube. You can join us in our Discord channel, explore our website and reach us via email, or Tweet us on X @front_end_fire.Front-end Fire websiteBlue Collar Coder on YouTubeBlue Collar Coder on DiscordReach out via emailTweet at us on X @front_end_fire

This week’s episode kicks off with an announcement that Node 22.6 has experimental TypeScript support! What you might not realize unless you read the fine print though, is that this isn’t the sort of TS support you might assume. Instead, the feature strips type annotations from .ts files, allowing them to run without transforming TS-specific syntax.Tauri, a competitor to Electron for building cross-platform desktop apps, just released a stable release candidate of Tauri 2. Tauri promises lower memory usage and CPU usage by taking advantage of a system’s native webview on the frontend and using Rust on the backend.A new acronym is sweeping the JavaScript world: e18e - or Ecosystem Performance. E18e is focused on improving JS package performance, by removing redundant dependencies in old packages or replacing them with more modern alternatives, improving the performance of widely used packages, and building modern alternatives to outdated packages.News:Paige - e18e initiativeJack - Node 22.6 with experimental TypeScript supportTJ - Tauri 2.0 RCBonus News:Courts rule Google is a monopolist in the search worldWhat Makes Us Happy this Week:Paige - Charisma towels from CostCoJack - The Old Man TV series and Bad Sisters TV seriesTJ - A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder TV series

Google is making headline news once again as it reverses course on a decision to block third-party cookies in its Chrome browser. After years of testing, planning, and delays, Google scrapped a plan to turn off third-party cookie tracking by default like Safari and Firefox already do.In other news, the annual CSS Working Group meeting wrapped up recently, and some of the exciting features the group will be focusing on this year include: the if() statement for conditional styling, cross document view transitions without the need for a JavaScript library, and (perhaps the most anticipated feature) cleaner, easier CSS anchor positioning. Vercel introduces feature flags in Next.js and SvelteKit with Vercel’s Flags SDK. The Flags SDK works with any feature flag provider, and sits between the application and the source of the flags to help devs follow best practices for using feature flags, while keeping websites fast.And finally, Reddit has doubled down on blocking search engine crawlers from surfacing new posts and comments in recent weeks, and as of now, Google is the only mainstream search engine that’s made a deal that will allow it to index new search results when users search for posts on Reddit.News:Paige - Exciting new CSS features coming out of this year’s CSSWG meetingJack - Feature Flag Support from VercelTJ - Chrome’s is no longer removing third-party cookiesBonus News:Reddit is now blocking all non-Google search engines and AI botsAll the video talks from React Conf 2024 are availableWhat Makes Us Happy this Week:Paige - Apple Watch SEJack - 3D printing (Autodesk Fusion 360 program)TJ - 2024 Paris OlympicsThanks as always to our sponsor, the Blue Collar Coder channel on YouTube. You can join us in our Discord channel, explore our website and reach us via email, or Tweet us on X @front_end_fire.Front-end Fire websiteBlue Collar Coder on YouTubeBlue Collar Coder on DiscordReach out via emailTweet at us on X @front_end_fire

Web development survey results season is upon us, so this week’s episode covers two of the newly released survey results: the State of React survey 2023 and Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2024.Just over 13,000 developers filled out the State of React survey, and the results were quite interesting. React devs are fans of component libraries like MUI (Material UI) and shadc/n, state management libraries like Zustand, and data fetching libraries like TanStack Query. They gripe about well-known Hook footguns like useEffect(), useMemo(), and useCallback(). And features like React Server Components and the use() Hook are still largely untested by the community, although many devs have heard of them.The more all encompassing development survey from Stack Overflow received 65,000 responses this year, providing some very cool insights about the larger developer world beyond the bounds of React.It’s fascinating to watch the trends starting to catch on or die down in the web development space year over year, and we highly encourage everyone to take a look at the survey results. There will probably be some surprise in store.News:State of React Survey 2023Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2024What Makes Us Happy this Week:Paige - NeilMed Sinus Rinse KitJack - Logitech Spotlight Presentation RemoteTJ - Electric fly swatterThanks as always to our sponsor, the Blue Collar Coder channel on YouTube. You can join us in our Discord channel, explore our website and reach us via email, or Tweet us on X @front_end_fire.Front-end Fire websiteBlue Collar Coder on YouTubeBlue Collar Coder on DiscordReach out via emailTweet at us on X @front_end_fire

Popular web framework Astro is making lots of headlines this week, between new experimental feature Server Islands, and achieving “official deployment partner” status with Netlify, it’s been a whirlwind.But in addition to Astro’s big news, Expo, arguably the most popular framework for building React Native apps, has been endorsed by the React Native team as the recommended way to build apps.Also, Vitest 2.0, the fastest growing test framework, has introduced a new experimental feature called “Browser Mode”, which allows users to run tests in the browser natively, providing access to browser globals like window and document.Now back to Astro. In 2021, Astro made island architecture a mainstream idea, and Server Islands takes it a step further, making it easy to combine high performance static HTML and dynamic-server generated components.And the Astro announcements kept coming with Netlify being declared Astro’s official deployment partner. Netlify’s betting on Astro and Server Islands, and will be sponsoring the Astro team with $12,500 each month to keep improving the framework and OSS community. Well done, Astro team!News:Paige - Expo is the recommended way to build React Native appsJack - Astro 4.12 Server Islands and Astro server-islands demo siteTJ - Netlify is Astro’s “Official Deployment Partner”Bonus news:https://vitest.dev/guide/browser/What Makes Us Happy this Week:Paige - Grafana dashboardsJack - Public speakingTJ - Mammoth Cave National ParkThanks as always to our sponsor, the Blue Collar Coder channel on YouTube. You can join us in our Discord channel, explore our website and reach us via email, or Tweet us on X @front_end_fire.Front-end Fire websiteBlue Collar Coder on YouTubeBlue Collar Coder on DiscordReach out via emailTweet at us on X @front_end_fire