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

Friend of the podcast (and previous guest host), Jason Lengstorf, joins Jack and Paige today to talk about the latest happenings in the web dev world - and wax poetic at the end about favorite restaurants and fine dining.First up, is AI model runner ONNX, which Jack’s been digging into recently. ONNX offers many pre-trained models which can run locally or in the browser and integrates well with many different programming languages.After that is new Lodash library competitor es-toolkit. It’s smaller, faster, relies heavily on native browser APIs, and wants to supplant Lodash for all those useful helper functions so many JS apps still rely heavily on.Then there’s a new React project framework named react-server that claims to be the easiest way to build React apps with server-side rendering.Finally, Jason shares his experience with full stack JavaScript SDK Vinxi, which makes it easy for devs to build JavaScript apps and even frameworks.News:Paige - es-toolkit and what’s next for ESLint Jack - ONNX (Open Neural Network Exchange) AI model runner and React ServerJason - Vinxi · Dev Agrawal on LWJ teaching Vinxi · Nikhil on Vinxi at ViteConfSpecial Guest:Jason Lengstorf, host of Learn with Jason and developer-focused media consultant.Jason’s X profile @jlengstorfJason’s YouTube channelLearn with Jason siteJason’s link tree (jason.energy/links)What Makes Us Happy this Week:Paige - The Bear TV seriesJack - Inside Out 2 movieJason - Chef movie and The Chef ShowThanks 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

Hosts share their favorite tech gear recommendations for web development, including MacBook Pros, office chairs, adjustable desks, monitors, keyboards, mice, headphones, microphones, and cameras. They discuss top picks from brands like Apple, Logitech, Elgato, Microsoft, Steelcase, and Shure. Recommendations are based on personal use and not sponsored endorsements. Additionally, the episode includes news picks and discussions on movies like 'The Hunger Games' and 'Harry Potter' series.

In a rare turn of events, it was a slightly quieter week in terms of actual web development news, so the hosts round up some technology-adjacent news and drama to share.Jack kicks off the show recounting his experience of being one of four developers in a reality show-type scenario that his friend Jason Lengstorf (host of the YouTube show “Learn with Jason”) put together. Next up is more drama around how AI companies are training their LLMs. Up and coming AI company Perplexity’s getting some heat for ignoring the robots.txt files on websites banning AI companies from crawling the content to teach their models.After that, TypeScript 5.5, previously in beta stage (in episode 42), has now reached release candidate stage. It brings with it inferred type predicates, regex syntax checking, and 33% smaller package size.News:Paige - TypeScript 5.5 RCJack - Don’t build another effin’ chatbot - Web Dev Challenge S1E1 (Learn with Jason)TJ - Perplexity and robots.txt drama and Apple is the first company charged with violating the EU’s DMA rulesBonus news:window.aiWhat Makes Us Happy this Week:Paige - The Hunting Party bookJack - Bridgerton on NetflixTJ - The Paris ApartmentThanks 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

Although we’re already halfway through 2024, this week the State of JavaScript survey for 2023 dropped, and the hosts weighed in and discussed the results they found most interesting.This year the survey provided a lot more write in options instead of predefined lists, which made extrapolating clear answers in many cases more difficult than it otherwise would have been, but there were still some clear winners in terms of usage and popularity among respondents. React and Next.js continued to dominate in the framework wars, Vite was beloved by most everyone, and the new category of AI tools was dominated by ChatGPT. There’s lots of interesting data here to peruse, but also some questions about the accuracy of results with having to normalize so many written responses.  Another topic of discussion was the new release of htmx 2.0. It’s dropping support for Internet Explorer,  breaking out all the previously built-in extensions from the main project, and (most exciting of all) now offers a dark-mode version of the website.We get an update on the React Suspense drama that began last week when the React team fundamentally wanted to change how Suspense is handled in React 19, and many library maintainers who rely on Suspense under the hood voiced concerns that it would severely impact how their libraries work. The React team has since backed off changing Suspense, and agreed to find a solution that works better for everyone, and we’ll update you on what that solution might be as soon as we know more.And finally, Adobe continues to make headlines this year as the US Federal Trade Commission sues it over confusing and hard-to-cancel subscription plans. For a company as big and successful as Adobe, the fact that it uses confusing and obfuscated terms and conditions to penalize users who try to cancel subscriptions is shameful, and the US FTC is taking a stand against it. News:Paige - htmx 2.0 is releasedJack - State of JS 2023 results are inTJ - The US FTC sues Adobe (Full complaint) Bonus news:The React team reverses course on proposed Suspense changes and Tkdodo’s summary of the Suspense dramaBlue Collar Coder video on React SuspenseWhat Makes Us Happy this Week:Paige - Three Body Problem novelJack - Cascadia JS conferenceTJ - Yellow Altra running shoesThanks 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

Today’s episode covers a slew of hot topics making headlines in the web development and general technology world.TJ kicks off the show with his firsthand experience of GitHub Copilot Workspace (available to users by invite only). He tested Copilot Workspace with a relatively simple issue in one of his repos, and while the plan Copilot came up with seemed sound, the implementation didn’t end up working. It took Copilot several minutes each time he asked it to try and code a working solution again too, which wasn’t the best experience. While it’s still extremely early days for Copilot Workspace, it still has a ways to go before it will replace developers at this rate.The next topic is around a talk at Google I/O: the latest in web UI. In the talk, Google DevRel Lead, Una Kravets, highlights some of the best new features out like native scroll driven animations and view transitions, the introduction of the popover API and anchor positioning in CSS, and CSS container queries and nesting and layout, typography, and color improvements. Her talk is accompanied by slick visual demos and is definitely worth a watch.Next up is some new drama in the React world: the React team is solidly considering fundamentally changing the way Suspense works in React 19, and the general React public is not happy about it. Hopefully their concerns are heard before it gets finalized.And there’s a bit of bonus news as well: Apple’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) unveiled “Apple Intelligence”, Apple’s answer to AI, which will include Siri interfacing with Chat GPT 4o when it doesn’t know the answer, custom, AI-generated emojis, and the new Safari 18 beta version. Jack also recommends a cool CSS browser extension called Design GUI for managing colors in CSS variables.News:Paige - The latest in Web UI (Google I/O ‘24) talkJack - React Suspense drama in React 19TJ - GitHub Copilot WorkspaceBonus news:Safari 18 Beta is outApple unveils Apple Intelligence its answer to AIDesign GUI CSS browser extensionWhat Makes Us Happy this Week:Paige - Substack newslettersJack - Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire movie TJ - A Brief History of Intelligence bookThanks 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