Hello 👋🏼 frontendies! Welcome to the tenth issue of our newsletter!
Ah, October - the month when pumpkins take over the world! And, of course, we all get our yearly dose of PSL. In the frontend world, things have been relatively drama-free (except for some raised eyebrows about server actions and SQL templates sneaking into NextJS). But fear not, we've still got some cool tools, platform updates, and a couple of videos worth checking out in this edition of Frontendies. Happy reading!
A new CSS function called light-dark() is set to make dealing with light and dark mode colors slightly easier in Firefox v120. This function will be able to shorten existing media query syntax and make CSS more readable. You can read more about it in Bramus's article.
Chrome 119 will introduce new relative color syntax features, bringing a host of new functions such as lighter, darker, saturate, desaturate, and more. Adam Argyle has written a very detailed article on this topic. If colors interest you, then you definitely want to read it.
The latest version of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), WCAG 2.2, added nine new success criteria (focus, dragging, target size, and more) and obsolete 4.1.1 Parsing that stopped making sense in the current ecosystem.
The OpenJS Foundation has recently released Node.js 21, which has replaced Node.js 20 as the current release line. The new release comes with updates to the V8 JavaScript engine, stable WebStreams, a new experimental flag for flipping module defaults, and many updates to the test runner. Interestingly, I just learned that NodeJS has a built-in test runner 😬
NextJS presented their server actions, which looked quite promising, but for some reason, they showed an example with an SQL query that could have been received better by the community. I wouldn't say that they made a DHH-size splash, but they still brought a little bit of drama and spice (pumpkin spice, of course!) to the table.
The latest release of NextJS 14 offers more than just a controversial tweet. Server actions, partials pre-rendering, and Turbopack edging closer to becoming the default bundler, you can expect to see significant improvements in local development performance. Check out their announcement post for more details.
After months of work, The Lit project dropped Lit 3.0 - IE11 is no longer supported, added support for TC39 decorators (stage 3), and released a Labs package with a faster template compiler.
Nuxt Studio is a git-based CMS that helps you manage content on your NuxtJS project. It looks like a polished and featureful tool with lovely collaborative editing, instant previews, and GitHub integration. Take a look if you're in the market for git-based CMS!
The UNJS offers high-quality, UNIX-like single-purpose packages and tools with consistent compatibility across various JS environments. uncrypto , unenv, ofetch, and much more - look at a full list of packages, and I'm pretty sure you'll find something useful.
Adam Wathan finally admits that Tailwind CSS looks awful! Watch the video, open your mind, look beyond the surface, and spread the word among your friends!
Just in case you missed ViteConf 23 at the beginning of the month, I have some excellent news for you. You can now watch all the talks thanks to a 12-hour-long replay! There is also a convenient timeline below so you can pick a topic that interests you instead of binging everything at once.
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