Tune In This Wednesday
Join us this week on March 1st for another JavaScript Jam Twitter Space! Whether you're a beginner or a Senior JS developer, we'd love to see you there.
Last week we had Ben Myers join us to discuss a range of topics including web accessibility, the challenges of building accessible Single Page Apps, and creating stream overlays with web standard technology.
He also created a custom captioning system to supplement the unfortunately removed captioning feature for Twitter Spaces and published a blog article explaining how to do this which will be featured in the next section.
Articles
Create Shareable Automatic Captions for Live Online Events with Web Captioner
Captions are an essential component of creating an accessible piece of content but can be especially challenging to provide for live events. Doing so requires either a professional captionist capturing what is being said in real time or an automated system that is transcribing and projecting the text.
Twitter Spaces used to have a native captioning system but it appears to have been removed in the recent spat of layoffs and micro-service culling. I would urge the Twitter team to reconsider, but in the meantime Ben's blog post helps provide a workable solution in the mean time.
I would be very curious to see what a system like this would look like if it were to incorporate a deep learning system such as OpenAI's Whisper which could potentially provide a much higher quality transcript.
Streaming, snapshots, and other new features since SvelteKit 1.0
SvelteKit has been hard at work building new features post 1.0. This includes adding HTML streaming, a new feature that set off a bit of a Twitter firestorm which ended in another framework author deleting their Twitter account. Spicy! You can check out Theo's video about the entire debacle.
Deno Office Hours Roundup and Update
I enjoyed this new format that Deno has published which includes questions and answers from the community. The recently released Deno 1.31 includes many big releases including package.json support and a stabilized Node API. It appears the Deno dream of leaving NPM behind will not be achieved but the JS developer dream of never, ever giving up on their dependencies is alive and well.
Next.js 13.2
Next 13.2 includes a range of new features such as built-in SEO support with a new metadata API to set static and dynamic meta tags, custom request handlers built on the Web Request and Response objects, MDX for server-side React components, a new Rust MDX parser, and the beta release of Next.js Cache for progressive ISR and faster re-deploys of code changes.
React Libraries for 2023
Robin Wieruch has been writing an ongoing yearly series about the most important React Libraries every React developer should be aware of. It's a truly comprehensive look at the full range of available options.
Composability Summit
Remember Composability Summit?? If you don't, we'll be highlighting a talk each week from our fantastic lineup of guests. This week we're highlighting Rizel's presentation titled Action Packed Composability CI/CD to the Rescue.
Podcasts
The State of JS Frameworks with Ryan Carniato: Part 1
Last week we highlighted Ryan's appearance on Syntax.fm about the state of SolidJS, this week he joined JavaScript Jabber for the first of a multi-part series about the larger evolutions taking place in the JavaScript ecosystem. This provides an interesting contrast to Alex Russell's appearance last week on JS Jabber.
Instead of insisting that the last decade has been at best a wash and at worse an affront to the dignity of web users, Ryan insists that JavaScript frameworks are doing better than ever, are still the future, and will continue to evolve to suit the needs of developers and users alike.
In related news, Ryan provided the following excellent chart explaining the differences between reactive programming paradigms.
I often get asked about the difference between different reactive libraries and approaches.
— Ryan Carniato (@RyanCarniato) February 10, 2023
I attempted to put it in a chart. pic.twitter.com/5biRGqTBwu
Saying goodbye to static generation
Sam and Ryan explain how they migrated their project Build UI from a statically generated site to a server-side rendered Next.js app. They discuss their previous experiences with server-rendered apps and problems that are better suited for static sites in contrast to dynamic.
Bedrock Layout Primitives with Travis Waith-Mair
Travis Waith-Mair from Plex joins Jamstack Radio to talk about his CSS library, Bedrock Layout Primitives. The project provides a range of common layout patterns to help organize and simplify common CSS patterns.
Astro 2.0 with Fred Schott
Continuing his string of recent podcast appearances, Fred Schott joins Syntax.fm to give a rundown of the new features in Astro 2.0 including edge readiness, image optimization, AI, an improved error overlay, and hybrid rendering.
WASM with Shivay Lamba
Shivay Lamba joins PodRocket to talk about server-side Web Assembly and common misconceptions about WASM.
One More Thing
Formerly a Developer Advocate for Auth0 and PlanetScale, James Q. Quick has transitioned to working as a full time content creator. In his video, Things Web Developers Say, he responds to some of the comments he's received recently.
He gives his insights about a range of different topics including developing your coding career, the impact of AI on developers, learning a new programming language like Go, JavaScript trends, and the rebirth of JavaScript fatigue.
