React Conf Highlights, Vercel Raises Another $250m, and Astro Adds Actions
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We’ve got an exciting episode with our co-host Jack Herrington fresh from his trip to React Conf where the React core team and close collaborators unveiled all the cool things they’ve been working on, including the much anticipated React Compiler and some exciting new features for React Native Expo. React Compiler is a new Babel-enabled plugin that will allow React apps to handle the memoization and re-rendering of components in an application so that developers won’t have to use the useMemo() and useCallback() hooks themselves. It will essentially save devs from having to think about it (and save them from the foot guns of implementing it incorrectly), and it is completely optional (not built in to React 19) and can be done via incremental adoption across an already existing application. If you want to give it a try before adding it to your own app, check out the React Compiler Playground, paste in one of your own components and see what gets memoized and what doesn’t. And watch Jack's new video on YouTube where he goes in-depth on the React Compiler. In related news, Vercel (the creators of Next.js, the most popular React framework in the world) announced it has raised $250m in funding, and the company is currently valued at $3.25b. Just wow! While we can only assume some of that funding will go towards continuing to improve Next.js and its core business of web hosting, it also said it will continue to invest heavily in its v0 generative UI system, which currently generates copy-and-paste friendly React code using shadcn/ui and Tailwind CSS that people can use in their projects. With that much funding the sky will be the limit for Vercel, and we’re excited to see what it does next. Another popular JavaScript framework, Astro, made a splash as well with its release of Astro 4.8. In addition to the usual performance enhancements and bug fixes, it added experimental support for Astro Actions with niceties like full type-safety, a single global action file that any client component can access, automatically parsing form request objects using a Zod schema, and progressive enhancement on forms. Astro’s been a go-to when devs need a static site, but it’s now venturing into the realm of lightweight JavaScript interactivity with actions, and for devs who’ve used Remix or SvelteKit actions in the past, this should feel very familiar in Astro. Finally, the news wraps up with some new features that came out in the Safari 17.5 release. For the web designers out there, new CSS features like text-wrap balance are now supported, and the helpful light-dark() CSS color function, which takes two colors for a property and returns one by detecting if a user has set a light or dark preferred color scheme. It’s simply amazing how tailored we’re able to make web interfaces nowadays based on user preferences.