Greetings to all JavaScript adherents! It’s time to discuss the latest news and updates from the JavaScript world. In this article, we’ll talk about the new functionality of Node.js 17 and Gatsby 4, know what TypeScript 4.5 Beta comes up with, and review the latest release of Bootstrap in React. Moreover, we added some useful tips for web developers you can benefit from. Let’s get started!

New Tools and Updates

Announcing Node v17

The latest major version of Node.js brings several improvements to the runtime, as well as additional promisified APIs, OpenSSL 3.0 support, and an update of the JavaScript engine to V8 9.5.

The team introduces in Node.js 17 promise-based APIs for the Readline module. It provides an interface for reading data from a Readable stream one line at a time. Besides, the new release includes OpenSSL 3.0, which provides QUIC support. However, FIPS support remains available via the new FIPS module. Follow the link to read the full list of updates.

What’s New in Gatsby 4

Gatsby is a popular open-source frontend framework that blends the functionality from React, GraphQL, and Webpack. According to the Gatsby team, the recent release is the most impactful one since it provides enhanced user experience and blazing-fast speed for end-users.

Gatsby 4 introduces two new page rendering modes, Deferred Static Generation (DSG) and Server-Side Rendering (SSR), that cut down long build time and allow developers to choose how content is generated. The release also includes support for Parallel Query Processing, which introduces a multithreaded approach and provides a 40% reduction in build times for some sites.

Having added SSR and DSG features to Gatsby Cloud, developers have to rebuild infrastructure. As a result, the team noted a significant reduction (by up to 90%) in deploy times for data-intensive websites. Moreover, Gatsby 4 includes new CMS integration APIs and support for React 18. You can read the full release article here.

React Bootstrap 2.0 Release

React-Bootstrap is one of the oldest React libraries that has evolved alongside React. Each component was built from scratch in pure React, so the library can be used instead of Bootstrap JavaScript. The second major release includes full compatibility with Bootstrap 5.1 and goes under the MIT license.

Announcing TypeScript 4.5 Beta

Microsoft announced TypeScript 4.5 Beta, which comes with ECMAScript module support in Node.js, new file extensions, and a new utility type called Awaited type that was designed to help with modeling existing APIs, including JavaScript built-ins.

Besides, TypeScript 4.5 can narrow values that have template string types as well as recognize template string types as discriminants. Also, to ensure that TypeScript and JavaScript support works well out of the box, TypeScript provides a series of declaration files that represent the available APIs in the JavaScript language and the standard browser DOM APIs. Other updates include CommoJS interop, tail-recursion elimination on conditional types, disabling import elision, import assertion, and much more.

Useful Tips and Articles

Node.js from Beginners to Advance

A great post for those who work with Node.js. The author explains which projects Node.js is most suitable for and shows how to create a simple demo app along with your own server for your project step-by-step.

How to Create a Grid Widget in JavaScript

DHTMLX Grid can be used to create a data grid with a comprehensive feature set with minimum time and effort. From this article, you’ll know how to build a JavaScript data grid, improve its functionality by adding data editing, filtering, sorting, and customize its appearance according to your project requirements.

Best Practices for JavaScript Programming Styles

There are certain standards developers should follow when working with JavaScript, especially when they work as a team. Thus, for instance, your code should be not only syntactically correct but also comply with programming styles. From this article, you’ll know what exactly programming styles are, why they are so important, and how to choose the most suitable for your team.

How to build a modern website in 2021

Kent C. Dodds is a highly-experienced JavaScript engineer who rebuilt his blogfolio website with React and decided to share his experience. In the article, he overviewed the technologies and libraries he chose and showed how they were used.

What’s one thing in JavaScript you’ve stopped doing as you’ve become more experienced?

On Twitter, you can share your experience of programming in JavaScript and discuss what you’ve given up with time.