Last update: August 29th
On my off time, internet surfing is a past-time that I often do in other to relax for the day. If I come across something absolutely amazing, then I for sure bookmark it and save it for another day.
Not only that, it also helps me keep up with the latest up-to-date technologies that I may miss out on because lets face it, technology is evolving quite rapidly and with the upcoming teases from Astro's twitter, it's one of the more prominent and exciting ones to look forward to.
Launch Week
We got the date of liftoff for Astro's latest version, but what kind of features are coming? Going through some of the latest tweets from Astro, they have teased quite a bit for the upcoming new version (I do love their memes too though). I'll keep my eyes open for additional updates once they hit as they tease their changes throughout launch week.
Astro View Transitions
Source: https://twitter.com/astrodotbuild/status/1687523994025832448?s=20
100% server rendered HTML? Persistent across different navigation? Along with full-page transitions? Sign me up! No longer do we have to think about ways of trying to add additional Javascript for the fluid transitions when all of these features will exist right off the bat!
Fit it in with any frontend framework of your choosing! I may even have to try this for my own blog once I get the chance to.
Vercel, Official Hosting Partner
Source: https://astro.build/blog/vercel-official-hosting-partner/
Vercel is now officially the official hosting partner of Astro. If you are unfamiliar with Vercel, Vercel is a cloud company which focuses on providing services (mainly frontend) to the cloud. They are the ones behind Next.js!
So what does this entail? With Vercel being the official backer of Astro, it means more money will be invested into open-source maintenance as well as the development of Astro. Everyone simply wins (me included as I often use Vercel to host my own sites) but that is not the only benefit here.
Edge Middleware
Astro's middleware will now run on the edge with Vercel's middleware. Via their blog, this will give developers more customization and response times in regards to anything related to requests. There are features listed on their blog site if you are interested in seeing what changes are being done within this regard.
Serverless Code Splitting
Astro is quite fast, but if you were to host your Astro sites on Vercel, it'll be even faster! Thanks to the addition of serverless code splitting provided by Vercel, server response times would shoot out of the roof since Astro originally bundle all your code into a single JavaScript file; great for simplified deployments but brought along poor serverless performance.
Image Optimization
You can now take advantage of Vercel's built-in image optimization service! As developers, we can now leverage Vercel's optimization service to simplify development complexity, costs, all while improving image performance. I always have liked the Image component from Next.js so I'm quite excited to see it again here as well.
Starlight - Documentation Framework
Source: https://www.producthunt.com/posts/starlight-by-astro
A new Astro project called Starlight has been announced! If you are unfamiliar with Starlight, it is a web framework for building documentation sites with ease, built with Astro under the hood.
It was initially in beta for as long as I have known of since I started Astro but today, it is now ready for production!
Here are some features that Starlight provides:
- Site navigation, content search, SEO, dark mode - essentially more power to your development experiences
- Powered by Astro, meaning your documentation will be blazing fast!
- Markdown, Markdoc, MDX ready - all type-safe for you to write, ship, and go
- Extend Starlight by bringing your own UI components (React, Vue, Svelte, etc)
Astro 3.0 - Hold on Tight!
What are your thoughts on the upcoming changes and additions to Astro 3.0? I am in love with Astro for creating websites due to the amount of power, simplicity, and fun it brings to my toolkit and cannot wait to see more of the upcoming changes that they'll bring!