NOTE: This is issue #074 of my newsletter, which went live on Monday, September 12th. If you find this information useful and interesting and you want to receive future issues as they are published, ahead of everyone else, I invite you to join the subscriber list at frontendnexus.com.
Front End News is back after the summer break and there are many things to cover. All main browsers have received updates: Chrome 104-105, Edge 104-105, Firefox 103-104, Polypane 10, Safari 15.6, and Safari Technology Preview 150-152. The software updates and releases include Astro 1.0, Electron 20, TypeScript 4.8, and a lot more. And everything is sprinkled with a handful of useful resources.
Browser news
Rachel Andrew continues covering the new additions to the web platform. We got here the entries for July and August:
Chrome
Chrome 104 rolled out on August 2. Most of the new features are focused on developers, such as the level 4 of Media Queries, or the independent values for CSS Transform properties.
Chrome 105 was released on August 30. The highlights of this update are container queries and the :has() CSS property.
Edge
Microsoft Edge kept pace with its Chromium brethren and released versions 104 and 105. As usual, their release notes focus less on platform updates and more on Edge-specific features. A few examples are Client Certificate Switching, enhanced security policies for less visited sites, or the option to load Microsoft Office and Outlook in the sidebar.
Firefox
Firefox 103 became available on July 26. This version brought, among other things, improved performance on high-refresh rate monitors, better responsiveness on macOS, and support for the backdrop-filter, scroll-snap-stop, and :modal CSS properties.
Version 104 rolled out on August 23 and brought the option to analyze the power usage of a website and many security fixes and "under-the-hood" improvements.
Polypane
Polypane claims to be "the browser for ambitious developers" and the new version 10 delivers on this promise. The panel for dev tools can now be detached, you can disable the navigation sync, or you can choose the format of your screenshots. The list of changes is a lot longer and can be checked in the release notes below.
WebKit
The WebKit development team has worked hard lately to bring Safari on par with the other browsers. Safari 15.6 brings support for the :modal CSS pseudo-class and a long list of issues that have been fixed.
Last, but not least, we got no less than four releases for the Safari Technology Preview. If you want to know what will come in the future updates of Safari, you can give it a spin or simply check the release notes.
- Safari Technology Preview 150
- Release Notes for Safari Technology Preview 151
- Release Notes for Safari Technology Preview 152
- Release Notes for Safari Technology Preview 153
Software updates and releases
- Angular v14.1.0 - The modern web developer’s platform
- Astro 1.0 - a web framework for building fast, content-focused websites
- Bootstrap 5.2.0 - Powerful, extensible, and feature-packed frontend toolkit.
- Cypress v10.7.0 - Fast, easy, and reliable testing for anything that runs in a browser
- Docusaurus 2.0 - easy to maintain open source documentation websites
- Electron 20 - Build cross-platform desktop apps with JavaScript, HTML, and CSS
- Ember.js 4.6 - a framework for ambitious web developers
- Ember.js 4.7
- ESLint 8.23 - Find and fix problems in your JavaScript code
- ESLint v8.20.0 - find and fix problems with your JavaScript code
- Fresh 1.1 - Deno's full stack Web framework
- Gatsby v4.19 - build modern apps and websites with React
- GSAP 3.11 - Responsive, accessibility-friendly JS-based animations
- Ionic v6.2 - A powerful cross-platform UI toolkit for building apps with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
- Jasmine v4.3.0 - Simple JavaScript testing framework for browsers and node.js
- Jasmine v4.4.0
- Lighthouse v9.6.7 - Google's auditing/performance tool
- Mongoose 6.5.4 - MongoDB object modeling designed to work in an asynchronous environment.
- Neutralinojs v4.7.0 - cross-platform desktop application development framework
- Next.js 12.3 - Popular React framework
- Node v18.7.0 (Current) - an asynchronous event-driven JavaScript runtime
- Node v16.17.0 (LTS)
- Node v18.8.0 (Current)
- Node v18.9.0 (Current)
- npm-check v6.0.1 - Check for outdated, incorrect, and unused dependencies
- Parcel v2.7.0 - The zero configuration build tool for the web
- Redwood v2.2.0 - an opinionated, full-stack, JavaScript/TypeScript web application framework
- sql.js 1.8 - A javascript library to run SQLite on the web
- Stripe Node v10.7.0 - Node.js library for Stripe's API
- Tailwind CSS 3.1.8 - A utility-first CSS framework for rapid UI development.
- TypeScript 4.8 - a superset of JavaScript that compiles to clean JavaScript output
- Vite 3.0 - Next generation frontend tooling
Front End Resources
- Eggradients - Gradient background colors
- Fabpic - Beautify your screenshots in just a few seconds
- Heroicons - Beautiful hand-crafted SVG icons, by the makers of Tailwind CSS
- Sublus - Mix & Match your Illustration needs
- SVG Backgrounds - a collection of customizable SVG-based repeating patterns and backgrounds
There's more where that came from. Explore the rest of the Front End Resource collection.
Wrapping things up
Ukraine is still suffering from the Russian invasion - if you are looking for ways to help, please check Smashing Magazine's article We All Are Ukraine 🇺🇦 or get in touch with your trusted charity.
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That's all I have for this issue. Have a great and productive week, keep yourselves safe, spend as much time as possible with your loved ones, and I will see you again next time!
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