State of HTML, Firefox 118, Vivaldi on iOS, Safari TP 180, Astro 3.2, Deno 1.37, Next.js 13.5, and more | Front End News #103

NOTE: This is issue #103 of my newsletter, which went live on Monday, October 9. You might find this information valuable and exciting and want to receive future issues as they are published ahead of everyone else. In that case, I invite you to join the subscriber list at frontendnexus.com.

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The State of HTML completes the web platform survey trilogy. DuckDuckGo celebrates 15 years of existence, and we look at the new things to the web platform that landed in September. The browser releases include Firefox 118, Vivaldi for iOS and iPadOS, and Safari Technology Preview 180.

There are many signals on the Release Radar, including Astro 3.2, Deno 1.37, Hugo v0.119, Neutralinojs v4.14, Next.js 13.5, Node v20.8, and more. The resource package contains an extensive collection of programming fonts, a tool to create beautiful moving gradients, and many other helpful things.

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State of HTML

State of JavaScript and State of CSS have proven to be outstanding gauges for the web platform, bringing together developers, standard makers, and browser builders. The trilogy is now complete with the third survey - State of HTML. It covers the HTML elements and several related browser APIs (PWAs, Web Components, and more).

• State of HTML

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💻 Browser news

Rachel Andrew continues her series of monthly summaries on the web platform. In September, we got stable releases from all major browsers: Firefox 118, Safari 17, and Chrome 117. You can find more details on the new platform features below.

• New to the web platform in September

DuckDuckGo

DuckDuckGo appeared 15 years ago as a more user-focused alternative to Google. What started as yet another project born in a basement is now the 3rd in search market share in the US. Find more about its long journey in the article below.

• Celebrating 15 Years of DuckDuckGo

Firefox

Firefox 118 brings automated local translation of web content, ten new CSS math functions, support for the <search> element, and various security fixes.

• Firefox 118 Release Notes

• Firefox 118 for developers

Vivaldi

An old proverb says: "If you can't beat them, join them." Vivaldi decided to enter the iOS market with their mobile browser. Users can enjoy the features packed inside Vivaldi, even though the engine running under the hood is WebKit.

• Vivaldi Takes a Bite Out of the Apple: Introducing Vivaldi on iOS

WebKit

Speaking of WebKit, they launched another Safari Technology Preview. This release fixes a large number of issues, including many CSS and Accessibility ones.

• Release Notes for Safari Technology Preview 180

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📡 The Release Radar

• Astro 3.2 - The web framework that scales with you

• Bit v1.0 - A tool for composable software development

• chardet v2.0.0 - Character encoding detection tool for NodeJS

• ChatGPT.js - A powerful client-side JavaScript library for ChatGPT

• CKEditor 5 v40.0.0 - Powerful rich text editor framework

• Critical v6.0.0 - Extract & Inline Critical-path CSS in HTML pages

• Deno 1.37 - A modern runtime for JavaScript and TypeScript

• Dependency cruiser v14.1.0 - Validate and visualize dependencies

• Ember 5.3 - A JavaScript framework for creating ambitious web applications

• Env 3.0.0 - A utility for verifying environment variables are present

• Faker v8.1.0 - Generate massive amounts of fake data in the browser and node.js

• Hugo v0.119.0 - The world’s fastest framework for building websites

• Marked v9.1.0 - A markdown parser and compiler. Built for speed.

• Neutralinojs v4.14.0 - Build lightweight cross-platform desktop apps with JavaScript, HTML, and CSS

• Next.js 13.5 - The React Framework for the Web

• Node v18.18.0 (LTS), Node v20.7.0 (Current), Node v20.8.0 (Current) -

• Pagefind v1.0.0 - Static low-bandwidth search at scale

• pnmp v8.8.0 - Fast, disk space efficient package manager

• preact 10.18.0 - Fast 3kB React alternative with the same modern API

• Tailwind Elements v1.0 - Bootstrap components recreated with Tailwind CSS, but with better design and more functionalities

• Tesseract.js v5.0.0 - Pure Javascript OCR for more than 100 Languages

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🛠️ Front End Resources

• .classnames - Find inspiration for naming things

• B612 Font Family - a highly legible open-source font family designed and tested for use on aircraft cockpit screens

• Color Lisa - Color palette masterpieces from the world's greatest artists

• Doodle Ipsum - The lorem ipsum of illustrations

• Flatdraw - Open-source canvas drawing web application built with TypeScript, React, and Next.js.

• Image-to-Pixel - An editor that converts images to pixel art, adds dither, set palettes, and more!

• Programming Fonts - Test drive all the programming fonts!

• ShaderGradient - Create beautiful moving gradients on Framer, Figma, and React

There's more where that came from. Explore the rest of the Front End Resource collection.

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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 contact 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!