Hello readers!

Just as we do every month, we've pulled together a selection of articles from the world of web tech that we think are worth sharing…

Find out how to build desktop apps with React Native, get insights into Typescript 5.1, learn how to provide visual editing in headless CMS and much more.

Happy reading!

Typescript 5.1 released

A few months after the release of 5.0, the Typescript team has just released a new minor version 5.1 packed with improvements and new features. User experience is improved thanks to easier implicit returns for undefined-returning functions, and by allowing different unrelated types for getters and setters. Improvements focus mostly on the React library users and support for the JSX features. Check out the blog for more details on these, and all other, improvements in v5.1. 

Do you know the useSyncExternalStore hook?

With the introduction of concurrent rendering in React 18, an application can show different external state values in separate components of the screen. This happens due to the fact that the concurrent renderer allows React to render multiple tasks simultaneously, based on their priorities. However, the store values might change during the render. This hook is intended to solve the issue. Check out the article to learn more.

Using React Native to build desktop apps

In this article, Facebook developers describe the benefits they’ve found from dropping the Electron applications in favor of using React Native to build both Windows and Mac desktop apps. Have a read to learn more, and see if this approach might also be beneficial to you.

Visual Editing with Headless CMS

If you know or use tools such as Wix or Squarespace you’ll already be pretty familiar with visual editing. It’s aimed at non-coders – e.g. people in marketing or other non-tech creatives, by allowing them to get instant visual feedback from any changes to their content. However, multiple headless CMS’s have recently started to adopt this feature, and the results are looking promising. You can find out more in this blog post.

Building secure micro-frontends

Micro frontends offer several benefits, such as improved scalability, agility, and faster development cycles. However, they also come with several security challenges, including inconsistent dependency management or insufficient component isolation. Learn from this article how to overcome them.

React Native 0.72 released

While the React team may be taking a break, the React Native team has been working hard and has just released a new LTS (long-term support) version. This new version introduces beta support for symlinks in your repository, improves the Hermes JS engine, and moves the updates for the currently experimental New Architecture, which aligns APIs to the web standards, to keep updates focused to their target audience.