WebContainers - what is all about? Parcel 2 and Node release - Frontend News #10

Watch the Frontend News #10 - the podcast about tech and front end innovations with our hosts - Chris and Tommy K. Looking for a team for your project ? Ask us for free consultation on https://frontendhouse.com.

What is Frontend News #10 about?

• 0:00 - Contents
• 1:28 - WebContainers - what is all about?
• 3:08 - The future of Internet Explorer - probably the end of the browser, Microsoft will not support this browser since next year
• 4:13 - Spoken presentation in HTML
• 6:29 - IDE for dinosaurs?
• 8:20 - Parcel 2 beta 3 in da house!
• 9:50 - Node v16.2.0.

Transcription

Chis

Hey, guys, we're going to the 10th episode of Frontend News in this podcast. As always, I'm here with Tomasz and great bunch of news.

Tommy

Thank you, Chris. My week was amazing. I did get the vaccine for Covid-19. I felt no pain during the injection. Not in the vaccine!!! Ok, just kidding. Yeah, I stayed at home just to rest and that's it. How was your week, Chris?

Chris

Oh, it's the first time you asked. Thank you. It is amazing. I was preparing this news for you guys. So let's see what you have today. First one is about web containers.

Tommy

Yeah. The second one is about the future of Internet Explorer.

Chris

The next one is about translating speech in HTML.

Tommy

The forth news will be about the sublime text and its new release and features.

Chris

The next one about Parcel 2. And the last one will be about our lovely guest in almost each chapter. Node.js updates.

Chris

Stay tuned and watch the intro. The first one is about the webcontainers. Tomasz, so what have changed?

WebContainers - what is all about?

Tommy

Nothing has changed with webcontainers. This is the new stuff with new features. So what webcontainers allow us to run? Webcontainers will allow us to run Node.js code directly in our web browser. So you do not need, do not require any server to handle the Node.js apps. Thanks to Stackblitz developers team, they produce the solution that allows you to create a full stack Node.js project and run them directly in your browser, which makes it really fast for developers, really efficient and support secure by default.

Chris

Could you explain a little bit about the use cases for this one?

Tommy

This case is quite simple. Imagine that you use the next.js application and for example, you have a project and want to have a server side rendering that will handle, you know, rendering your components and send the HTML directly to the client. And imagine that you don't have to send the request somewhere to the server, which could be not in Poland. It can be everywhere, like everywhere. OK, and instead of that, you have a server in your browser on the client side by default. So the server side rendering will be handled much faster because the way that requests need to come across is really short. It's like an almost zero time response in projects. That's it about webcontainers.

Chris

OK, thank you so much. I hope you guys get it. I don't. So let's jump to Internet Explorer.

The future of Internet Explorer

Tommy

I want to make a short notice about the Internet Explorer into this chapter. In the ninth episode, we spoke that Vue dropped their support for Internet Explorer and then - Vue and Angular. Yep, exactly. The future of this browser is really clean, like, you know, it will be that soon. But what is interesting, Windows 10 will drop support for Internet Explorer on June 15th in 2022. OK, so it's like one year still to support this browser, you will still be able to run the dedicated Internet Explorer Web apps if you want. Let's focus on the modern Internet and on the modern web apps and leave the Internet Explorer resting in peace alone.

Chris

And so speaking about the modern web, we have very good news for HTML and for speech to text.

Spoken presentation in HTML

Tommy

Yeah, exactly. Let me explain what it's all about. So we have a draft for the new specification that is dedicated for the text to speech functionality. Right now we have different engines that translate text and HTML document content to the speech. OK, but those engines are translated in different ways. So we might have differences on the same application, on different devices because the engines were different. OK, you got it. Yeah. Cool. So there is a proposal to combine all the rules and standardize all the engines. Accepting this proposal will make it happen. So fingers crossed for that and for that accessible platform architectures working group because they are the owners in future, the creators of this proposal. And I will be looking for it from time to time how the situation is moving and hopefully it will become the standard as soon as possible.

Chris

That sounds great. Do you know anything about multi language support?

Tommy

Yeah, multi-language support is something that I did not find information about. So probably it will be like more from... This is a good question actually.

Chris

Yeah, I have only good questions, Tomasz.

Tommy

And it's hard sometimes, but yeah, multi-language is something that should be supported. Yes. Because we do not want to have projects with English version only, but for the very first iteration maybe that there will be only a single language.

Chris

But it's not that easy. You have a lot of languages. Yeah, that's correct. OK, let's see…

Tommy

How many languages do we have, Chris? Only JavaScript guys, come on.

Chris

Oh nice. Just JavaScript! I was about to say, like we can have a contest - who will guess the correct number of languages will have a selfie with us. But we still have great news for you. The next one. About sublime text.

IDE for dinosaurs

Tommy

Yeah, exactly, for you guys who have been working in web development a really long time, you probably met the sublime text editor and somehow we work with it for a while or maybe for a long time. I was familiar with sublime text version two when I started working in your first company, Chris. Oh, yes. You showed me this IDE. And since that time I was using it for like a long time. The thing that I really like in the subline is that it was highly customizable. You know, you just need to overwrite the configurations, set some params. There were plenty of addons that extended the functionality of this IDE. And it was amazing. It was free for use. Yeah, OK. And I have really great memories with that IDE and its features. And yeah, we did receive a new version, which is 4.1. And what has changed? First of all, the license has changed. You need to check it on your own. How it looks like it's because it will be like a different license for different versions. And I think as far as I remember that that was the change then. I think it's a top multi select so we can select a few tops and, for example, close them at once. Yeah. And the sublime will be supporting Apple, Silicon and Linux. We received such features as refreshed UI and the last thing is context aware autocomplete. So they really boost the new version of the sublime text. And if you want to check documentation and IDE, download it, use it and do whatever you want with your life.

Parcel 2 beta 3 in da house

Tommy

Parcel 2 beta 3 to three in the house. So the Parcel is the engine that compiles the Rust code. And we have a new version of this compiler, which is ten times faster than the previous one. Well, it's a big number. It is. We receive a lot of speed, boost optimizations around performance and the whole rust ecosystem. This is the tool that, as I mentioned in the last chapters, we can utilize to create the complete and complex Web applications, both on the backend and the frontend side.

So this tool is like a great tool for the full stack developers, who enjoy producing the apps on both sides of the force. Yeah, the question is, do we have a lot of specialists on the market that use the rust language? Yeah, exactly. You know, definitely this is something that is worth the track because the popularity of the Rust ecosystem grows year by year, by default. But for sure, next year will show in which direction the web development world will go. And definitely JavaScript is no. 1. Exactly. Is it from the Rust word. Check the documentation.

Chris

That's it. And our favorite. The last one, but not the least. Node.js.

Node v16.2.0.

Tommy

Not just no jazz version, sixteen point two point zero. And it will never be boring to tell you there really is. No, I love it. No, just kidding. We receive a bunch of updates from the car library side, from the HTTP, from the .Net and from other different parts of the Node.js. And as always, if you want to know what's going on, take it on your own, on their website, on their release notes.

The link, as always, Chris, where? In the description. That’s it for the news today! Check our socials - Instagram, YouTube, Spotify and Facebook and look for us on the Internet, look for the best front end news team in the world. See you next time. We are waiting for your feedback.