React 19 is Coming!

Author

Meghanadh Vasireddy
February 21, 2024

Good Morning! React 19 is coming with re-rendering improvements and breaking changes to support new features like unified data handling. Google is testing "App Highlights" in the Play Store, using AI to summarize apps and improve discovery and Rust-based Tauri framework is emerging as a lightweight alternative to Electron for building desktop apps.

React 19 is Coming!

React 19 will bring major improvements and some breaking changes to things like re-rendering and data handling between client/server. Therefore, they're releasing this as a major version bump from React 18 to React 19.

Optimized Performance

  • They're releasing a React compiler that optimizes rendering performance by compiling code where safe to allow extensive optimizations, and skipping compilation where code doesn't strictly follow React rules.

  • Features like Strict Mode and an ESLint plugin will help validate compliant code for compilation.

The update introduces Actions, which provide a unified way to handle data across client/server environments. You can define Actions on the client with JavaScript or server-side with useServer. Once defined, React will manage the lifecycle, so there are hooks like useFormStatus and useOptimistic to enable things like accessing status/responses and temporary optimistic state updates.

Other changes include:

  • Directives like useClient and useServer to indicate split points to the bundler. useClient ships JS to the client, and useServer generates a server endpoint.

  • Built-in support for document head rendering of things like metadata, title and link tags.

  • Improvements to Suspense integration for loading assets.

  • Renaming "offscreen" to "activity" for background rendering capabilities

As far as releasing these updates to the stable version... the React team is now focused on finalizing documentation for the new features shipping with React 19, as well as building out announcements for the specific changes and improvements coming. The version bump is largely due to the need for some breaking changes to support things like improved web component interoperability.

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Google Tests AI "App Highlights" in Play Store

Google is testing a new Play Store feature called "App Highlights" that uses AI to provide brief overviews of apps' key features. The AI-generated summaries highlight aspects like messaging, live streaming, feeds, and groups. They aim to give insight into what users can expect from the app by pulling the most relevant info from reviews and focusing on features users care about.

This feature was discovered by developer @AssembleDebug. It is only enabled for a small test group of users through a server-side switch. This is not Google's first AI Play Store feature - previously it tested AI-generated FAQs to learn why people download apps and what they like most.

The purpose of App Highlights is to tap into AI to improve app discovery and influence how Android users evaluate and select apps.

It is unclear if or when the App Highlights feature will roll out more widely. We'll be keeping an eye out for additional tests as Google works to perfect its AI-enhanced Play Store experience.

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Goodbye Electron. Hello Tauri!

Electron has been the popular framework for building cross-platform desktop apps using web technologies. However, Electron apps tend to be large and resource intensive.

A new alternative called Tauri is gaining momentum. It's a Rust-based framework that also utilizes web technologies for building desktop apps, but differs by having a Rust backend instead of bundling Chromium like Electron.

Benefits of Tauri:

  • Apps have up to 44x smaller file sizes

  • Use around half the memory compared to Electron

  • Feel more responsive, better for laptop battery life

  • Currently working towards mobile app support

The maturity and establishment of Electron gives it an edge for now:

  • Enterprise teams are more familiar with working in Electron

  • Some complex apps can't fully switch over to Tauri yet

But as Tauri develops over time:

  • It could replace Electron as the standard

  • Continued improvements to lightweight and efficient Tauri apps

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🔥 More Notes

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