Hello JavaScript Enthusiasts!
Welcome to a new edition of "This Week in JavaScript"!
This week, we’ve got a major release for creative coders, groundbreaking React experimental features, and reflections on a decade of SolidJS—plus exciting new tools you won't want to miss!
P5.js 2.0: JavaScript Takes Art to the Next Level
P5.js, the beloved creative coding library, has reached version 2.0 with impressive upgrades for artists and developers alike!
Key Improvements:
- Variable Fonts & Advanced Typography: Animate font weight, width, and slant with full variable font support. New utilities like textToContours() and faster textToPoints() (3.5x speed boost) make text manipulation smoother.
- JavaScript Shaders (No GLSL Needed): Apply GPU-accelerated shaders directly in JavaScript to strokes, fills, and images using simple functions like strokeShader(). No GLSL knowledge required.
- Expanded Color Spaces & HDR Canvases: Work with LAB, LCH, OKLab color spaces, and HDR outputs like Display P3—perfect for richer color workflows and modern displays.
- Unified Pointer Events: Handle mouse, touch, and pen inputs with a single event system for seamless interactivity across devices.
Performance Boosts:
- Faster text rendering
- Efficient 3D line drawing with linesMode(SIMPLE)
- Asynchronous asset loading via async setup()
Modular & Modern:
- Full ES Module support
- Improved npm package with modern tooling
This update solidifies p5.js as the premier tool for anyone wanting to blend art with code. Whether you're a seasoned creative coder or a beginner looking to start, p5.js 2.0 offers an accessible entry point into generative art and interactive visualizations.
React Labs: View Transitions and Activity Component
React Compiler may have hit Release Candidate status, but that's not even the most exciting React news this week!
Some amazing updates in React:
View Transitions: A new experimental component that makes UI animations dramatically simpler
- Easily animate between page navigations, expanding elements, and UI state changes
- Leverages browser's native capabilities for better performance
- Available now in react@experimental
Activity Component: Revolutionary approach to UI state management
- Hide and show UI elements while intelligently preserving their state
- Perfect for tabbed interfaces, modals, and complex navigational flows
- Reduces performance costs compared to traditional unmounting
These features represent significant advancements in how React applications can handle animations and state management, making previously complex implementations straightforward.
A Decade of SolidJS: Reactive Revolution
SolidJS creator Ryan Carniato has shared thoughtful reflections on a decade of developing the project, four years after reaching version 1.0.
Key Highlights:
- Fine-grained reactivity goes mainstream: SolidJS pioneered a signal-based reactivity model that minimizes runtime overhead and maximizes performance. This model has reshaped frontend architecture and been adopted by major frameworks like Angular (Signals), Vue (Vapor), and Svelte (Runes).
- From niche to standard: What started as a side project inspired by Knockout.js evolved into a blueprint for how modern frameworks handle state updates efficiently—without the need for virtual DOM diffing.
- Industry-wide impact: The signal-based approach has become the de facto standard for reactive programming in frontend development, with SolidJS playing a key role in sparking this shift.
Carniato's persistence has transformed how front-end frameworks approach reactivity, demonstrating the long-term impact of innovative architectural thinking in JavaScript.
Tools & Releases You Should Know About
Let's speed-run through some of the other big tool updates this week!
- jsvu 3.0: Install modern JS engines without compilation headaches, now with improved Node.js v18+ compatibility and support for V8, SpiderMonkey, JavaScriptCore across major operating systems.
- SmallJS 1.6: Smalltalk-inspired library now with multi-provider AI support for OpenAI, Deepseek, Google AI, and Anthropic, featuring a new demo chat app and improved compiler performance.
- Scala.js 1.19.0: WebAssembly output now runs 15% faster than JavaScript for computation-heavy code, with native async/await support and compatibility with Firefox 131+ and Safari 18.4+ without flags.
- ESLint v9.25.1: Fixes directive detection in no-unused-expressions rule to support projects publishing code for both ES3 and ES5+ environments, along with other important bug fixes.
- Spectacle: Create React-powered presentations with JSX syntax, featuring live code demos, clickable elements, and polished visual effects for standout technical presentations.
And that's it for the thirty-second issue of "This Week in JavaScript."
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Until next time, happy coding!