React Native v0.85 introduces a new Shared Animation backend, enhancing the animation capabilities of applications. Upcoming features like <ViewTransition> and Skia Graphite promise to further improve user experiences.
When you assign the any type to a variable, you're essentially telling the compiler: Stop checking this. I'll handle it myself. At that moment, you've basically turned off TypeScript. Even worse, any tends to spread through a codebase. If a function returns any, every variable that receives that value becomes untyped as well.
Events are essential inputs to modern front-end systems. But when we mistake reactions for architecture, complexity quietly multiplies. Over time, many front-end architectures have come to resemble chains of reactions rather than models of structure. The result is systems that are expressive, but increasingly difficult to reason about.
One of the most significant changes is the move to integrate CSS module support directly into webpack's core. Currently available behind the experimental.css option, this feature eliminates the need for mini-css-extract-plugin. The team expects to complete integration into core around early 2026, with the feature remaining experimental until webpack 6, at which point plugin-based CSS handling will no longer be necessary.
Modern web applications are no longer just "sites." They are long-lived, highly interactive systems that span multiple runtimes, global content delivery networks, edge caches, background workers, and increasingly complex data pipelines. They are expected to load instantly, remain responsive under poor network conditions, and degrade gracefully when something goes wrong.
By how much? Well, that would depend on the value of the <length> argument provided. Thomas Walichiewicz, who proposed :near(), suggests that it works like this: button:near(3rem) { /* Pointer is within 3rem of the button */ } For those wondering, yes, we can use the Pythagorean theorem to measure the straight-line distance between two elements using JavaScript ("Euclidean distance" is the mathematical term), so I imagine that's what would be used behind the scenes here.
Dear JS ecosystem, I love you, but you have a dependency management problem when it comes to the Web, and the time has come for an intervention. No, this is not another rant about npm's security issues. Abstraction is the cornerstone of modern software engineering. Reusing logic and building higher-level solutions from lower-level building blocks is what makes all the technological wonders around us possible. Imagine if every time anyone wrote a calculator they also had to reinvent floating-point arithmetic and string encoding!
The web is full of AI assistants that appear to understand application UIs, user data, and intent. In practice, however, most of these systems operate outside the application itself. When you try to build one from scratch, you quickly run into a core limitation: large language models have no native understanding of your React state, component hierarchy, or business logic.