📨 #224: Next.js, TanStack Form, Astro, RTK, State Machine, Remix, StyleX | Lynx, Entreprise, SwiftUI, VisionOS, Windows, Hermes, Expo | Node.js, TypeScript, ArkType, Nitro, BetterAuth

March 5, 2025 · 8 min read

Newsletter Editor - Docusaurus maintainer

Hi everyone!

This week we have:

React: A cool Next.js release improving the DX, and TanStack Form launching a stable v1.
React Native: The field is getting more competitive, with ByteDance, Callstack and early signals of Vercel mobile activity.
Other: TypeScript support keeps improving!

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⚛️ React

Next.js 15.2

Vercel released a new minor version of Next.js, with major DX improvements. Highlights include:

Redesigned error UI and improved stack traces: A redesigned debugging experience leveraging the brand-new React captureOwnerStack() API
Streaming metadata: Async metadata will no longer block page rendering or client-side page transitions
Turbopack performance improvements: Faster compile times and reduced memory usage
React View Transitions (experimental): Experimental support for React's new View Transitions API
Node.js Middleware (experimental): Experimental support for using the Node.js runtime in Middleware

TanStack Form 1.0

A new TanStack library, years in the making, has just been released as stable. The announcement post highlights an interesting subset of its features:

Framework agnostic, headless: Supports 5 frameworks, including React used in the post's examples
Extreme type safety: I must admit <form.Field> is a pretty cool API
Schema validation: Support for Zod, Valibot, ArkType, Standard Schema
Async validation, built-in debouncing, AbortSignal
Isomorphic, multi-platform: share validation logic across client/server

💸 Clerk - Build session-based authentication with React and Express
👀 Rsbuild Plugin React Router - Epic Stack example: Did you know that Rsbuild can be used as an alternative to Vite for React Router framework mode? Yep, it can even run Kent’s favorite stack.
🗓️ React Paris 2025 - 🇫🇷 Paris - 20 & 21 March (2 days) / 19th of March (Workshops) - Last call to join the React Event of the year in Paris. Get 20% off tickets with code "TWIR"!
🗓️ dotJS 2025 - 🇫🇷 Paris - 03 April - Last week of regular registration! Secure your spot now to save 200€ until March 11. Join Ryan Dahl, Sarah Drasner, Wes Bos, Angie Jones, Kyle Simpson, Matteo Collina, Eduardo San Martin Morote and more! Get 15% off tickets with code "TWIR”.
📜 {transitions} = f(state): A rather philosophical article explaining that React can be seen as a state machine where the possible state transitions are implicitly defined by its event handlers. The asynchronous/concurrent nature of React makes it possible to introduce invalid state transitions that you should guard against explicitly.
📜 Building APIs with Next.js: New official guide from Lee Robinson, covering many cases and answering common questions.
📜 It's probably time to stop recommending Redux: Argues you probably don’t need a global state manager and can go a long way with an API cache + useState.
📜 Signals in React? Not a good idea: React doesn’t have first-class signal support on purpose, and relies on raw data.
📜 React, Solid, htmx: Part 2: The recent evolution of multiple frameworks, all pushing the web forward in their way.
📜 Building an InertiaJS app with Rails: A complete example of a seamless integration of a React frontend with a Rails backend through Inertia, without the need for an API.
📜 How to Show a 404 in React Router
📦 XState Store 3.0: I particularly like the new store.trigger API that permits using the store more ergonomically, in particular for cases where event-driven indirection is not useful. This new version makes it an interesting alternative to Zustand, still lightweight but more opinionated, and a path toward adopting real XState state machines.
📦 Isograph 0.3 - Modern GraphQL framework, support for Relay-style connections, fetch policies
📦 Astro 5.4 - Remote image optimization in Markdown, enhanced security for dev and preview servers
📦 React Hook Form Lenses - Focus on specific parts of your deeply nested form state
📦 StyleX 0.11 - Debugging, CLI caching and docs improvements
📦 Redux Toolkit 2.6 - Infinite Query support
📦 Remix 2.16 - Vite 6 support
🎥 Jack Herrington - React’s New ViewTransition Component Is A Little Flakey
🎥 Alem Tuzlak - React Router just made your apps faster (splitRouteModules)
🎙️ This Month in React - CRA, React Router, RTK, TypeScript, Astro, Standard Schema

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William CandillonReact-Native animations expert - Youtuber

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📱 React-Native

Lynx: Unlock Native for More

ByteDance just announced Lynx, their native cross-platform technology. It’s used extensively in their production apps, including TikTok! With React bindings, it’s a serious competitor to React Native, and support for other frameworks is expected. The architectural choices are interesting, with a dual-thread model and different runtimes. It has support for some CSS and Web APIs that even React Native still doesn’t have and uses convenient built-in JSX intrinsic elements like <view>.

The feature set at launch is impressive, but there are also some surprising things you might dislike, such as using React 17 / Preact, or custom elements on the web. Time will tell whether the technology lives up to its promise and can truly compete with the established player. In any case, competition is healthy.