June 2022 Summaries

Gatsby 4.15 introduced a built-in `<Script>` component designed to improve website performance by offering various script loading strategies, helping developers manage scripts without negatively impacting user experience. The component allows for different loading strategies such as post-hydrate, idle, and off-main-thread, each with its unique benefits. The post-hydrate strategy loads scripts after the page is hydrated, providing immediate performance improvements over standard `<script>` tags. The idle strategy uses the browser's requestIdleCallback API, executing scripts when the main thread is free, while the experimental off-main-thread strategy utilizes Partytown to move resource-intensive scripts to a web worker, reducing the main thread's workload. A demonstration website was built to explore these strategies, revealing that while post-hydrate and idle offer similar performance, off-main-thread has specific use cases and trade-offs. Overall, the Gatsby `<Script>` component provides both power and flexibility for developers seeking to optimize script loading on their sites.

Gatsby has unveiled its new Gatsby for Agencies Plan, designed to enhance the experience for agency partners by addressing specific needs gathered from consultations with them. The plan aims to improve workflows for managing Gatsby site ownership, usage limits, and billing, while offering a more streamlined process for transferring sites between agencies and clients. It also seeks to provide better visibility and collaboration across multiple workspaces within the Gatsby Cloud UI, and to refine user access and role coordination tools for diverse teams working on client sites. The initial release of the plan features more flexible limits to increase productivity using Gatsby and promises future updates, including enhanced site transfer capabilities and multi-workspace features. Gatsby is actively seeking feedback from agencies to further refine and improve their offerings, encouraging communication through their product roadmap portal and direct contact with Kate Griggs for any suggestions or inquiries.

Gatsby has announced the launch of the Gatsby Agency Directory, a new online resource designed to connect web development and design agencies using the Gatsby Framework with potential clients. This initiative follows the Gatsby Best of 2021 Agency Awards, which celebrated the exceptional work of agencies utilizing Gatsby. In addition to the directory, Gatsby has introduced a new agency-specific product plan, tailored to meet the distinct needs of agency partners. The directory allows users to search for agencies by various criteria, including geographic location, supported languages, and technology expertise, making it a valuable tool for businesses seeking to enhance their web presence. Gatsby plans to continuously refine the directory and invites feedback to improve its utility.

Gatsby's integration of GraphQL Type Generation enhances its TypeScript capabilities by allowing developers to automatically generate and update type definitions for GraphQL queries, streamlining collaboration and reducing the need for manual type writing. This new feature, announced during Gatsby’s Launch Week, simplifies the process of using multiple data sources by creating a unified GraphQL API and providing type safety to frontend code, making it particularly beneficial for teams working on isolated components or those new to a project. By adding auto-generated type files to the TypeScript configuration, developers can easily access query types, which aids in quicker prototyping and reduces ambiguity in data usage. The feature also extends GraphiQL-like autocompletion to code editors when the Gatsby development server is running, further enhancing the development experience. This advancement is part of broader efforts to improve Gatsby's TypeScript support, made possible with contributions from the open-source community and community plugins.

Gatsby has introduced enhancements to its Enterprise Pricing Plan to provide faster build speeds and improved global content delivery for companies using its headless web solutions. The new plan offers an enterprise-specific build environment that can increase build speeds by up to 30% and includes features like Burst Builds and Parallel Uploads, which significantly expedite the deployment process for large sites. With the expansion of Fastly's Points of Presence (POPs) to regions like South America, Africa, and Australia, Gatsby can now offer faster response times and better user experiences globally, reducing bounce rates and potentially boosting revenues. Additionally, the plan includes a Log Drains feature for Datadog to facilitate efficient log data analysis, helping enterprises troubleshoot and optimize their site performance more effectively. These improvements aim to deliver the fastest publishing pipelines and enhanced global reach while providing enterprises with critical insights into their website's performance.

Gatsby has achieved SOC 2 Type 2 certification, meeting the AICPA Trust Services Criteria for Security, Availability, and Confidentiality, following a rigorous evaluation process from October 2021 to March 2022. This certification demonstrates Gatsby's commitment to IT security and data protection, with the implementation of a robust cybersecurity program that includes continuous vulnerability patching and regular penetration testing, aided by compliance partner Laika. While proud of this achievement, Gatsby emphasizes that compliance is not the entirety of security and continues to enhance its security measures beyond SOC 2 requirements by architecting its services to securely segment and isolate customer data, conducting quarterly incident response exercises, and offering educational resources to its community. The ongoing efforts aim to provide a dependable development environment and empower developers to create secure web applications using Gatsby.

Gatsby Cloud has introduced Incremental Deploys for all builds, significantly enhancing the speed at which content changes are published across large sites. This new feature, now available for Branch, Pull Request, and CMS Preview builds, allows only the modified pages and routes to be updated when content changes are made, reducing the time to publish by over tenfold even for large sites. Previously, large sites faced delays in deploying content changes despite the improvements made by Gatsby 3 and Incremental Builds. With Incremental Deploys, sites like gatsbyjs.com have seen their publish times drop from 40 seconds to just 2 seconds on average. A third-party study highlighted the fast build and deploy times of Gatsby Cloud, comparable to local builds on powerful hardware like Apple M1 chips. Incremental Deploys is currently in beta for Branch and Pull Request builds, with Gatsby 4 being a requirement for this feature.

Gatsby has rolled out a series of enhancements to its Gatsby Framework and Gatsby Cloud, aiming to improve performance and usability for developers, marketers, and enterprise clients. The new Gatsby Script Component allows for better management of third-party scripts, enhancing site performance by offloading resource-intensive tasks to web workers with native experimental support for Partytown. The introduction of GraphQL Type Generation offers TypeScript developers auto-completion support, ensuring type safety while crafting queries. Enterprise clients benefit from faster build times with the new Enterprise Builds, improved log analysis with integration to Datadog, and enhanced global performance with additional international Points of Presence. Gatsby has also achieved SOC 2 Type 2 Certification, ensuring robust IT security standards. The Image CDN is now generally available, optimizing image processing and reducing load times, while Incremental Deploys are in beta for all build types, further decreasing publish times for large sites. The company is also focusing on agencies by developing a new pricing plan and introducing the Gatsby Agency Directory to connect agencies with potential clients. These updates are part of Gatsby's ongoing efforts to provide a fast, scalable, and secure platform for building headless web experiences.