March 2019 Summaries

Today, we are happy to announce that you’re now able to create and deploy sites to Netlify, directly from CodeSandbox! We've integrated CodeSandbox with Netlify, allowing users to build in the browser, and deploy their sites to Netlify's CI/CD environment with one click. This new integration was built in collaboration with the team at CodeSandbox and shortens the path between writing code and getting your site online. With this integration, users can enjoy all the usual Netlify benefits of CI/CD and other features, while still using a low-friction approach to getting started on web projects.

This wonderfully creative site allows you to customize the algorithms driving generative art to make something you'd want to hang on your wall. It's a JAMstack site that uses the power of the web browser to build an engaging and effective user interface, as exemplified by its creator Joshua Comeau's approach to creating unique generative art through serendipitous experimentation with a whimsical machine. The site allows users to experiment and create their own images, which can then be purchased as physical prints via integration with Stripe. It's described as a joy to use, inviting users to have a playful experience.

Netlify has upgraded its default build image from Ubuntu Linux 14.04 LTS (codenamed "Trusty Tahr") to Ubuntu Linux 16.04 LTS (codenamed "Xenial Xerus") as it reaches its end of life in April 2019, requiring changes to the operating system version on their build images. This change allows for more flexibility and testing capabilities, enabling the company to roll out new features and improvements to all new sites without affecting existing ones. Existing sites can still run on the "Trusty" image, but users can now upgrade to the newer "Xenial" image with a single click in their Build & deploy settings page. The updated build infrastructure paves the way for future innovations and improvements.

Curated is a searchable index of sites about web design, featuring community-suggested sites presented through an elegant interface. It is notable for its clean design and effective use of user contributions via Google Form and Algolia search. The site's simplicity, coupled with its thoughtful implementation of developer tools, make it a great example of how to gather contributions from users in a seamless way.

This summary provides a concise overview of the article, which discusses the concept of closures in JavaScript and how they relate to React Hooks. The author creates a tiny clone of React Hooks using closures, demonstrating their effective use and how Custom Hooks naturally arise. The article explains how closures are used in the implementation, including the Module pattern and the usage of arrays to generalize state and effects. It also touches on deriving the rules of hooks based on the implementation and concludes that understanding closures can help demystify how React Hooks work.

Matt Biilmann, co-founder and CEO of Netlify, discusses building the company's infrastructure in an episode of the Software Engineering Daily podcast. He shares insights on evolving for scale and lessons learned from his background in music. The goal was to make a simple and intuitive way of working that could be scaled up to support many frontend developers.

Creating high-value content for a community forum is crucial for engaging users, but it requires careful planning and execution. The author emphasizes that simply posting tips and solutions to common questions may not be enough, as it lacks engagement and discussion potential. Instead, they focus on transforming existing support threads into valuable community posts by making them concise, clear, and humanized. To achieve this, the team created a "before/after" guide showcasing rewritten answers with annotations, which helped standardize the process and improve content quality. By doing so, they were able to quickly create engaging community content using existing material, saving time and effort.

FaunaDB` is a cloud-based NoSQL database that integrates seamlessly with the `JAMstack`, a set of best practices for building fast, scalable web applications. The JAMstack emphasizes separation of concerns between application deliverables and APIs, allowing for well-defined build steps and automated processes using services like Netlify. FaunaDB's capabilities are showcased in a demo readymade for use with Netlify Functions and FaunaDB, enabling developers to build serverless CRUD apps efficiently.