May 2019 Summaries

Netlify Functions has been available for over a year and a half, supporting hundreds of thousands of functions created since its release. The platform is now increasing the memory capacity from 128MB to 1024MB, making it easier for users to run workloads with heavier memory footprints such as image or video processing, event streaming, logging, data analysis, or running Headless Chrome in Netlify Functions. This change aims to encourage users to be more creative with server-side code and improve their overall development experience. The company welcomes feedback on any custom needs regarding memory or execution time limits.

The process of writing and deploying code can be challenging due to the disparity between development environments and production, making it difficult to test and identify bugs. To overcome this, developers can use local emulators that replicate production conditions, such as serverless providers like AWS, Netlify, and Microsoft, which offer CLI tools or sandbox testing environments. By using these tools, developers can improve their testing strategy, reduce the likelihood of deploying buggy code, and increase productivity. A concrete example is using Netlify Dev, an extension of the Netlify CLI, to create a serverless function that makes a call to the Yelp API to fetch data for a map visualization. The process involves installing the Netlify CLI, creating a basic project scaffold, connecting the project to Netlify, and deploying the function to test its functionality. With Netlify Dev, developers can share their locally running build with stakeholders, receive instant feedback, and deploy code faster, ultimately improving their development workflow and reducing the risk of deploying buggy code.

Netlify has introduced Netlify Dev, a feature that allows developers to spin up a local dev environment via the Netlify CLI, giving them access to Netlify features like redirects, functions, and env variables on their local machine. This enables quick iteration and testing of frontend and serverless functions before deploying to production. The Netlify CLI also offers a faster deploy process with a "deploy --open" command, which allows for quicker turnarounds and easier sharing of preview URLs with teams. However, it's recommended to use this feature in moderation due to potential risks of deploying untested code to production.

We have improved Netlify Forms spam filtering using Akismet, enhancing our ability to detect spam. This improvement was made without changing the user interface too much, introducing a dropdown menu to filter submissions by state and a button to change the state of selected submissions. We will continue to iterate on the UI to add functionalities pragmatically.

Dr. Anthony Gustin, the founder of Perfect Keto, partnered with web agency Wayfx to adopt a Headless WordPress architecture for his popular website, resulting in lightning-fast page delivery. This approach decouples the end user experience from the content management system, allowing frontend developers to deliver rich and responsive user experiences without being constrained by the backend. By using WP Engine and Netlify, Dr. Gustin's website now benefits from a streamlined backend, sped up display logic, and the potential for designers and developers to create truly interactive experiences, unleashing the full potential of the site as an in-browser application.

Proxx is an interactive web game developed by the Google Chrome Labs team, inspired by Minesweeper, which showcases building dynamic and performant applications with web technologies. The app leverages various technologies such as Preact, Rollup, WebWorkers, WebGL, and Canvas for optimal performance without sacrificing capabilities. Its source code is open-source and available for learning purposes. Proxx is being featured at Google I/O 2019 as part of a session on building fast and smooth web apps, and can be accessed through the proxx.app website.