December 2022 Summaries

We're making our predictions for 2023 based on data from our third annual Jamstack Community Survey. Remote work is expected to remain a permanent fixture in the tech industry, with web development projects favoring flexibility and autonomy. The CMS market is predicted to see growth for Sanity, while WordPress will likely decline in popularity. TypeScript will continue to gain traction as a programming language, and React will maintain its dominance in the component model space. Next.js will slow down but be surpassed by Remix, which will gain momentum after being acquired by Shopify. Web3 is expected to lose steam due to low adoption rates. Our 2022 predictions were largely accurate, with notable exceptions including Strapi's slower growth and Vite's rapid rise.

APIs continue to play a significant role in modern web development, driving innovation across various sectors, but they also represent a vulnerable area for organizations due to exposed application logic and sensitive data. To mitigate this risk, authentication is required to verify the identity of users making API requests, while authorization verifies the properties or information that verified users can access. Transport Layer Security (TLS) provides encryption and mutual authentication for select organizations using zero trust security models, OAuth 2.0 offers a secure way for users to grant third-party applications access to their resources without sharing passwords, JSON Web Tokens (JWTs) provide key-based client authentication with self-contained tokens that eliminate the need for additional calls to retrieve user information or check permissions, and rate limiting prevents excessive or malicious traffic from abusing APIs. The choice of API authentication method depends on specific needs, and understanding these methods is essential for protecting API resources and sensitive data.

Google introduced Core Web Vitals to measure a web page's overall experience beyond its content value. This new SEO signal assesses how users perceive the interaction with a webpage, focusing on three key metrics: Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS), and First Input Delay (FID). These vitals help search engines understand the user's perception of a website's performance, which affects its overall ranking. Google bases Core Web Vitals on real user metrics, making it essential to consider device and location when optimizing for this signal. To evaluate the impact of Core Web Vitals on SEO, developers can use various tools and strategies, including Lighthouse, PageSpeed Insights, Treo's site speed tool, and their own real user monitoring platforms. By improving Core Web Vitals, businesses can increase conversions, click-through rate, and revenue uplift, as well as decrease bounce rates and cost per acquisition.

To adapt and localize times in the browser with JavaScript, developers can use the Date object's toLocaleString() method or the Intl.DateTimeFormat() method. However, these methods have drawbacks, such as displaying un-personalized content before JavaScript kicks in or failing to load on some devices. To overcome these challenges, Netlify Edge Functions provides a solution by allowing developers to use native JavaScript APIs within edge functions, eliminating the need for client-side JavaScript and server-side logic. By leveraging Edge Functions, developers can personalize timezones without introducing additional infrastructure, making it easier to adapt dates and times according to different locales and timezones in a virtual and remote-first world.

The Commerce-UI team helped Aether Apparel build a unique online shopping experience using headless Shopify, Sanity CMS, Next.js, and Netlify. The goal was to create an ecommerce site that reflects the brand's physical stores, with a focus on community and storytelling. To achieve this, they built a custom frontend with Next.js, decoupled from the backend logic, allowing for faster page loads and better performance. They also utilized Sanity as a headless CMS, providing a user-friendly interface for content editors to create unique product pages. The site's performance was further improved by hosting it on Netlify's High-Performance Edge network, ensuring speedy delivery regardless of location. This approach enabled Aether Apparel to showcase their brand and products in a more engaging way, while also improving store conversions.

Integrating Contentful with your Netlify site has become easier than ever, thanks to the recent improvements made by Contentful. With the new features, you can create and manage webhooks with ease, allowing for continuous deployment of your site and introducing a "Build website" button in the Contentful editor pages. The integration enables automation for building sites, stores, and apps using various tools and services, making it easier to combine different services to create an ideal solution.