Astro Weekly #36

Hello Astronauts,

Exciting news! Astro Weekly is moving to Sundays!

There’s so much incredible stuff happening with Astro now more than ever, but sometimes it can be a little difficult to cover it all alongside the 9-5!

To ensure you get the latest on everything Astro sooner, Astro Weekly will be delivered to your inbox on Sunday moving forward.

So without ado, in today's newsletter, I'll be covering all the announcements from Astro's mini-launch week, aptly named "The Future of Astro”, and more!

This week in Astro ☄️

The Future of Astro 🔮

Astro has unveiled three major features slated for release in 2024, heralding what is described as the next generation of content-driven frontend architecture.

Here’s a recap of everything announced:

Zero-JS View Transitions 🪄

Astro has announced support for zero-JavaScript view transitions, leveraging the View Transitions API in Chrome and Edge 126. This update enables native, app-like page navigation without JavaScript, marking a significant advancement to Astro’s famous party trick.

Read more about Zero-JS View Transitions in Astro:
https://astro.build/blog/future-of-astro-zero-js-view-transitions/

Astro Content Layer ✏️

A more powerful Content Layer API is coming to Astro, enhancing the existing Content Collections functionality to simplify content management.

With the new API, you can read files from the file system, provide a simple array of inline data, load data from a remote API using fetch(), and load content from an external CMS like Storyblok.

Read more about the new Astro Content Layer API:
https://astro.build/blog/future-of-astro-content-layer/

Server Islands 🏝️

Server Islands are a new architecture for delivering static, CDN-cached HTML page shells with dynamic content. You define a server island similarly to a client island, but use the server:defer directive instead of client:*.

<UserButton server:defer />

This new directive instructs Astro to defer rendering the component initially, allowing the static page to be cached with placeholder content. The deferred render updates the page with dynamic HTML later.

Read more about Server Islands in Astro:
https://astro.build/blog/future-of-astro-server-islands/

Astro 4.11 released ⚡️

Now we know what’s coming in Astro later this year, but what about now?

Astro 4.11 is out with custom 500 page improvements and Shiki transformers in the Code component.

Head over to the official Astro release announcement for all the details on providing more contextual information on 500 errors with a new special page file, and using Shiki transformers on your code blocks.

Boosters 🚀

Create beautiful screen recordings in minutes with Screen Studio.

Screen Studio makes it easy to create engaging product demos, courses, tutorials, and social media videos.

Add automatic zoom on mouse actions, smooth mouse movement, and other powerful effects and animations.

Astro Community 🧑‍🚀

Astro comes Together 🎉

Astro coffee, space cocktails, and a Houston lounge.

Astro’s first-ever in-person event, Astro Together, took place in Montreal last month, and if you feel bad for missing out, then Astro has published official photos from the event that will have you booking flights for the next one.

• 📸 View the Astro Together Photo Gallery

• 📺 Watch the Astro Together Keynote

Experimental Environment Variables 🧪

Astro 4.10 introduced a new experimental built-in module, astro:env, to allow easier use of environment variables in your Astro project.

In this video, Jamie Barton demonstrates configuring API keys for Stripe using the new envField schema right in your config.

What else I’ve been reading this week 🤓

Check out these great posts from the Astro Community ↓

• 📕 Announcing Live Preview for Storyblok’s Astro Integration

• 🤖 Build a RAG chatbot with Astro, Postgres, and LlamaIndex

• 🔌 Using Unplugin Icons in Astro with React

If you have something awesome you’d like to share with the Astro community, you can reach me at [email protected] or via DM on X

Astro on X 💫

What’s happening on Twitter X this week…

Direct link for web version:
https://x.com/nathanlawsn/status/1800649387112030672

Astro Showcase 🤩

Check out these awesome projects from your fellow Astronauts.

Would you like your work to be featured in our Astro Showcase? Get in touch at [email protected] or DM me on X

That’s all we have time for today, Astronauts.

Got something you’d like to share in next week’s newsletter? Reach out at [email protected] or via DM on X.

I’ll see you on Sundays.

– Nathan 🧑‍🚀