Introducing Deno Deploy Beta, ES2021 has been approved, Google delays FLoC, and the launch of Brave Search

NOTE: This is issue #035 of my newsletter, which went live on Monday, June 28th. If you find this information useful and interesting and you want to receive future issues as they are published, ahead of everyone else, I invite you to join the subscriber list at frontendnexus.com.

Deno Deploy is the latest addition to the Deno ecosystem. The Ecma General Assembly has approved ECMAScript 2021. Brave launched Brave Search Beta. Google postponed the deployment of FLoC. Chrome 91 included TableNG, solving many table rendering issues. And the major releases include Angular v12.1.0, Cypress v7.6.0, Hugo 0.84.0, and more.

Introducing Deno Deploy Beta 1

Deno Deploy is the latest addition to the Deno ecosystem. It is a "globally distributed JavaScript VM" running in 25 data centers across the world. The project is currently in the Beta 1 phase, with further releases scheduled for the coming months. You can use this service for free during the beta period. Pricing details will come once the project reaches the phase of General Availability

You can use your custom domain or you will receive a deno.dev subdomain. All deployments will have to run over encrypted channels. You can deploy a custom certificate, or you can use the one provided using Let's Encrypt.

Deno Deploy Beta 1

ES2021 has been approved

The Ecma General Assembly has approved ECMAScript 2021. It is the twelfth edition of the ECMAScript Language Specification and it brings the following updates:

Logical Assignment Operators: (&&= ||= ??=)
Numeric Separators: 1_000
Promise.any and AggregateError
String.prototype.replaceAll
WeakRefs and FinalizationRegistry

The support for these features is good in all major browsers (with a few exceptions). It means you can already start using them today if you haven't started already. Happy coding!

Browser news

Brave

Brave is bravely taking on Google with the launch of their new search engine. The Beta version of Brave Search is available in the Brave browser. It can be also used via the official portal using any modern browser.

Brave Search is built on top of a completely independent index and doesn’t track users, their searches, or their clicks. There are no ads displayed in the search results during the beta phase. There are plans to offer options for both ad-free paid search and ad-supported free search later.

Chrome

Google wants FLoC to be the future of tracking for targeting ads in an age without third-party cookies. The initial rollout encountered unexpected opposition from almost all other third parties. As a result, Google announced that it will delay the introduction of this new technology. They are committing to a public development and testing period that will last until 2023.

Google delays FLoC rollout until 2023

Chrome 91 included many improvements covered by the #Compat2021 initiative. One set of such improvements is called TableNG and it fixes over 70 issues with the way tables are rendered. The most spectacular change, in my opinion, is the option to use position: sticky on table rows. More details are available in the blog post linked below.

TablesNG Resolves 72 Chromium Bugs for Better Interoperability

Software updates and releases

Angular v12.1.0 - a development platform for building mobile and desktop web applications
Apostrophe 3.0 - a full-featured, open-source CMS
Commander.js v8.0.0 - Node.js CLI tools made easy
Cypress v7.6.0 - fast, easy, and reliable testing for anything that runs in a browser
Hugo 0.84.0 - a fast and flexible static site generator built using Go
ip-address v8.0.0 - a library for parsing and manipulating IPv4 and IPv6 addresses in JavaScript
pnpm v6.9.0 - Fast, disk space efficient package manager
Storybook 6.3 - UI component explorer for all major libraries
TOAST UI Editor 3.0 - Markdown WYSIWYG Editor
AdminJS v5.0.0 - an admin panel for apps written in node.js