In this month’s roundup, we cover key updates from leading JavaScript and React UI libraries. August 2024 has been an exciting month, with several releases focusing on performance improvements, new features, and enhanced developer tools. Let’s dive into the latest news from the major players in the UI library space.

JavaScript & React UI Libraries

• Sencha introduced Rapid Ext JS, a Visual Studio Code extension designed to accelerate the development of Ext JS applications. It integrates a low-code editor and a user-friendly graphical user interface (GUI), allowing developers to work more efficiently. Sencha also released the update of their visual app builder Sencha Architect 4.3.6 with some quality improvements.

• Progress® announced Telerik and Kendo UI 2024 Q3 Release introduced newly launched page templates and building blocks, as well as the new Chart Wizard Component and Grid enhancements.

• The Ag-Grid team released AG Grid 32.1 and AG Charts 10.1. They also introduced the new AG Grid Theme Builder that lets designers and developers easily create and customise AG Grid themes, without needing third-party tools.

• Webix released version 10.3 of their UI library, which includes typing mode for bot-generated responses in Chat, data facets in Report Manager, standalone lines in Diagram, a number of innovations for SpreadSheet, Pivot and Scheduler components.

• DHTMLX team presented Pivot 2.0 with the codebase overhaul, enhanced performance, and numerous new features: frozen and collapsible columns, vertical headers, the ability to set limits for aggregated data and a range of new math methods to aggregate data more effectively. They also updated DHTMLX Scheduler to v.7.1, introducing support for RFC-5545 format for recurring events, the ability to use maps from different providers, and other visual and behavioural improvements.

• MUI team announced the availability of Material UI v6. This new version includes improvements to dark mode, stabilized APIs, decreased bundle size, and bug fixes. Material UI v6 introduces Pigment CSS, a zero-runtime CSS-in-JS styling engine to replace Emotion and styled-components as a more future-proof solution for writing styles in React 19 and beyond.

• Infragistics announced Ultimate 24.1 update for their React, Angular, Web Components and Blazor packages. Key novelties include the new React Code Generation feature in App Builder and significant updates across major web frameworks too, focusing on state management, performance optimization, and advanced data handling.

• And if you're developing with Svelte, check out the step-by-step tutorial from SVAR team on how to quickly create editable users table with Svelte and SVAR DataGrid.

JavaScript Related News

• GitHub Survey: The AI Wave Continues to Grow on Software Development Teams explores the findings of a survey conducted with 2,000 software development professionals across the U.S., Brazil, Germany, and India. It reveals growing use of generative AI tools in software development (no surprises here), with over 97% of respondents reporting usage.

Software development teams are recognizing more benefits with AI coding tools than previously reported. Some of these include building more secure software, improved code quality, better test case generation, and faster programming language adoption.

• React Native 0.75 released with support for percentage values in layout, new architecture stabilization, template & init updates, and more.
  

• Angular now has support for TypeScript isolatedModules as of Angular 18.2. With this support, the team claims performance boosts of up to 10% in production build times.
  

• Astro 4.15 is out. This release stabilizes Astro Actions and includes support for libSQL remotes in Astro DB, a new timeout option for client:idle, and more.
  

• Tauri 2.0 Release Candidate is announced. Tauri a lightweight framework for creating fast, cross-platform desktop applications by combining any front-end framework with a rust-powered backend for enhanced performance and security.

• And if you want to stay up to date with the JS news, you can check the list of JavaScript talks presented at conferences during the first half of 2024 gathered in one place.

As the summer winds down and the holiday season comes to an end, the world of web development continues to evolve at a rapid pace. With exciting new tools, performance improvements, and enhanced development environments, developers have plenty to look forward to in the months ahead. Stay tuned for the updates and enjoy your coding journey!

Cover photo by Christopher Gower on Unsplash