JPEG XL vs AVIF for web use-cases

JPEG XL vs AVIF for web use-cases
about 1 hour by Jake Archibald

AVIF beats JPEG XL in most web use cases, producing smaller files, encoding faster, using less memory, and decoding quicker. JPEG XL occasionally wins for certain photos, lossless images, and possibly HDR, but these are exceptions. For most web images, AVIF at high effort with full color resolution is the best default choice, though a newer JPEG XL encoder called jixel is closing the gap fast.

React i18n, minus the part where you babysit JSON files
sponsored by Tolgee

Tolgee is an open-source i18n library and platform for React. It plugs into react-i18next. Setup takes three lines of code. One CLI command sends your new keys to Tolgee. AI translates them using the context of your UI. Your PM or translator fixes the rest by Alt+clicking text in the running app. Apache-2.0 core, 4,100+ stars on GitHub. Free to start, no card.

GraphQL as a foundation for malleable UI
6 minutes by Jovi De Croock

GraphQL was built around the idea that clients define their own data needs, and that principle matters more now that AI agents can reshape interfaces on the fly. When a user asks to turn a product grid into an inventory table, the data requirements change too, and a fixed endpoint either falls short or over-delivers. A capable GraphQL schema lets the client update both the interface and its query together, without touching the server.

A visual notation for React's parent and owner trees
23 minutes by Jules Blom

Reading React code file by file makes it hard to see how components connect. Working memory fills up fast when tracing props or state across files. Visual diagrams of the parent and owner trees make this structure visible at a glance. A notation with consistent rules for components, context, Suspense, memo, and other React features lets you read any diagram without learning it from scratch each time.

Can we make React faster using the React compiler?
20 minutes by Jimmy Miller

React Compiler can make React significantly faster. Jimmy explores this through prototypes like function inlining, list memoization, smarter context handling, and optimized external store selectors. Each optimization shows real speedups on benchmarks, though benchmark wins don't always translate to production gains. The React Compiler's deep code analysis makes it a powerful foundation for these kinds of improvements.

Deploy Your React Apps Without the DevOps Hassle + Get 30% Off
sponsored by Cloudways by DigitalOcean

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className considered harmful
5 minutes by Matt Rothenberg

Accepting className on design system components feels convenient, but it lets teams quietly build up inconsistent overrides that are hard to track and break during refactors. Renaming it to something like DANGEROUS_className keeps the escape hatch open while making overrides visible in code review and easy to find with a simple search. Repeated overrides often signal a missing variant or an unreported bug. Tracking them over time turns drift into useful feedback.

And the most popular article from the last issue was:

• Making context cheap with React compiler