Hi readers! In today's issue, I've included the first installment of a comprehensive web development mid-year review, which focuses on version control and browsers. The next installments will cover languages, operating systems, version control, general industry news/stats/surveys, and other tools you need to know that have been released and more so far this year.
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Sheena
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A new site called Mozilla Lifeboat has been launched to help connect laid off Mozilla employees with Mozilla alumni looking to hire at companies like GitHub, MongoDB, Google, and more. It's one of many efforts to help those affected by Mozilla's mass layoffs, like the #mozillalifeboat hashtag on Twitter, where companies can connect with those workers laid off directly.
More:
- Others not featured on the Mozilla Lifeboat list but that have expressed interest in hiring Mozilla employees laid off include Safari and WebKit and Amazon Web Services.
- Mozilla recently laid off nearly 25% of its workforce, or 250 employees, including their Developer Tools employees and entire MDN team. The company seeks to organize a "new product organization" beyond its flagship web browser to create new revenue streams and ship products faster.
- What will happen to Firefox Developer Tools now: On Twitter, Firefox Developer Tools team said "it will not be going away," however. The team will just be smaller, and will share more details later "when we have them."
- What will happen to Rust: The news caused some to worry about the future of the Rust programming language, which Mozilla supports. However, Rust core team member Steve Klabnik reassured users "Rust will survive." Most contributors and team members are non-Mozilla, Mozilla has been on "long road towards diversification," and companies like Amazon and Microsoft will now pay for "a bunch of the bills" Mozilla used to.
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Storybook’s new developer experience
Storybook 6.0, an open-source tool for developing UI components in isolation for React, Vue, Angular, and more, is now available. Some highlights:
- Zero config setup which also comes with best-practice features pre-configured
- The introduction of Storybook Args, which improves component developers' efficiency by allowing stories to accept dynamic data as input arguments
- Controls, a new add-on that makes it possible to dynamically edit a component’s inputs without touching code
- Composition feature, which gives developers the ability to browse components from any Storybook inside their local Storybook
- Documentation overhaul
For a thorough list of all new changes introduced in this release, check out the changelog.
STORYBOOK / MEDIUM
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Twitter launched its new API, Twitter API v2. For the first time since 2012, the company rebuilt the API's foundation, thus cleaning it up and making it possible to add new features, such as:
- The ability to specify which fields get returned, or retrieve more Tweets from a conversation within the same response
- Other new features: conversation threading, poll results in Tweets, pinned Tweets on profiles, spam filtering, and a more powerful stream filtering and search query language
- Multiple access levels and new product tracks beyond just standard (free), premium (self-serve paid), and enterprise (custom paid), making it possible for all developers – ranging from fields like academic research to business – receive "elevated access and grow on the same API."
- New developer portal where you can start using the API with an onboarding wizard, manage apps, track your API usage and limits, access the new support center, find documentation, and more.
Twitter released a free, fully supported, production-ready Early Access to an initial set of new endpoints for developers to measure Tweet performance, stream Tweets in real-time or analyze past conversations, and more. You can start using it by visiting the new developer portal. For those who don't have a developer account, you can apply for one here.
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Go 1.15 has been released. Some highlights:
- The GOPROXY environment variable now supports skipping proxies that return errors which means you can divided proxy URLs with either commas (
, ) or pipe characters (| ).
- Substantial improvements to the Go linker that decrease which linker resource usage and improve code robustness/maintainability.
- Better allocation for small objects at high core counts
- A redesigned object file format
- New embedded tzdata package.
Check the release notes for a thorough list of other new changes introduced in this release.
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Version Control:
Version Control:
GITHUB:
General:
- GitHub acquired popular JavaScript package manager npm, Jeremy Epling, GitHub's director of product management, confirmed. As a result of the integration, Friedman noted in his March 2020 blog post developers will benefit from new capabilities, such as publishing improvements as well as security updates.
- GitHub CEO Nat Friedman announced all of its core features are now free for teams. These include free private repositories with unlimited collaborators for all, even for those teams that use GitHub for commercial purposes. As a result...
Mobile:
- The iOS and Android versions of GitHub for mobile are now generally available. The app allows GitHub users to receive notifications when they're mentioned in a discussion, merge pull requests, add code to repositories, "swipe to finish a task," respond to comments and more "while on the go."
GitHub Satellite Conference:
Other new features:
- GitHub has launched a public roadmap, a public repository to keep developers updated about what new features and functionality the platform will release in the next few quarters. As a result, teams can plan ahead better while also offering earlier feedback to GitHub about what they like and don't.
- GitHub CEO Nat Friedman revealed dark mode...
GitHub Enterprise:
- GitHub announced GitHub Enterprise is now available for free through...
GITLAB:
General:
- GitLab CEO Sid Sijbrandij announced...
Releases:
- GitLab 12.8: introduces the Log Explorer, which lets developers work with all of their logs from one place. Other new features...
- GitLab 12.9...
GIT:
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Browsers:
CHROME:
General:
- Google Chrome will start gradually blocking insecure HTTP file downloads downloading on HTTPS origins, Joe DeBlasio, who works on the Chrome security team, tweeted, sparking concerns among some developers about site breakages and more. By September's Chrome 85 release date, users will receive warnings for mixed content, while Chrome 86 in October will no longer download any mixed content by default.
- Google released an update noting the loading attribute for lazy loading images and frames has not been standardized, advising developers not to use it until it has a specification.
- Google's Chrome Web Store has announced new changes in its policies concerning spam. Google instructs developers to avoid publishing more than one extension that provides "duplicate experiences or functionality" and more, which you can check out in further detail here. These new policies will go into effect starting Aug. 27.
- The Chrome team revealed it has been working with Microsoft Edge on CSS grid tooling, which you can check out a sneak peek of here.
- Starting in August 2020, Chrome...
Releases:
- Google's Chrome 80: introduced major changes in how the browser operates. While Chrome 80 came with support for SameSite Cookies, it was not immediately rolled out with the release of the new browser version as many anticipated. Google instead rolled out SameSite-by-default and SameSite=None-requires-Secure in Chrome 80 Stable the week of Feb. 17, 2020. Other notable features...
- Google Chrome 79: stopped displaying Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS) preflight OPTIONS requests in the...
General:
- Mozilla announced interim CEO Mitchell Baker will be the new permanent CEO of Mozilla Corporation. She will now permanently take over from former CEO Chris Beard, who announced he was stepping down last August.
- Mozilla will be dropping support for Adobe Flash in consumer versions of its browser by December 2020. Security and performance issues...
Releases:
- Firefox 73: the Firefox team has added overscroll-behavior-block and overscroll-behavior-inline to CSS logical properties...
- Firefox 74: includes the removal of Transport Layer Security (TLS) 1.0/1.1 support..
OTHER BROWSERS:
- Web browser engine Webkit announced it is now blocking cookies for cross-site resources by default in Apple's Safari browser.
- Microsoft Edge is one of the least private browsers, a new study...
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Quick Hits:
*This is a sponsored post.
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