Faster Image Loading, Astro V4, and more! This week in web dev (December 1st, 2023)

Hey friend! It is Friday and Christmas is finally here ⛄️! Even though the news has been little this past week, I still found a few for you! I hope you have a fantastic weekend, and a great start to your Christmas, maybe you are going out gift-shopping? I know I am 😆 

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Netlify Image CDN

Netlify just announced the beta release of their image CDN. With their image CDN it is possible to resize, crop, and reformat images on the go, easily like this:

https://example.netlify.app/.netlify/images?url=/owl.jpg&w=800&h=600

Using Netlify’s Image CDN it is possible to speed up your application anywhere you use images.

PHP 8.3

The old, but gold 🥇 (depending on who you ask…), PHP 8.3 release contains several major improvements like typed class constants, a new JSON validation function, enhancements to working with read-only properties and overriding methods, expanded random number generation, and other features to simplify and secure PHP development.

Astro 4.0 Beta

Not too long ago, Astro was in this newsletter with their recently released version 3.5. But Astro is already back with new additions, changes, and improvements. The first Astro 4.0 beta is out, upgrading to the latest Vite build tool version 5. While most projects should upgrade smoothly, some minimal code changes may be needed. Astro 4.0 also brings some experimental features to stable status.