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What’s new in Svelte: October 2021

A whole year of “What’s new in Svelte”

Dani Sandoval

Hey y’all 👋 It’s been 1 year since “What’s new in Svelte” started being cross-posted to the Svelte blog. I wanted to take this moment at the top to thank all of you for reading and for all the contributors every month. From the maintainers to everyone who posts their work in the Discord and Reddit, it’s amazing to witness all the effort that goes into making the Svelte community great.

Keep up the good work, everyone! Now, let’s dive into this month’s news...

New around Svelte

  • New additions to Svelte’s export map now expose no-op versions of lifecycle functions for SSR (Svelte 3.43.0)
  • Custom components with a src attribute no longer break svelte-native builds (Svelte 3.42.4)
  • Svelte plugin users without the TypeScript plugin enabled will now be prompted to enable it. It enhances TypeScript and JavaScript files with additional intellisense to interact with Svelte files. Please leave feedback if you are using it (Svelte extensions 105.4.0)
  • Event modifiers have been added to intellisense as autocomplete and hover info (Svelte extensions 105.4.0)
  • TypeScript users no longer have to strictly separate type imports and value imports when using Svelte version 3.39 or higher and svelte-preprocess version 4.9.5 or higher. This means you can now write import { MyInterface, myValue } from './somewhere' instead of import type { MyInterface } from './somewhere'; import { myValue } from './somewhere'. Huge thanks to community member @SomaticIT who mainly implemented this!

For a full list of features and bug fixes, check out the Svelte changelog.

SvelteKit Updates

Nearly 100 PRs committed again this past month, but there’s still lots to do and Svelte maintainers are looking for help getting SvelteKit to 1.0. Antony said it well in a recent comment on the issue:

If you think you are too n00b to contribute (you’re not), then add tests, or write tests for the feature you want to add, before you add it! Start small, and learn the codebase that way.

If you’d like to help, please consider working on any of the 1.0 milestone issues labeled with “help wanted”.

Notable SvelteKit improvements this month include...

  • Service workers are now allowed to access files using the $lib alias (#2326)
  • Svelte libraries should now work out-of-the-box without any Vite configuration (#2343)
  • Improvements to package exports field (#2345 and #2327)
  • [breaking] The prerender.pages config option has been renamed to prerender.entries (#2380)
  • A new generic argument has been added to allow typing Body from hooks (#2413)
  • The svelte field will be added to package.json when running the package command (#2431)
  • [breaking] The context parameter of the load function was renamed to stuff (#2439)
  • Added an entryPoint option for building a custom server with adapter-node (#2414)
  • vite-plugin-svelte improved support for useVitePreprocess, which uses Vite to automatically preprocess TypeScript, PostCSS, Scss, etc in Svelte components (#173)

To see all updates to SvelteKit, check out the SvelteKit changelog.

Community Showcase

Apps & Sites

  • radiofrance just migrated their website to SvelteKit
  • FLAYKS is the portfolio site for Félix Péault made with SvelteKit, Sanity, and Anime.js
  • hirehive is a candidate and job tracking site
  • Microsocial is an experimental Peer-to-Peer Social Platform
  • Dylan Ipsum is a random text generator to replace lorem ipsum with Bob Dylan lyrics
  • Chip8 Svelte is a CHIP-8 emulator frontend, built on top of CHIP8 TypeScript

Looking for a Svelte project to work on? Interested in helping make Svelte’s presence on the web better? Check out the list of open issues if you’d like to contribute to the Svelte Society rewrite in SvelteKit.

Podcasts Featuring Svelte

Educational Content

Libraries, Tools & Components

  • sveltekit-netlify-cms is a SvelteKit skeleton app configured for use with Netlify CMS
  • SvelteFireTS is a SvelteKit + TypeScript + Firebase library inspired by Fireship.io
  • stores-x lets you use Svelte stores just like vueX
  • sveltekit-snippets is a VSCode extension that provides snippets for common patterns in SvelteKit & Vanilla Svelte
  • svelte-xactor is a middleware that allows you to easily convert your xactor machines into a global store that implements the store contract
  • vite-plugin-pages-svelte is a vite plugin for automatic filesystem-based routing
  • sveltio is a Svelte wrapper for valtio - a proxy-state library
  • svelte-transition-classes is a custom Svelte transition for adding and swapping CSS classes
  • Svelte-Boring-Avatars is Svelte port of the popular Boring Avatars React project
  • Svelte DataTables brings DataTable, a popular JavaScript library allowing you to easily display your data in a user-friendly table, into your Svelte project.
  • focus-svelte is a focus trap for Svelte with zero dependencies
  • filedrop-svelte is a file dropzone action & component for Svelte

Check out the community site sveltesociety.dev for more templates, adders and adapters from across the Svelte ecosystem.

Before you go, answer the call for speakers!

Svelte Summit Fall 2021 (happening 20 November 2021) is looking for speakers. Submit your talk proposal before 30 October... all are welcome to present and attend.

More info on the sessionize site

Can’t wait for the summit? Join us on Reddit or Discord!