Hello to all JavaScript enthusiasts! We are happy to continue sharing with you new JavaScript stuff, especially as we have plenty to say about DHTMLX.

Today, you will learn about our new product, namely, DHTMLX Chatbot for AI. In addition, we released updates for Scheduler, Suite, and RichText components. You’ll also learn about the latest news from the Webix team. Apart from that, we’ll highlight the latest surveys on JavaScript and programming in general.

Traditionally, this article also includes a section with useful materials covering various aspects of writing code in JavaScript.

DHTMLX Chatbot 1.0: New Widget for AI Chat Apps

Artificial intelligence is not a new phenomenon in the IT industry, but the advent of generative AI tools such as ChatGPT has become a starting point of the immense transformation in the world of programming. The DHTMLX team is very enthusiastic about this trend and anxious to contribute to the adoption of AI in web development with a new product - JavaScript chatbot widget for AI.

Our team designed this lightweight tool to help web developers deliver UIs for a single or multiagent AI chat integrated with popular large language models such as ChatGPT, Claude 3, and Gemini on the backend. The widget has a responsive and configurable interface with different modes for displaying messages and a modifiable sidebar.

The chatbot is also mobile-friendly and supports markdown text format and read-only mode. Apart from that, you can also make use of ready-made integration examples and other samples prepared by our team. And the best part is that DHTMLX Chatbot is distributed under the MIT license, meaning you can use it in your projects free of charge.

Find more details about this new widget in the release article.

Other Releases from DHTMLX

This month, in addition to the new chatbot widget, the DHTMLX team also rolled out several minor updates for well-known JS components from our product portfolio. We are talking about new versions of DHTMLX Scheduler, Suite, and RichText Editor.

The DHTMLX Scheduler 7.1 offers several novelties designed to improve your experience with this JS component. First of all, there is a new option for storing recurring events known as RFC-5545 format.

In the Map view, you can use two popular map providers out-of-the-box: OpenStreetMap and Mapbox. In addition, you can integrate into your project abilities to highlight cells from which users drag events and undo event deletion.

The DHTMLX Suite 8.4 comes with multiple API updates for popular UI widgets such as Grid/TreeGrid, Combobox, Chart, Form, and Toolbar. Combobox allows specifying custom logic in templates (also applicable to Grid, TreeGrid, and Form). In DHTMLX Charts, you also have an opportunity to add a template for displaying values in Pie, Pie3D, and Donut charts.

The ability to set headers and footers for files exported in PDF and PNG formats is now available in Charts, Grid, and TreeGrid. The configuration of the Toolbar widget includes the option that opens menu items in toolbar elements when hovering over them with the pointer.

The DHTMLX RichText 2.1 is not a substantial release in terms of new features. In fact, there is one feature but it will be useful for both web developers and end-users.

Starting from v2.1, you can specify required default values for various text parameters such as font, font size, etc. in the toolbar of the Editor. Thus, end-users won’t have to worry about manually adjusting the Editor’s settings and can focus on work with text. Moreover, this minor update includes a range of fixes and improvements to improve your experience with our JavaScript Text Editor.

Webix Updates: Improvements Inspired by User Challenges

The Webix team is dedicated to continuously improving the library based on user feedback and support tickets. The recent updates in version 10.2.5 brought several functionality enhancements of existing components.

Performance is always a priority for the Webix team so they optimized rendering for faster UI updates and a more responsive user experience:

• Diagram rendering engine has been optimized for better performance in FireFox,

• Pivot incorrect rendering of the total section in the footer has been fixed,

• standard RichText widget rendering with an unset value has been also corrected.

When it comes to Complex widgets, Webix team put the effort into developing Spreadsheet JS UI Widget. Users’ feedback has been invaluable, allowing to implement numerous enhancements, some of them are highlighted here:

• the copy-paste process was improved,

• Spreadsheet 10.2.2 is the first version that got all data saving actions including saving styles, spans, and sizes now get name of the source sheet,

• updates in filtering in math formula suggestions is applied correctly to named ranges as well and resulted in enhanced usability.

Documentation Updates:

Alongside the improvements, the documentation has been updated to provide clear guidance on implementing the latest enhancements. With the comprehensive examples and usage scenarios it helps developers quickly adapt to the new functionalities. To learn more about Webix releases between 10.2 and 11 read the release article page. Nevertheless, additional updates and fixes are coming soon.

Stack Overflow’s Developer Survey 2024

This popular survey is a valuable resource for the web development community, providing insights into trends, preferences, and challenges faced by developers.

This year’s edition includes a lot of insights. For instance, JavaScript predictably continues to be the most widely used programming language, and, besides this, JS is high on the list of highly desired and admired languages. Svelte is loved by developers and 72% of survey respondents express admiration for this front-end framework.

The survey also paid much attention to AI technologies. Most of the respondents (76%) are using or are planning to use AI tools in their development process this year, but only 43% said they trust the accuracy of AI tools.

The list of the most popular AI tools includes ChatGPT, GitHub Copilot, Google Gemini, and Bing AI. At the same time, 70% of professional developers do not think that AI technologies pose a threat to their job opportunities.

Long-Awaited Results of Surveys from the Devographics Team

Believe it or not, the results of the State of JS 2023 have recently become available to the public. Despite a six-month delay, this release still has many curious insights supported with an updated data visualization codebase.

For us, for instance, it was interesting to know about the things that bother survey respondents the most about JavaScript. It is said that the most challenging aspects of JavaScript are code architecture, state management, build tools, and managing dependencies. People also crave new features and improvements in JavaScript such as static typing, a standard library of common utilities, and better date management.

We also want to note the growing interest in some “smaller” front-end frameworks like Preact, Solid, and htmx, the enduring popularity of SPAs, and the higher adoption of Partial Hydration and Islands architecture.

You may wonder why we still haven’t mentioned React while reviewing the latest State of JS report. There is a good reason for that. React is still immensely popular, therefore the Devographics team conducted a separate survey dedicated solely to this framework - State of React 2023.

The data in this survey was collected between October 27 and November 15, 2023, meaning that all the developments since then, including the upcoming React 19, were not covered. Anyway, you can come across interesting findings when examining the results of this survey.

Updated GitHub Innovation Graph and Its Practical Value

Launched in 2020 by the GitHub team, the Innovation Graph initiative proved to be a useful source of information for researchers, policymakers, and developers, who are looking for insights on software development trends.

Recently updated with Q1 2024 data, the Innovation Graph offers global metrics on various categories such as top programming languages, Git pushes, developers, organizations, etc. And it seems that this data has practical value.

To prove this point, GitHub published a blog post interviewing two researchers who used the Innovation Graph data to estimate the impact of ChatGPT on developer engagement across various programming languages.

Useful Tips and Articles

Web Development Challenges Addressed with JavaScript UI Libraries

Nowadays, it is only in rare circumstances dev teams have to deliver a web app without the use of additional tools like JavaScript UI libraries. For instance, when the UI requirements of a project require a highly customized solution.

But in most cases, JavaScript UI libraries can become a game-changer for web projects of any complexity. Established JS libraries offer pre-built components and functionalities that streamline the development process, saving significant time and effort. In this article, you will learn more about the advantages of using JavaScript libraries in real-case scenarios.

Mastering Your JavaScript Debugging Skills

Debugging is a crucial part of the application development process. No matter whether you are a newcomer or an experienced developer, you should certainly devote some time to improving your skills at debugging your JavaScript code.

There are many techniques used to identify and fix issues efficiently. If you have knowledge gaps in this important aspect, this crash course will walk you through from absolute basics to advanced debugging concepts.

Going into Multithreading in JavaScript

In JavaScript, multithreading refers to the ability of a program to execute multiple threads, or units of execution, concurrently within a single process. The use of multithreading in web apps can contribute to improved performance, better user experience, optimal utilization of computer resources, and enhanced functionality.

There are some techniques to enable multithreading in JavaScript. In this article, you’ll get acquainted with the main mechanisms for achieving parallel threads in JavaScript in the browser (web workers) and on the server (worker threads).

Collection of Useful Shorthands for JavaScript and TypeScript

Shorthands are techniques that allow developers to write code concisely and achieve the same goals as longer, more verbose syntax. Working the same way as longhand code under the hood, shorthands can make code cleaner, more readable, and even more efficient.

If you write JavaScript or TypeScript code and know little about shorthands, this article will expand your knowledge on the topic.

Exploring Server-Side Rendering Strategies and Choosing the Right One for Your Project

In web development, server-side rendering (SSR) is a special technique used to generate the HTML content on the server before sending it to the client side. Several SSR options can be used in web apps. By choosing the right SSR strategy, you can enhance the performance, SEO, and user experience of your app.

This article highlights 5 popular SSR strategies and their use-case scenarios.

Tips on Code Review from GitHub Staff Engineer

Code review plays a crucial role in the development process, especially in the age of AI code generation. With the right approach to code review, you can ensure the quality and reliability of the codebase.

Sarah Vessels, a staff engineer at GitHub, shares her thoughts and useful tips on the process of code review in this blog post.

This article was originally published on Medium.