StackBlitz Monthly Update Post: September 2022

Hello everyone!

At StackBlitz, we have been working hard on the new tools that will premiere at ViteConf and that I believe will be truly game-changing for Open Source maintainers.

The release will happen before a significant crowd: at this moment, 21,000 devs registered to attend ViteConf! If you haven’t yet, click here to get your free ticket. Here's mine:

Meanwhile, we have been pushing updates and cheering for our community!

Today we are bringing you:

• StackBlitz in the wild: news from our community
• DX & Compatibility improvements: the change log
• New Teammates: our team has grown - do you wanna join, too?
• Quick bites for the road

I hope you’ll have a wonderful month!

StackBlitz in the wild

• Does running WordPress in the browser without a PHP server sound like fun? Here’s a delightful writeup on spinning it on StackBlitz thanks to WASM. We may soon be able to run an in-browser WordPress IDE - something to look forward to!
• Wanda has just released a beautiful Design System components playground powered by StackBlitz - have a look:
• tRPC, a library used for building fully typesafe APIs, added a StackBlitz demo on their homepage and we love to see it!
• Matt Pocock is soon releasing Total TypeScript, a comprehensive course on TypeScript, which uses StackBlitz to help users learn as they watch the videos without leaving the browser.
• Token CSS is a new tool that seamlessly integrates Design Tokens into your development workflow - you can launch a Token CSS demo with a single click!
• Josh Morony created a bash script to instantly launch a fresh Angular app for test code, which publishes the app on StackBlitz 🚀
• neodrag has just dropped. It is a lightweight plain JS library that makes your elements draggable. You can play with it in this demo.
• And finally, oh so many StackBlitz starters to choose from in the whyframe docs! whyframe is a library that “gives iframes superpowers, making it easy to render anything in isolation”.

DX & compatibility improvements

As we’re working on new tools, we are finishing the month with a whole plethora of improvements:

• Bug fixes and improvements
  • Updated our dashboard with new project starters: effector, NativeScript (mobile section), Quasar, Remotion, VuePress, VitePress.
  • Our dashboard now features a description of each of the projects instead of the project slug.
  • New repositories now have their name as a header in the README instead of the project slug.
  • Introduced improvements to the Console components (for EngineBlock projects):
  • Added support for console.table
  • Fixed the display of NaN, Infinity and -Infinity values
  • Improved the color contrast and readability of console log items.
  • Improved the responsiveness of the Console when logging over hundreds of messages.
  • Improved StackBlitz EngineBlock error messaging when a library referenced from the code has an entry point file that does not exist in the package.
  • Fixed issue in the EngineBlock projects with importing ace-builds package due to the way that it handles AMD and the way that it specifies a webpack file-loader in its webpack-loader.js file.
  • The ace editor library entry point overrides the require function with its own custom logic (amd loader).
  • Fixed a bug Ctrl+S / Cmd+S not saving project if all tabs are closed.
  • Fixed an issue where a standalone preview tab would get stuck in the loading state if the StackBlitz project had some sort of error. These errors are now shown to the user.
  • When reloading the page, now the previously displayed screen is copied and displayed for up to 3 seconds.
  • Updated our icon set to use Microsoft’s Codeicons in more places.
  • Fixed an issue with the dashboard's project list not showing the “Delete this project” menu entry.
  • Now user can open the commit dialog in the auto commit mode by alt+click on the commit button (GitHub Issue #2034 fix).
  • Clarified the UI shown when opening a binary file in the editor.
  • Binaries are now preserved when you connect git repository to a project with binaries (Github Issue #787 fix).
  • Fixed the storage quota exceeded error, by using indexeddb instead of localstorage.
  • Clarified context for options in the user menu.
  • Now user can use git integration with GitHub "Keep my email addresses private" setting on (GitHub Issue #1963 fix).
• Blog
  • Replaced the generic social image and added the new social image for category index pages.
  • A specific title to each Category page, instead of showing generic StackBlitz::Blog title.
  • Implemented the new Netlify build image (the new Ubuntu 20.04 images).
• Docs
  • Created and added numerous demos, like for example this project that showcases all open file options.
  • Updated the list of the custom project starters with these friends:
  • analogjs.org/new
  • ladle.dev/new
  • NativeScript:
    • TypeScript: nativescript.new
    • JavaScript: nativescript.new/javascript
    • Angular: nativescript.new/angular
    • Vue: nativescript.new/vue
    • React: nativescript.new/react
    • Svelte: nativescript.new/svelte
  • node.new/nx
  • qwik.new
  • rakkasjs.org/new
  • storybook.new
  • vitepress.new
  • Refreshed content across the docs platform.

New Teammates

Our team has grown! Please meet:

• Yuka Masuda, a front-end engineer, a community organizer, a talented knitter, an inspiring baker, and a loving human to a shiba inu 🐕
• Dave McChesney, an Enterprise Account Executive, a skilled archer, a true enthusiast of the outdoors, and a pet parent to two wonderful poodles 🐩

Are you looking for a ✨ nurturing ✨ team to join? We have roles open for software engineers (a senior Rails engineer and a senior TypeScript/Rust/Nodde.js engineer), as well as a Product Marketing Manager.

Here are three tweet threads on how it is to work with us:

Wanna learn more? Feel free to reach out!

Quick bites for the road

• Are you ready for ViteConf? Our team member, Patak, spoke recently to the Storyblok folks about some of the marvels awaiting you there!
• Here’s an article predicting a looming end of the localhost, inspired by Swyx’ blog post.
• Puru Vijay, our team member spoke recently at Svelte Summit on how to migrate React libraries to Svelte
• Do you already have a ticket for ViteConf? Just in case, it’s an online and free conference with an all-star speaker list celebrating the web ecosystem at large. Excited? See you on 11-12 October 2022!

What’s next?

We are so excited for what the nearest future will bring — we are cooking something really special for you! In the meantime, stay tuned on Twitter or join our Discord community.