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Astro: Ship Less JavaScript

astro.build

21–30 of 171 posts

Re: Astro: Ship Less JavaScript

#22

Wondering how this compares to Gatsby or other React-compatible static site generators...

Most of those tools are focused on giving you a full SPA on the client (and therefore load a lot of JS). Astro is focused on sites that are mostly static with "islands" of interactivity. To that end every component is server rendered only, by default, and you opt-in to client render when you need it (with different loading strategies).

Re: Astro: Ship Less JavaScript

#24
post #2

:wave: Hey everyone, one of the Astro creators here! Happy to talk Astro or answer any questions you have about what we're building. Our README has a bunch more info that we couldn't fit into the release post: https://github.com/snowpackjs/astro

Hi fks. Astro looks really compelling, but I’m already addicted to NextJS and deploying on Vercel. Any chance an Astro app will be deployable on Vercel or similar services?

Re: Astro: Ship Less JavaScript

#25
post #2

:wave: Hey everyone, one of the Astro creators here! Happy to talk Astro or answer any questions you have about what we're building. Our README has a bunch more info that we couldn't fit into the release post: https://github.com/snowpackjs/astro

How does this compare to Elder.js[1] which released a little while ago? You seem to have similar goals - mostly static site with small amounts of interactivity, minimum JS to achieve that - but Astro supports multiple frameworks, while Elder.js is restricted to Svelte. Are there any other big differences? [1]: https://elderguide.com/tech/elderjs/

Elder is great! We're definitely fans. both Elder and Astro deliver Partial Hydration and the same "0kb JS by default" story. We wanted something less Svelte-specific and more pluggable, along with some other neat features mentioned in the README that couldn't fit in the launch post.

Re: Astro: Ship Less JavaScript

#27
post #4

JS dev: I'm burnt out by having to keep up with all the tools that are releasing all the time! Also JS dev: Look, I've built another tool!

This tool undoes a lot of harm of tool proliferation. It's one of the few JavaScript tools I'll actually approve of.

If you're confused, perhaps try not lumping everybody into the homogenous “JS dev”.

Re: Astro: Ship Less JavaScript

#28
post #2

:wave: Hey everyone, one of the Astro creators here! Happy to talk Astro or answer any questions you have about what we're building. Our README has a bunch more info that we couldn't fit into the release post: https://github.com/snowpackjs/astro

Hi fks. Astro looks really compelling, but I’m already addicted to NextJS and deploying on Vercel. Any chance an Astro app will be deployable on Vercel or similar services?

Yup, static site means you can pretty much deploy anywhere! Just configure Vercel to point to the final destination build directory when you set up your project.

Re: Astro: Ship Less JavaScript

#29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok so it is a static site generator. Wasn't really obvious from the landing page. Doesn't almost every large front end framework have a static site generator? I think Vue for example has it built in for example. Why would anyone use this over the already existing one in their current ecosystem?

I can't speak for every frameworks' SSG tool but most of them load a full SPA on the client and have poor performance. Go pick out a random website for Gatsby's showcase page and see how much JS is loaded (spoiler: a lot). Astro focuses on partial hydration where you only load the JS for the specific components that need to run in the client. Very few tools and none of the framework SSG's that I'm aware of do this. T…

Ok well it seems kind of cool, maybe I'll try it out. :)

Re: Astro: Ship Less JavaScript

#30
post #8
post #2

:wave: Hey everyone, one of the Astro creators here! Happy to talk Astro or answer any questions you have about what we're building. Our README has a bunch more info that we couldn't fit into the release post: https://github.com/snowpackjs/astro

Hi, looks like a great development for developers and users alike. But I am curious how you intend to make money from this. Or is this a not for profit initiative?

it seems like it's just an OSS project no need to make money
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