ReactJS has undergone many updates in the past decade, with some significant changes between versions. As of 2023, React is on its 18th version, which came out in March 2022. As with any new version of major software, this came with many new features, but the developers haven’t taken it easy since. That’s why we will do a quick overview of v18.0, the more minor updates that have happened since, and some future feature releases.
React v18.0
If you have not yet upgraded from React v17.0, check out this guide for upgrading so you can use all the new features. They’ve also recently moved to a new website—react.dev—so the old homepage is now archived but still available for reference.
Concurrent React
The most significant update for this version was the release of a concurrent rendering engine. While this is not really a feature, in the strictest sense of the word, concurrent rendering is powerful because of the features it unlocks. For example, concurrency allows you to prepare multiple versions of your UI simultaneously.
The developers stress that a technical understanding of concurrency isn’t strictly necessary; however, since it’s such a foundational shift in the core rendering model, it’s helpful to have a basic understanding of what it is.
Concurrency allows React to pause rendering or even abandon it to prioritize user interaction. However, React will keep the UI looking consistent even if rendering is interrupted by waiting to perform DOM mutations until the end of the process. It can then prepare new screens in the background.
So even if React is in the middle of rendering something large and resource-heavy, it will respond instantly to user input.
This is a significant update, especially since many complaints surrounding React center on the rendering times for complex applications.
While concurrent rendering is compatible without updates for most of the existing features and components, a few need some help. So that the update doesn’t break your app, they’ve only enabled where you use the new features until you manually upgrade it.
Suspense in Data Frameworks
Suspense is a feature that lets you display a fallback until all its children are done loading. As of React 18, Suspense is now available for date fetching in opinionated frameworks. This includes Relay, Hydrogen, Remix, and Next.js.
The developers say that in the future, they may expose additional primitives to make it easier to access data with Suspense without an opinionated framework. However, they expect libraries and frameworks to continue to be integral to React’s ecosystem.
Server Components
While Server Components was still in development at the time of React 18’s release, it is now out as of March 2023. React Server Components (RSC) is a new application architecture. The team has introduced server components that are excluded from the JavaScript bundle and run ahead of time.
It’s a basic component type that fetches data for rapid rendering by retrieving data from the server and rendering its content on the server side. Since there is no client-side interaction, developers can create apps spanning the client and server.
This solution is a best-of-both-worlds situation where you get the interactivity of client-side applications and the performance of server rendering.
Automatic Batching
Another new feature that translates into a significant performance upgrade is automatic batching. Automatic batching allows you to group multiple updates into a single update, reducing the time spent updating components and increasing efficiency.
This combined concurrency should improve how responsive applications made with React are.
Transitions
This is another feature, like lazy loading, that allows you to prioritize what needs to react immediately and what can take longer without hurting the user’s experience. For example, transitions prioritize updates based on whether or not they require immediate feedback not to feel jarring to the user.
Urgent updates include typing and clicking and any other interactions. Transition updates are shifts in the UI from one view to another that don’t have to be immediate.
New suspense features
While Suspense isn’t new, it was limited in previous versions, only usable for lazy-loading. Now in v18, you can declaratively specify the loading state for any part of your component tree.
Other updates
These are more minor updates that you can read more about in the official release:
- New Client and Server Rendering APIs
- React DOM Client
- React DOM Server
- New strict mode behavior
- New hooks
- useId
- useTransition
- useDeferredValue
- useSyncExternalStore
- useInsertionEffect
What’s Next for React – A Look at Future Updates & Releases
Some updates have been hinted at but haven’t yet come to fruition. Here are a few things developers are expecting with the next release.
Offscreen rendering
This feature was first hinted at in the v18 release, and the developers have said they’re still working on optimizing it. However, it’s a feature that should help render screens in the background without putting additional strain on your performance. This has a lot of implications, including being able to prerender screens so they’re instantly available and improving tab switching.
Although there isn’t an official release date, they expect to release an RFC later in the year with an experimental API.
React canaries
This is less of a future update and mainly just a new way to receive updates. Meta often uses non-stable versions of React that aren’t available to the public. But now those versions will be available publicly. React now has a Canary channel where you can download features that are almost stable and finalized, but not quite.
React Is Better Than Ever
One of the best parts of React is how it continues to improve as the team behind it takes user critique and implements improvements. The updates since Version 18 have done a lot to mitigate some of the performance issues that have previously plagued React. The next version promises features that will push things even further in the right direction, so stay tuned.
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