Friday Issue 153
Big news this week as the React Foundation officially launches under the Linux Foundation, meaning React's future is no longer Meta's call alone. On the JS side, there is a worrying empirical study on memory leaks in React, Vue and Angular apps, Firefox 148 ships the new setHTML() Sanitiser API to make XSS a little harder to pull off, and Cloudflare's Vinext rewrites most of the Next.js 16 API surface on Vite in under a week. In the CSS world, someone built a working x86 CPU emulator with no JavaScript at all, there is a new border-shape proposal worth keeping an eye on, and a deep dive into OKLCH colours with great visuals. Mixed news has a story about 7,000 robot vacuums, the UX journey behind the most seen button on the internet, and a lovely trip back to 1995 web design. Happy Reading!
JavaScript News
Memory Leaks
Did you know that 86% of repos have at least one missing cleanup pattern? Ko-Hsin Liang scanned 500 public repos and found some worrying patterns in how we manage resources in modern front-end apps, especially in React, Vue, and Angular. By the end of the article, you will see how to fix memory leaks and also some quick ways to scan your own project.
https://stackinsight.dev/blog/memory-leak-empirical-study
setHTML instead of innerHTML
Firefox 148 is the first browser to ship the standardised Sanitiser API with the new setHTML() method, a security-enhancing API that makes it much easier to avoid XSS when inserting HTML.
Vinext
With roughly $ 1,100 in Claude API tokens, about 800 AI sessions, and under a week of work, Cloudflare rebuilt most of the Next.js 16 API surface on top of Vite as an alternative runtime called Vinext. It aims to be a drop-in replacement for Next.js that runs on Vite and can be deployed to Cloudflare Workers with a single command, with early benchmarks showing builds up to 4.4 times faster and client bundles up to 57 per cent smaller than Next.js 16 in their test app.
https://blog.cloudflare.com/vinext/
React Foundation
The React Foundation has officially launched with eight Platinum founding members: Amazon, Callstack, Expo, Huawei, Meta, Microsoft, Software Mansion and Vercel. In the long term, this means React is no longer a single company’s project but is hosted under neutral governance at the Linux Foundation, with shared stewardship that should help keep React free and open source, and encourage more investment in ecosystem tooling, grants and community projects.
https://react.dev/blog/2026/02/24/the-react-foundation
Slowmo
A tiny library that slows down time in your browser so you can inspect animations in detail. You can use it as a JavaScript library or via a Chrome extension.
React Doctor
A tool that scans your React app and gives you a score from 0 to 100 along with suggestions to improve things like performance and structure.
Vue-scrollama
A Vue library for “scrollytelling” style experiences, built on top of Scrollama, that lets you trigger animations and state changes as the user scrolls.
https://vue-scrollama.pages.dev/
Angular-skills
“A collection of skills for AI-assisted Angular development. These skills provide coding agents such as Claude, Gemini, OpenCode, etc with up-to-date Angular v20+ patterns, best practices, and code examples.”
https://github.com/analogjs/angular-skills
HTML & CSS News
x86 CPU made in CSS
Ok, at this point, I’m not sure whether to put this post in HTML, JS, or Mixed news. Somebody built a working x86 CPU emulator in CSS. No JavaScript required. It is wild, and a strong argument that CSS is now at least expressive enough to behave like a programming language, even if that is not its original purpose.
Border-shape
A new CSS border-shape proposal and demos that let you draw more complex shapes directly with CSS borders, opening up design possibilities that previously needed SVG, even if it is not a full SVG replacement.
How to customise HTML lists
A very deep dive into styling ul and ol, showing how to build custom list markers, use emojis, and create your own list styles with modern CSS.
https://piccalil.li/blog/an-in-depth-guide-to-customising-lists-with-css/
Explore colours as we see them
A visual playground for OKLCH colours that shows how different tools represent colour and why working directly in OKLCH space can give you more predictable, human-friendly results.
Figcaptions vs alt text
A clear explanation of when to use <figcaption> versus alt text, and how they serve different purposes for accessibility and meaning.
https://www.tempertemper.net/blog/figcaptions-versus-alt-text
Visually Hidden
A long-form piece of “CSS detective work” exploring how we hide content visually while keeping it accessible, which still does not land on a single perfect solution, but is a very good read if you care about visually hidden patterns.
https://dbushell.com/2026/02/20/visually-hidden/
Mixed News
Army of 7000 minions
A story about a security researcher who accidentally gained access to more than 7,000 robot vacuums across 24 countries, and what that revealed about the risks of connected devices.
https://www.popsci.com/technology/robot-vacuum-army/
Verify you are human
A fascinating UX case study of Cloudflare’s Turnstile and challenge pages, showing the design journey behind a single button that is served 7.67 billion times every day. No pressure for UX/UI then?
History page about 1995 Batman Forever
A lovingly detailed look at the 1995 Batman Forever movie site and what web design felt like in that era, which is oddly relaxing to scroll through after a long day.