The first issue of our monthly JavaScript ecosystem and community overview gets you covered with the most important reports, tutorials, and resources of the month.

New tutorials

Setting up a JavaScript project for ES6 development with Babel and Webpack

From our own blog, this tutorial explains how to set up a JavaScript project for ES6 development with Babel and Webpack.

async/await

Nikolay Grozev has written a thorough and visual tutorial on the async/await syntax that comes with JavaScript ES7.

Protect your npm account

On their blog, the NPM project explains how to protect your npm account with two-factor authentication and read-only tokens.

How to write reliable browser tests using Selenium and Node.js

Todd Chaffee gets you through all the details and pitfalls of how to test your web applications with JavaScript.

Super-fast web applications with the WebSocket protocol

Again from our own blog, this tutorial explains how to massively improve data exchange between browsers and your Node.js server application by utilizing the WebSocket protocol.

API Authentication With Node.js

Building APIs is important; however, building secured APIs is also very important. In this tutorial, you learn how to build a secured API in Node.js.

Configuring Your .npmrc for an Optimal Node.js Environment

One of the most useful, important, and enabling aspects of the npm CLI is that its highly configurable. This article explains how to exploit this to use NPM effectively.

Vue.js vs React: Which JavaScript framework to choose for your project?

The folks at da14 provide a nice guide to help you with your decision.

In the news

Node.js v8.6.0 has been released

This is a new minor release for the current stable version. As always, download here.

Notable Changes:

  • crypto: Support for multiple ECDH curves.
  • dgram: Added setMulticastInterface() API. Custom lookup functions are now supported.
  • n-api The command-line flag is no longer required to use N-API.
  • tls Docs-only deprecation of parseCertString().

React v16.0 has been released

Featuring two new render return types (fragments and strings), improved error handling and server-side rendering, portals, support for custom DOM attributes, and - gasp - it’s MIT licensed. Read all about it in this Facebook post.

Typescript turns 5 years old

On October 1, 2012, Microsoft released TypeScript. Here is a blog post where they look back at its 5 years of history.

In 1993, Dan Linton, owner of a hugely successful BBS called Software Creations, visited Texas and made his way to id Software. This is the footage he recorded one night in November 1993.

Learn more about writing web applications using Node.js with The Node Beginner Book - the first part of this step-by-step Node.js tutorial is available for free!