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    Episode 83

    11 Oct 2023

    With the start of the Kirby 4 beta phase, we are more and more approaching the final release of Kirby 4, so it's time for an update.

    New releases

    Last week, we released Kirby 3.9.7 with a new feature that allows you to mask variables that are displayed when showing errors with Whoops, as well as some enhancements and bug fixes.

    And at the end of September, we released the second beta of Kirby 4. It comes with a long list of enhancements, improvements and a QR code generator!

    Introducing a new license scheme for Kirby 4

    With the upcoming release of Kirby 4 in autumn, we will introduce a new license scheme that not only focuses on the longevity of Kirby, but also on you, our community. Here are the basics in a nutshell:

    • The regular license price remains at 99 € despite the high inflation rate.

    • For larger companies and organizations with a yearly revenue or funding of 1 million € and more, the license will cost 399 €.

    • Both licenses come with all of Kirby's features and can be used with the included versions indefinitely (i.e. they don't expire).

    • We will continue to support students, educational projects, social and environmental organizations, charities and non-profits with free licenses.

    • Your license will cover all major releases within 3 years of activation. This means that regardless of when you purchase your license, the 3-year period only starts when you publish and register your website.

    Read more about the new license prices and conditions.

    Say hello to our brand-new UI lab

    The UI lab is a hidden layer that will be directly accessible in the Panel at /panel/lab. The Lab includes interactive examples of all our components, libraries and of our design system. Every component has its own docs' drawer with documented props, slots and more. The source code of every example can be inspected, and you can even add your own test examples.

    The UI lab will ship with the upcoming Beta 3 of Kirby 4. Some impressions to wet your mouth:

    Bye-bye PHP 8.0

    PHP 8.3 will be released next month, and we will support PHP 8.3 in Kirby 4 right from the start. However, since a library we use only released support for PHP 8.3 in the same version that it is dropping support for
    PHP 8.0, we will also drop support for PHP 8.0 with Kirby 4.0.

    We are also planning to release a Kirby 3.10 version with PHP 8.3 support (while dropping PHP 8.0 support) for those of you using v3 in projects and eager to update PHP versions.

    Kirby in the wild

    Hey Low LTD

    Kirby plugins

    Kirby PDF is planned as a wrapper around multiple PDF engines to create PDF documents from HTML. Currently, however, it only supports the WkHtmlToPdf library.

    Kirby Typesense allows you to index your Kirby website in Typesense an open source alternative to services like Algolia, to provide full text search.

    Kirby Contentsync Kirby plugin to synchronize content from the server to your local development environment.

    Kirby Cookieconsent implements the open source Cookie Consent library for use with Kirby.

    Kirby Resend is a plugin that allows you to send transactional E-Mail with the Resend email sending platform.

    Kirby Buzz

    Kev Quirk writes about his experiences while migrating his blog to Kirby.

    Eddi Dale compared the file sizes of multiple PHP-based CMS'es Guess who won!

    This & that

    When lazy-loading images on your website, it is important to make sure that you don't lazy-load your hero images.

    Generate fake JSON data structures with the JsonGenerator.

    Harry Roberts explains how to create low-quality image placeholders that also reduce image-based LCPs (Largest Contentful Paint).

    Anchored positioning of side-notes a look into the future using Chrome with experimental web features enabled.

    The W3C recently published the Web Sustainability Guidelines 1.0
    with a wide range of recommendations for making websites and products more sustainable. "The guidelines are best practices based on measurable, evidence-based research; aimed at end-users, web workers, stakeholders, tool authors, educators, and policymakers".

    The Concise TypeScript Book A Concise Guide to Effective Development in TypeScript. Free and Open Source.

    Implementing type safety in CSS with @property.

    Stefan Judis explains how to escape CSS selectors in JavaScript.

    Writing better form labels, instructions and error messages. A primer on getting the language and meaning of the words right.

    Understanding the const keyword in JavaScript.

    Baseline is a Google initiative aimed at making it easier to determine if a browser feature or API is safe to use in your website or web applications. Baseline is also used as an indicator for feature support on MDN now.