Expo Unveils Hosting, Interop 2024 Highlights, and Automattic Cuts WP Contributions

The first topic of conversation this week is an unexpected new area the Expo team is tackling: Expo Application Service Hosting. EAS Hosting is a new service for quickly deploying web projects built using Expo and React Native apps. It makes it easy to compile and sign apps with custom native code, upload apps to the Play Store or App Store, and push live app updates directly to users.

The Interop project, which aims to improve interoperability between major browser engines, released its accomplishments from 2024 this week. The browsers took on 17 areas of focus in 2024, and went from 46% of tests passing in January, all the way to 95% of tests passing by the end of December.

WordPress makes headlines once more, as Autommatic, the WordPress hosting company owned by WP creator Matt Mullenweg cuts its contributions back on the WP open-source project from 4,000 hours per week to 45 hours per week.

News:

• Paige - Interop 2024 highlights
• Jack - Expo APIs (EAS Hosting)
• TJ - Automattic cuts WordPress contribution hours (WordPress Drama Timeline)

Bonus News:

• Vitest 3.0 is out
• The iPhone Air could be coming later this year

Fire Starters:

• WebXR Device API

What Makes Us Happy this Week:

• Paige - Shrinking TV show and browser-based SwaggerEditor
• Jack - fzf command-line fuzzy finder
• TJ - Switch 2

Thanks as always to our sponsor, the Blue Collar Coder channel on YouTube. You can join us in our Discord channel, explore our website and reach us via email, or Tweet us on X @front_end_fire and BlueSky.

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