What’s Driving Web Development in 2023? Key Trends You Must Know

Guide: Look at the 2023 web development trends – sharpening your tools before you cut wood.

In my view, web development slowed from 2016‑2021 but regained strong attraction in the past year, as shown by State of JS data.

This article introduces new web development trends that will continue to excite developers and make 2023 especially exciting.

Meta‑Frameworks

Single‑page applications (SPA) and their frameworks (React, Vue, Svelte) have gone through hype cycles and have existed for many years.

However, with the rise of meta‑frameworks built on top of these solutions, we see a clear shift from client‑side rendering (CSR) to server‑side rendering (SSR).

Today, SSR is ubiquitous when using JavaScript frameworks.

The most popular meta‑framework, Next.js, sits on top of React. Andrew Clark of the React core team calls it the "real React 18" because it includes built‑in batteries like Suspense and streaming SSR. Vercel (behind Next.js) works closely with the React team to provide an excellent developer experience.

While many developers worry about the close relationship between Next.js and React, alternatives such as Remix (now owned by Shopify) take a different approach, using web standards as first‑class citizens, and both frameworks share features like nested routing.

Besides Next.js, other frameworks worth watching include:

SvelteKit – built on Svelte, with its 1.0 version supported by Vercel.

SolidStart – built on Solid, offering DX improvements over React.

Application Rendering Modes

For the past decade (2010‑2020), SPAs and client‑side rendering dominated. From Knockout and Ember to Angular, React, and Vue, developers have increasingly embraced server‑side rendering (SSR) on meta‑frameworks.

The SPA/MPA cycle appears to be ending. Multi‑page applications (MPA) have used SSR and JavaScript (jQuery, MooTools, Dojo) since 2005‑2010.

Previously, Java (JSP) or Ruby on Rails handled SSR, but now JavaScript drives it.

Next.js has been a major driver of this trend, and other meta‑frameworks like SvelteKit are catching up.

SSR has long competed with static site generation (SSG) for performance. SSG suits static content (e.g., blogs), while SSR suits dynamic, user‑specific content.

If SEO matters, both SSR and SSG are relevant. For highly dynamic or authenticated content, developers must choose between SSR (on‑demand rendering) or CSR (client‑side data fetching).

CSR, SSR, and SSG are not the newest rendering trends.

While SSR and SSG began performance optimization years ago, newer techniques like Incremental Static Regeneration (ISR) and streaming SSR have emerged. ISR allows per‑page static rebuilds (e.g., every 60 seconds) instead of rebuilding the whole site. On‑demand ISR can trigger rebuilds via API calls.

Streaming SSR mitigates the single‑thread bottleneck of traditional SSR by sending chunks of rendered HTML to the client as they become ready.

In recent years, finer‑grained approaches have become popular: partial hydration (e.g., React Server Components), progressive hydration, island architecture (e.g., Astro), and resumability (e.g., Qwik).

Edge Computing and Serverless

SSR and SSG are closely tied to the edge‑serverless trend, both being performance‑driven to deliver seamless user experiences.

Serverless (functions, cloud functions) has been a major cloud computing trend. Although servers still run, developers deploy individual functions that cloud providers manage, scaling on demand.

Serverless functions enable deployment close to users, reducing latency. This proximity creates the concepts of edge computing and edge functions.

Providers such as Cloudflare Workers, Vercel’s edge network, Deno Deploy, and others compete to optimize Time‑to‑Interactive (TTI) for end users. Edge functions can also cache results nearer to users.

Beyond performance, edge computing can lower costs by processing data locally (e.g., filtering IoT streams at the edge).

Database Revival

With the rise of edge‑side serverless, databases are experiencing a revival. Serverless functions often open many short‑lived connections, leading to connection‑pooling challenges.

Popular serverless databases include PlanetScale (MySQL), Neon (PostgreSQL), and Xata (PostgreSQL), offering distribution, schema branching, and strong analytics.

Platforms like Fly.io bundle databases and applications, while Railway (a Heroku successor) offers PaaS for custom stacks. Supabase provides an open‑source Firebase alternative with hosted DB, auth, and edge functions.

JavaScript Runtimes

The story began with Ryan Dahl’s 2009 announcement of Node.js, which brought JavaScript to the server using the V8 engine.

Ten years later, Dahl introduced Deno as a safer, faster successor with built‑in TypeScript, browser‑like APIs, and a standard library.

Many cloud providers now ship their own JavaScript runtimes: Cloudflare Workers, Vercel’s edge runtime, Deno Deploy, and Bun (built on JavaScriptCore). This fragmentation raises interoperability concerns, prompting initiatives like WinterCG to standardize APIs across runtimes.

Monorepos

Monorepos, originally used for large applications, now serve both big companies and open‑source projects, allowing shared UI components, design systems, and utilities to be versioned together.

These shared packages can be consumed by various front‑end apps (SPA, MPA), static sites, and documentation sites.

Turborepo (now owned by Vercel) promotes monorepos in the JavaScript/TypeScript ecosystem, offering local and cloud caching, and integrates with npm/yarn/pnpm workspaces. Competing tools include Nx, Rush, and Lerna.

Utility‑First CSS

Developers are divided on CSS: some love it, others hate it.

Tailwind CSS exemplifies utility‑first CSS, offering excellent developer experience despite perceived verbosity.

With the rise of SSR, utility‑first CSS may become more attractive again, while CSS‑in‑JS solutions (Styled Components, Emotion) can add bundle size and runtime overhead.

Developers may gravitate toward SSR‑friendly solutions such as Tailwind, UnoCSS, DaisyUI, CSS Modules, or zero‑runtime CSS‑in‑JS tools like vanilla‑extract, Linaria, and Astroturf.

End‑to‑End Type Safety

The shift from JavaScript to TypeScript is unstoppable, bringing full‑stack type safety.

Typed APIs (REST with OpenAPI, GraphQL with Codegen) generate type definitions for front‑ends.

tRPC emerges as a type‑safe API alternative, allowing back‑end types to be directly imported into front‑end code without intermediate schemas.

Other type‑safe tools include Zod, Prisma, and TanStack Router, all contributing to safer edge‑centric applications.

Build Tools

For years, Create‑React‑App (CRA) dominated React scaffolding, but Webpack has become outdated.

Vite, created by Vue’s Evan You, offers a next‑generation dev server and leverages esbuild (written in Go) for ultra‑fast bundling.

Vite’s ecosystem includes Vitest (Jest alternative) and faces competition from Vercel’s Turbopack, a Webpack successor that may pair well with Next.js.

AI‑Driven Development

Will AI replace developers? The answer is unclear.

AI‑assisted development became real in 2022 with GitHub Copilot, enabling AI pair‑programming directly in IDEs.

OpenAI’s ChatGPT can also perform coding tasks, serving as a StackOverflow alternative, though it can generate low‑quality SEO spam.

Summary

Additional noteworthy items that didn’t fit into the main trends:

Tauri as an Electron alternative for desktop apps built with JavaScript/CSS/HTML.

Playwright as a Cypress alternative for end‑to‑end testing.

Warp and Fig as next‑generation terminals.

CSS container queries as a replacement for media queries in responsive design.

htmx for richer HTML‑only interactive UIs without JavaScript.

Feel free to add your thoughts in the comments.