Stories from the Blok #7: Intro to Astro with Fred K. Schott

In our most recent Stories from the Blok #7 Frameworks Edition, we dove into the world of news and exciting frontend frameworks that you can use to create the app of your dreams. After an intro by Cathleen Ballar and Josefine Schaefer as well as Chance Strickland’s coverage of Remix, we jumped over to Fred K. Schott for a look at Astro. For a video version, check out the embedded version below.

He kicked things off by explaining the core principles behind the fresh-on-the-scene Astro: creating a framework that focuses on server side rendered or statically built websites that prioritizes web performance and ships as little HTML as possible.

Next, he dove into the traits that make Astro stand out from the crowd. For one thing, you can use several different frontend frameworks (such as React, Vue, or Svelte), and you won’t be tied to your choice. He drove the point home by showing how it's even possible to use more than one framework on a single page.

Fred went on to explain how all of this makes Astro ideal for content-focused websites. If your goal is to quickly present content to your users, such as on a homepage or an eCommerce store, then it should definitely be on your radar! One big reason for this is Astro’s principle of partial hydration. Instead of loading an entire page, Astro will save its resources to process dynamic elements only when needed or desired, boosting your site’s performance considerably.

He wrapped up with a reminder: Simplicity is at the core of Astro. It’s meant to deliver your content in a way that’s both faster and easier for you.

Fred also sat on our group panel at the end of SftB #7 to give us his take on some big questions facing modern-day frameworks. Learn more about his thoughts with our full recap of the panel here.