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WebdevPro #84: Patch Your Next.js Now, AI Agents Get Smarter, and CSS Scroll Animations Go Native 🌍🔍

Crafting the Web: Tips, Tools, and Trends for Developers

Hi ,

The web dev world never slows down, and neither do we! This week, we’re bringing you the hottest updates—AI-powered coding breakthroughs, next-gen frameworks, and pro tips to sharpen your skills. Whether you're building, debugging, or just geeking out over new tech, we’ve got you covered.

Let’s break down this week’s biggest news!

🛡️ Next.js users face a critical security flaw—here’s how to patch it fast.
🤖 OpenAI’s Agents SDK just unlocked multi-step orchestration—goodbye hardcoded logic.
🔧 Go 1.25 ditches go/types core—streamlining dev tooling for good.
🎨 Scroll-timeline lands in browsers—say hello to native scroll-based animations.
📚 TypeScript patterns that’ll clean up your code and scale with you.

We’ve sifted through the noise so you can skip the endless scroll and get straight to the good stuff. Got a tool you swear by? Or a spicy dev opinion that’s begging to be unleashed? Drop us a reply—we’re all ears, and your take might just steal the spotlight in next week’s issue.

Let’s get into it!

Latest news: what's new in web development? 🧑‍💻

From critical security updates to game-changing AI upgrades, the web dev world never stands still. This week, we’re looking at essential updates for Node.js and Ruby, a major step forward for OpenAI’s Agents SDK, Go’s big cleanup, and a crucial security alert for Next.js users. Stay informed and stay ahead—here’s what you need to know!

Node.js 18.20.8 Lands – But Time’s Running Out!

The latest Node.js 18.20.8 update is here, bringing fresh security patches, OpenSSL 3.0.16 updates, and refreshed root certificates (NSS 3.108). But here’s the catch—Node.js 18 hits End-of-Life on April 30, 2025!

That means no more security updates, no more patches—just an open invitation for vulnerabilities. If you're still running Node.js 18, now’s the time to start planning your upgrade to Node.js 20 or 22 for long-term support and security.

Ruby 3.2.8 is Here – Lock in Security & Stability!

Ruby devs, it’s update time! Ruby 3.2.8 has landed, packing critical security fixes and stability enhancements to keep your apps running smoothly. No flashy new features this time—just solid improvements to keep your codebase safe and performant.

If you’re working with Ruby, don’t wait—upgrade now and stay ahead of any potential vulnerabilities!

OpenAI Adds MCP Support to Agents SDK

OpenAI’s Agents SDK just leveled up with support for MCP (multi-component planning), letting agents chain together multiple tools and calls with more autonomy. Think: GPT deciding when to query APIs, fetch files, and trigger custom logic—without you hardcoding every step. It’s a peek into the future of multi-step AI workflows, and if you're building with agents, this unlocks serious orchestration potential.

Go Says Goodbye to go/types Core

In Go 1.25, go/types is shedding its core types—and that’s a good thing. The move decouples the type-checker from the compiler’s internal objects, making the tooling ecosystem cleaner, faster, and easier to maintain. For devs building linters, static analyzers, or anything that needs to understand Go code, this cleanup makes the language tooling more modular and less fragile. Simpler under the hood, stronger on the surface.

Next.js Users – Urgent Security Patch Needed!

If you're running Next.js, you need to update now. A newly discovered exploit could expose web applications to security vulnerabilities. The recommended action? Upgrade to the latest Next.js version ASAP to keep your apps secure and running smoothly. Don’t wait—protect your stack!

Human APIs at full throttle ⚡

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Where do you find this much brainpower in one room?

Hint: it’s not a server farm.

It’s the Microsoft MVP Summit—where some of the sharpest minds in tech gather, including our very own Packt authors!

Expert corner: what's the web community talking about?🎙

This week, we’re calling out the gaps and pushing for better. LLMs need smarter benchmarks, not just bigger sizes. UX is shedding breadcrumbs and sensory cues, and accessibility is still being sidelined. Time to rethink, redesign, and do better.

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Kyle Peatt unpacks what’s next for UX

In a live session with Aaron Lazar from our team at Packt, Kyle Peatt (SVP of Product Design at Bonfire) dug into the future of UX. From the promises and pitfalls of AI to the risks of over-systematizing design, his message was clear: better design starts with better questions. Catch the replay for sharp, practical insight into what’s coming next.

LLMs: stop counting params, start making sense

Hugging Face’s LLM Hacker is done with parameter obsession. Instead, they’re pushing Model-Compute-Performance (MCP) — a smarter framework for judging AI models by what they actually do, not just how bloated they are. Efficiency matters. Insight matters. Hype? Not so much. See why MCP might be the new gold standard.

Your UI looks sleek, but it forgot how to feel

Web Designer Depot delivers a wake-up call: today’s interfaces are too flat, too silent, too sterile. We’ve scrubbed out all the sensory feedback that made digital feel human. The fix? Design that listens, responds, and yes — even buzzes a little. Here’s how to bring the senses back.

Breadcrumbs are toast

Once a UX darling, breadcrumb nav is on life support. And according to the experts, that’s a good thing. With mobile-first design, smarter search, and app-style flows, users just don’t need that old-school trail anymore. Time to let it go. Read why breadcrumbs are dead — and what to do instead.

2025 web dev trends that actually matter

Strapi’s trend report doesn’t just list buzzwords—it maps out where web dev is really going. From the rise of headless and API-first builds to GenAI reshaping prototyping, it’s packed with insight you can actually use. You’ll also see how tools like Vite and Turbopack are shaking up workflows, and why Astro and Qwik are turning heads. Give it a read and see what’s worth betting on.

Accessibility: still broken, still ignored

VentureBeat dropped the numbers — and they’re not pretty. Most sites are failing on accessibility, even as legal heat turns up. This isn’t just about compliance; it’s about reach, risk, and responsibility. Bake it in, or pay for it later. See what the data says.

Packt catalogue: must-read dev books📚

Want to level up your skills and stay ahead of the curve? Take a peek at our hand-picked book recommendation designed to sharpen your expertise and spark new ideas!

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This updated second edition of TypeScript 5 Design Patterns and Best Practices by Theofanis Despoudis is your go-to guide for mastering proven design patterns in modern TypeScript development. Cleaner code, fewer bugs, and patterns that actually stick — it’s all in here.I'm a new paragraph block.

This week, we’re not just repping the book—we’re showing it off with an AI-generated visual. Why? Because just like AI is speeding up dev workflows (see our AI spotlight section below), it’s also shaking up how we share, design, and build. Think of it as a nod to how far GenAI has come—and how devs are starting to use it in clever, unexpected ways.

GRAB YOUR COPY!

Exclusive excerpts you can’t miss! ✍️

Tired of messy 500 errors and generic stack traces?
In this excerpt from Spring System Design in Practice, Rodrigo Santiago walks through one of the most overlooked aspects of REST API design: centralized error handling. If you've been scattering try/catch blocks across your Spring controllers—or worse, returning blank error pages—this section shows how to clean it up with @RestControllerAdvice, @ExceptionHandler, and ProblemDetail to create consistent, client-friendly responses. Bonus: it’s clean, testable, and won’t blow up your logs in prod.

Here’s how to fix your error handling, the Spring way. Preorder your copy today!

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Error handling in REST APIs

Since we were talking about REST services in the prior chapter’s examples, let's extend this a bit to solve a critical problem in Spring REST APIs.

Suppose there is a specific exception that is issued by various endpoints in your application. How could you implement the proper error handling and return meaningful responses to your remote clients without replicating code with the same try/catch statements all over the place?

A useful example would be the 500 error code in HTTP. How many times you have seen unexpected server errors that are fully unformatted and irrelevant, or just empty? It is basically impossible to anticipate every situation in which your code can break in production. So, it is at least advisable to have something in place that can catch all the unexpected exceptions thrown in your code and just handle it in such a way that your remote clients will receive a standard, well-formatted message in every case.

In these annoying situations, we can standardize our responses using the @ControllerAdvice and @ExceptionHandler Spring Web annotations, and the ProblemDetail class as a standardized return object.

Let's see how it works. First, we will create this sample defective endpoint in our current RentalPropertyController class that will purposefully throw a RuntimeException:

@GetMapping(value = "/error")
public ResponseEntity<List<RentalPropertyDTO>> runtimeExceptionSample() {
 throw new RuntimeException
 ("This was a sample unhandled runtime exception");
}

This exception is just to symbolize a runtime error that could happen anywhere in your application.

Next, let’s use curl to fire a request to this endpoint:

webdevpro-84-patch-your-nextjs-now-ai-agents-get-smarter-and-css-scroll-animations-go-native-img-5

As you can notice, we get an internal server error that does not give any useful data from the exception we originally fired.

Now, let's create this simple class to handle all uncaught runtime exceptions that happen throughout our code:

@RestControllerAdvice
public class SampleExceptionHandler {
 @ExceptionHandler(RuntimeException.class)
 public ResponseEntity<ProblemDetail>
 handleGenericException(RuntimeException ex) {
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 ProblemDetail problemDetail =
 ProblemDetail.forStatus(
 HttpStatus.INTERNAL_SERVER_ERROR);
 problemDetail.setTitle(
 "Customized Internal Server Error");
 problemDetail.setDetail(
 "An unexpected error occurred: "
 + ex.getMessage());
 problemDetail.setInstance(
 URI.create(
 "/api/v1/rental-properties/error"));
 problemDetail.setProperty("timestamp",
 LocalDateTime.now().toString());
 return new ResponseEntity<>(problemDetail,
 HttpStatus.INTERNAL_SERVER_ERROR);
 }
}

Here are some highlights:

I am annotating the class with the @RestControllerAdvice Spring Web annotation, which lets Spring know this is a bean that's used to handle whatever exceptions are declared in the methods. We can have as many @RestControllerAdvice classes as we want in our code, but many projects will only maintain one of them. Unless you have very complicated exception handling and need to isolate them in other classes for clarity, having just one @RestControllerAdvice tagged class will be OK.
We are tagging a single method with the @ExceptionHandler annotation, which lets us specify which exception should be handled in this method. In our case, we just want a method that can capture all runtime exceptions so that we can better format 500 error messages to our HTTP clients.
We are creating an instance of the ProblemDetail class, which has very useful fields for informing remote clients about our errors.
If you have several different exceptions that you want to handle in your code using the RestControllerAdvice mechanism, you can create different methods for handling each one of the exceptions you want to address.

Now, let's see it in action. Once you have written a RestControllerAdvice class, Spring just knows how to forward errors to an instance of this class by using the Spring Beans management mechanism we talked about in the previous chapter.

The @RestControllerAdvice annotation will signal Spring Framework to create a Spring Bean out of it, and to keep that instance throughout the whole application lifecycle.

Here is an attemptto fire the same GET request, but this time the response is customized by our @RestControllerAdvice bean:

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As you can see, our original exception message is now being carried over the remote client. Notice that this can help with troubleshooting important error messages, but it can also lead to security breaches if you don't handle the error messages properly. Letting error messages flow to your remote HTTP clients can leak important security details about your architecture. You need to be very careful about these error messages.

Developer tip of the week 💡

Use scroll-timeline to Animate with Scroll—Natively!

As of last week, modern browsers (Chrome 123+ and Safari Tech Preview) support the new CSS scroll-timeline spec. This allows scroll-based animations without JS!

Example:

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@keyframes fadeIn {
												 from { opacity: 0; }
												 to { opacity: 1; }
												}
												
												.my-element {
												 animation: fadeIn 1s linear;
												 animation-timeline: scroll(root);
												}

This ties animation progress to scroll position—great for subtle reveals, parallax, or sticky effects. Cleaner, performant, and no JavaScript scroll listeners needed.

💡 Try it in a component to animate sections as they enter the viewport. Works beautifully with Intersection Observer fallbacks for older browsers.

AI in the spotlight 🔦

AI Creativity Levels Up: From Ghibli Dreams to GPT-4o

AI-generated art is having a moment. From turning your favorite characters and books into Studio Ghibli-style scenes (yes, it’s everywhere now) to the latest leap from OpenAI—things are moving fast.

GPT-4o just dropped, adding stunning image-generation skills to its already top-tier text and code chops. Think faster, sharper, more lifelike visuals that blur the line between human and machine creativity.

Meanwhile, Instagram and X are flooded with AI-Ghiblified takes on everything from The Lord of the Rings to your favorite dev tools. It’s cute. It’s clever. But is it… too much? Tell us!

Web Dev Meets GenAI: Automation, But Smarter

Generative AI is quietly reshaping the web dev pipeline—from rapid prototyping to real-time component generation. But unlike past automation waves, this one isn’t about cutting corners. It’s about amplifying creativity and collapsing iteration cycles.

AI-powered design tools now generate React components from wireframes, translate Figma mocks to code, and even optimize layout responsiveness with minimal input. Devs can spin up landing pages, tweak UI styles, or scaffold full-stack flows—all in minutes. And with contextual code suggestions getting smarter, the grunt work is being shaved off the dev process.

Still, it’s not a handover—it’s a handoff. The real value lies in pairing human vision with machine speed. GenAI can’t replace judgment, architectural decisions, or accessibility compliance. It builds fast, but you’re still the one who makes it right.

As automation matures, the question shifts: not “what can AI build?” but “how should we build with AI?”

Java + GenAI? Amazon Says Yes

Amazon is bridging GenAI with enterprise Java stacks by integrating Bedrock into the Spring ecosystem via the new Spring AI project. Translation: developers can now tap into powerful LLMs like Anthropic Claude or Meta Llama directly within familiar Spring Boot flows. This lowers the barrier for backend devs looking to add chat, summarization, and GenAI-driven features into enterprise-grade apps—without rebuilding their architecture. Enterprise GenAI just got a lot more real.

Know a hot AI update we missed? Send it our way—we might feature it in the next drop. 👀

And that's a wrap 🎬

That’s your weekly dose of dev know-how—served fresh! Hope you found something to spark new ideas, level up your workflow, or just make coding a little more fun.

Until next time—keep coding, keep creating, and stay awesome. ✨

P.S. Got a topic you’d love to see covered? Send us your suggestions, and we’ll put them on our radar!

Cheers!

Kinnari Chohan,

Editor-in-chief

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