Skip to content

DEV Community

Astro

This is about Astro, the framework where you build faster websites with less client-side JavaScript.

about #astro

Welcome to Astro!

Astro is a new kind of static site builder that delivers lightning-fast performance with a modern developer experience. Astro borrowed the best parts of our favorite tools and then added a few innovations, including:

🚀 Bring Your Own Framework (BYOF): Build your site using React, Svelte, Vue, Preact, web components, or just plain ol’ HTML + JavaScript.
🚀 100% Static HTML, No JS: Astro renders your entire page to static HTML, removing all JavaScript from your final build by default.
🚀 On-Demand Components: Need some JS? Astro can automatically hydrate interactive components when they become visible on the page. If the user never sees it, they never load it.
🚀 Fully-Featured: Astro supports TypeScript, Scoped CSS, CSS Modules, Sass, Tailwind, Markdown, MDX, and any of your favorite npm packages.
🚀 SEO Enabled: Automatic sitemaps, RSS feeds, pagination and collections take the pain out of SEO and syndication.

How it works

Astro works a lot like a static site generator. If you have ever used Eleventy, Hugo, or Jekyll (or even a server-side web framework like Rails, Laravel, or Django) then you should feel right at home with Astro.

In Astro, you compose your website using UI components from your favorite JavaScript web framework (React, Svelte, Vue, etc). Astro renders your entire site to static HTML during the build. The result is a fully static website with all JavaScript removed from the final page. No monolithic JavaScript application required, just static HTML that loads as fast as possible in the browser regardless of how many UI components you used to generate it.

Of course, sometimes client-side JavaScript is inevitable. Image carousels, shopping carts, and auto-complete search bars are just a few examples of things that require some JavaScript to run in the browser. This is where Astro really shines: When a component needs some JavaScript, Astro only loads that one component (and any dependencies). The rest of your site continues to exist as static, lightweight HTML.

In other full-stack web frameworks this level of per-component optimization would be impossible without loading the entire page in JavaScript, delaying interactivity. In Astro, this kind of partial hydration is built into the tool itself.

You can even automatically defer components to only load once they become visible on the page with the :visible modifier.

This new approach to web architecture is called islands architecture. We didn’t coin the term, but Astro may have perfected the technique. We are confident that an HTML-first, JavaScript-only-as-needed approach is the best solution for the majority of content-based websites.

👋 Sign in for the ability to sort posts by relevant, latest, or top.

Mar 28

📦 I Built 3 Astro Integrations and Shipped Them to npm — Here's What They Do

#astro #webdev #javascript #opensource

4 min read

Mar 3

Why I Over-Engineered My Blog (And Why You Should Too)

#astro #webdev #frontend #productivity

5 min read

Mar 9

Building a Table of Contents Sidebar Without a Library

#javascript #css #astro #architecture

4 min read

Mar 7

Building Radar: A Google Sheets Hack for My Link Feed

#webdev #astro #buildinginpublic #googlesheets

4 min read

peter zou

Mar 18

I got tired of my phone distracting me, so I built a frictionless Web Timer (Astro + Cloudflare) ⏱️

#showdev #webdev #productivity #astro

2 min read

Mar 14

Astro Docs Without a Single Manual Screenshot

#astro #documentation #webdev #automation

2 min read

Mar 10

Stop Shipping Broken Env Config

#security #vite #astro #javascript

6 min read

Chishan

Mar 15

How I Built a Niche Review Site for Squishy Toys (and What I Learned About SEO)

#webdev #astro #seo #javascript

3 min read

Domenico Tenace for Playful Programming

Mar 12

Rebuilding domenicotenace.dev: How Pure Astro and CSS Reminded Me That Simple Is Better 🌟

#astro #css #opensource #webdev

6 min read

Rafael Cavalcanti da Silva

Mar 10

SEO Case Study: From zero to Google in 12 weeks — Part 1

#seo #webdev #astro #performance

8 min read

Jardiel Vega Domínguez

Mar 8

Creating "StepStyle" with a Focus on UX E-commerce

#webdev #javascript #astro #ui

2 min read

Андрей Викулов (VProger)

Jan 31

Astro vs React/Vue и SSG: когда Astro — перебор, а когда спасение

#astro #react #vue #nextjs

2 min read

Joachim Zeelmaekers

Feb 23

Rebuilding My Blog From the Ground Up

#softwareengineering #writing #blog #astro

4 min read

Pere

Feb 22

Building a High-Performance Site Analyzer with Astro, React, and Node.js Performance Hooks

#webdev #astro #react #performance

2 min read

Emerson Delatorre for Fazedor de Codigo

Mar 5

Como Construir um Blog com Astro e Inteligência Artificial (Sem Perder o Controle do Código)

#speckit #githubcopilot #astro #vibecoding

4 min read

👋 Sign in for the ability to sort posts by relevant, latest, or top.