Astro Weekly #74

Astro 5.5 adds improved diagramming support in Markdown, build a fast search with Fuse.js, create a blog with Strapi 5 and Astro

In partnership with

Dia duit, Astronauts! 🍀

In the spirit of St. Patrick’s Day, let’s get lucky and level up your Astro projects!

This week, we’re diving into some exciting new updates with Astro 5.5, including enhanced support for diagramming tools in Markdown. We’ll also explore how to boost your site’s search with Fuse.js, and build a blog using Strapi 5.

Let’s dive in! 🚀

What’s new with Astro 🗞️

No whiteboard needed with diagrams in Astro 5.5

Astro 5.5—diagramming tools just got easier ⚡

Astro 5.5 is now available!

This release introduces enhanced support for diagramming tools like Mermaid and D2 in Markdown, along with type-safe sessions and improved heading ID compatibility.

Here’s a quick look at what’s new:

  • 🖼️ Better Diagramming Tool Support: Seamlessly integrate Mermaid and D2 charts in Markdown with the new excludeLangs option.

  • 🔒 Type-safe Sessions: Define types for session data to avoid errors and enable better development experience.

  • 🔗 Improved Heading ID Compatibility: Keep your heading IDs consistent with other platforms like GitHub and npm.

  • Experimental Script/Style Tag Order: Preserve the order of your style and script tags to ensure accurate rendering.

For all the details and more, check out the Astro 5.5 release post.

Astro Boosters 🚀

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Astro Community 🧑‍🚀

Don’t blow a fuse with Fuse.js

Fuse your way to better search in Astro 🔍

Discover how to add fast, dynamic search to your Astro site using Astro Actions and Fuse.js with CSS-Tricks.

With client-side searching powered by Fuse.js and Astro Actions handling server-side logic, you get the best of both worlds—speed and flexibility.

Build an Astro blog with Strapi 5 🖐️

Learn how Astro and Strapi 5 make building dynamic landing pages and blogs a breeze.

Paul Bratslavsky covers setting up Astro with Strapi, a powerful headless CMS, using static paths for fast-loading pages, and structuring content with a block renderer.

What caught my interest this week 🤓

Check out these great posts from the Astro Community ↓

If you have something awesome you’d like to share with the Astro community, you can reach me at [email protected] or via DM on X

Blazing-fast Astro themes ⚡

Light as a feather, fast as lightning

Introducing Feather—an elegant, minimalist blog theme for Astro. 🪶

Feather provides a clean, typography-focused design that puts your writing first while achieving perfect Lighthouse scores across all metrics.

Early access pricing available for a limited time. Astro Weekly subscribers can save an additional $10 using code ASTROWEEKLY10 at checkout.

Astro on X 💫

What’s happening on Twitter X this week…

Astro Boosters 🚀

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Astro Showcase 🤩

Check out these impressive projects built with Astro!

That’s a wrap for this week, Astronauts! 🎬

Got something to share with your fellow Astronauts in next week’s issue? Reach out to me at [email protected] or DM on X.

Until next time—keep building, keep exploring! ✨

– Nathan 👨‍🚀