New in Vue - February 2025

Source: Dev.to

As you probably didn’t even notice, I skipped the January issue of my wannabe monthly newsletter. I was in a hurry towards some deadlines, and I wrote three other articles in 2026 already. So I decided not to post some half‑baked something last Saturday and to postpone the release. Today I am travelling by train from Prague to Ostrava, which is always a good opportunity for creative work. Here it comes.

Nuxt Updates

Nuxt began 2026 with a new minor release 4.3. Among numerous updates and improvements, it is now possible to opt‑in to forthcoming v5 features via a setting. Nuxt v5 won’t be a revolutionary update with large API and behavior changes, but it will bring a completely re‑worked Nitro v3 server engine promising faster and more effective execution with a number of new cool features.

Owners of larger projects also got a pleasant announcement: official support for Nuxt v3 has been extended by six months—from the end of January to 31 July 2026. That gives everyone more time for migration efforts. Some are complaining that the support period should be even longer, but Nuxt is an open‑source project. Despite a handful of team members now being paid by Vercel, the solution capacity is still limited. I would rather see new features being developed than legacy code being maintained indefinitely for (often non‑paying) users.

New Nuxt Modules

Two new official Nuxt modules are on the horizon:

• Nuxt Accessibility – focuses on dealing with accessibility issues by providing ways of testing and giving hints during development.
• Nuxt Hints – goes beyond accessibility, offering insights about your application’s performance, accessibility, and security.

Both modules are currently in alpha stage, with a v1 release expected soon.

Nuxt Studio Becomes Open Source

The formerly paid premium feature Nuxt Studio is now free and fully open‑sourced. The transition began after Vercel acquired NuxtLabs last summer and was completed at the dawn of 2026. Nuxt Studio used to be a revenue source for Nuxt development; now it’s available to everyone as an advanced CMS solution.

Vueform 2.0

Adam Berecz announced Vueform 2.0. After learning about Vueform 11 months ago from his conference talk, I immediately liked it. Vueform 2.0 shifts from a more opinionated form‑handling solution to a headless core that can be extended by almost any UI library. Forms remain a big (and somewhat painful) topic, and I haven’t settled on my dream setup yet.

Another contender is Formisch, developed since last summer by Fabian Hiller, the author of the Valibot validation library. With Nuxt UI now open‑sourcing its previously paid components, their Form component might be all a Nuxter needs. I plan to experiment with this theory soon.

Vite, Rolldown, and the Ecosystem

One of the fundamental parts of the ongoing improvement efforts in the Vite ecosystem is Rolldown. This bundler, written in Rust, is designed to be extremely fast and effective for building modern web apps. Vite 8, already in beta since December (announcement), will be powered exclusively by Rolldown. Standalone Rolldown releases are also on the way, with release candidates already available (details). You can see more of what’s happening in the fresh monthly summary by Alex Lichter.

npmx – A New Frontend for the NPM Registry

The project npmx offers an alternative frontend to the NPM package registry. It’s open‑source and under active development, promising an improved browsing experience for NPM packages. It’s not a competing repository or ecosystem—just a different UI with additional features. While I’m still satisfied with the classic npmjs.com, npmx feels like one of those updates you don’t know you need until you try it. I’ll keep an eye on its progress.

I plan to release the March issue after the VueJS Amsterdam conference. This year I won’t be traveling there in person, but I’ll stay tuned for updates and expect plenty of news to discuss. Take care until then!