Everyone's Talking About Pretext (And Here's Why)

Description

Everyone's talking about Pretext — the JavaScript library that went viral. Here's why it's actually genius. Pretext solves text measurement performance by avoiding expensive DOM reflows. Instead of getBoundingClientRect and offsetHeight, it uses Canvas-based measurement with smart caching. Perfect for virtual lists, masonry layouts, and any UI where text measurement affects performance. In this video I break down what Pretext does, why it went viral, the technical implementation, and whether you should use it. Created by Cheng Lou (ReasonML, former React team), this library is changing how developers think about text layout on the web. 🔗 Pretext: https://github.com/chenglou/pretext 🔗 Live demos: https://chenglou.me/pretext/ Make sure to check 8bitcn! https://www.8bitcn.com/ Next video to watch: https://youtu.be/lG_mTu0wyZA ⚔️ Join The Horde - Discord: https://discord.com/invite/uFB5YzH9YG - Github: https://github.com/TheOrcDev - X: https://x.com/orcdev #pretext #webdevelopment #orcdev #react #nextjs #typescript