The latest version of React has been a long time coming. This new version has some great behind-the-scenes updates to how React rendering works, makes changes to server-side rendering of React, and introduces the new Suspense feature, which lets you specify a loading state for components that aren’t ready to be displayed yet (such as ones that rely on the results of an asynchronous request).

I just upgraded reactjsfoundations.com to React 18, and I’m excited to announce that it didn’t break anything at all! This is huge. It’s extremely rare that a major version update of a library doesn’t wreck everything. It’s even more rare that a major version update that happens right after a book is published doesn’t require major updates to the book.

In this case, however, all of the code in the book will continue to work just fine, whether you’re using React 17 or React 18. Furthermore, almost all of the content of the book is relevant to both React 17 and React 18. There may be a few places where more content on certain subjects is needed (such as Suspense, which is covered in the book but not extensively). I’m working on that.

I’ll be posting React 18 tutorials and info here over the next couple weeks, so make sure to check back regularly. If I find anything in the book that should be changed for React 18, I’ll also post it here. However, so far I’m seeing only positives from React 18. The ReactJS team did an amazing job of making major changes to the library without breaking everything that was written with the previous version. That’s extremely hard to do, and the ReactJS development team should be commended and praised for their dedication to taking the time to get it right.