Salesforce’s annual Dreamforce 2021 was different in many ways. A very select number of people were invited to attend (thanks COVID). Most of Dreamforce was done virtually for the widest audience possible. For this reason, the content delivered came off more as an informercial and did not have the meat that Dreamforce attendees are used to. I kept waiting for a 1-800 number to appear on the screen. It had to be said.
What was the same was that there are always lots of big announcements. But due to the infomercial style, most Salesforce developers probably missed the biggest announcement – Lightning Web Runtime is available as an NPM package.
So what does this really mean? In my opinion, it is a game changer for Salesforce developers, but possibly all web developers.
For starters, the Lightning Web Runtime (LWR) means that Lightning Web Components (LWC’s) can be used to assemble web applications that render a full page in less than one second. Yes, that is what I said. BOOM!
This means that Lightning Apps can actually render as fast as we have all been hoping for since the word “Lightning” was introduced. Will the real modern high performance web architecture please stand up?
Thanks to page generation at build time, not runtime, our bar is set at subsecond full-page loads.
LWR Docs – https://developer.salesforce.com/docs/platform/lwr/guide/lwr-intro.html
But the best part is that because of the release of the NPM package, serious web developers can build high performing web apps that may or may not connect to Salesforce. I’m serious. This is the flexibility that Salesforce developers have been wanting forever.
What is coming? Open Source, but no time frames on when that will be. I also imagine there will be more features and hopefully lots of demo apps.
My advice to you is to “Run, don’t walk” to the LWR guide as soon as possible. I know I am. And stay tuned here, because there is so much more to come.
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