LightningJS is a WebGL renderer for Television UIs developed and used by Comcast for apps like Peacock. SolidJS is a lightweight and highly performant reactive framework that supports custom renderers. Are these the perfect match? Chris Lorenzo, creator of SolidJS integration for Lightning 3, joins the stream today to talk about this powerful pair.

[0:00] Preamble
[7:00] Welcome Chris Lorenzo & What is LightningJS?
[22:30] Technological Constraints of Televisions
[31:15] Canvas, WebGL, & LightningJS 3.0
[40:15] Solid's Universal Renderer
[51:30] Why Solid?
[1:05:00] React Native Comparison & Why A DOM Tree?
[1:12:00] The Difficulties of Text Rendering
[1:21:30] More on Backwards Compatibility
[1:29:30] How Do The Types Work? TypeScript Fun!
[1:33:30] Exploring The Movies Demo
[1:44:15] Video Playback in LightningJS
[1:49:15] Animations & FlexBox in LightningJS
[1:58:30] Pushing Standards Forward & Vue Experiments
[2:05:45] Performance & Rendering Optimizations
[2:17:15] Q&A: Web Workers? Getting Started?
[2:26:45] Dave Di Biase Joins React Miami Panel
[2:38:00] Solid's Popularity in the Real World
[2:42:15] The Current Framework Landscape
[2:49:45] Q&A: RSCs? Reactivity? Movies Demo? Start?
[3:00:45] The Next JavaScript Framework Benchmark
[3:04:45] TNJSFB: Hydration Cost & We Have a Test?
[3:15:45] TNJSFB: What Do We Measure? & Conclusion
[3:21:45] Partially Lazy Reactivity
[3:27:15] PLR: Pure Sinks & Scheduling
[3:35:15] PLR: Suspense, Transitions & Concurrency
[3:46:30] PLR: Revisiting Rendering
[3:56:00] PLR: Inserting Nodes & "Onioning"
[4:10:30] PLR: Other Thoughts & Conclusion
[4:23:45] This Week in JavaScript: Solid News
[4:33:30] TWiJ: Tailwind Signals & Declarative Routes
[4:38:15] TWiJ: TC39 Signals, React, Remix & RSCs
[4:44:00] TWiJ: HTMX vs. React vs. Solid (Need & Want)
[4:51:30] TWiJ: What's Going On With The Edge?

Thanks @zombiefacesupreme for the timestamps!

Ryan Carniato

A live stream conversation between Ryan Carniato (SolidJS creator) and Chris Lorenzo (Comcast engineer) about LightningJS, a WebGL-based renderer designed for building TV applications on low-powered devices. LightningJS bypasses HTML/CSS entirely, using WebGL canvas to achieve 30fps on constrained hardware like old Roku sticks or TVs running Chrome 38-50. The discussion covers why SolidJS was chosen as an official framework for LightningJS 3 (performance, small bundle size, familiar JSX syntax, and its universal renderer API), how the universal renderer was originally built, and the challenges of targeting devices with as little as 1GB RAM and decade-old browser engines.

Ride the LightningJS w/ Chris Lorenzo