The npmx package browser for the npm registry has been released in alpha, following a groundswell of support for this alternative to the official npmjs browser.The open source project was started by Daniel Roe, who leads the Nuxt project team at Vercel, with the first code published in late January. Roe also started a thread on Bluesky, about frustrations with npmjs, to which the responses indicated a high level of dissatisfaction.
Many complaints focused on the publishing process – a user commented that "I've published one package to npm and no other experience in tech has made me feel more scared and stupid" – but since npmx is only an alternative browser for the existing npmjs registry, it does not address this.Other comments though are in scope. For example, npmjs has a code tab (marked beta) that allows browsing the package code, but it does not support browser history so the back button does not work as expected.Other issues mentioned were no dark mode; stars awarded by users not displayed anywhere; poor display of dependencies; lack of information on TypeScript and ESM (EcmaScript module) support; link to GitHub source not supporting directories within a repository, and more.
