- [#5602](https://github.com/gradio-app/gradio/pull/5602) [`54d21d3f1`](https://github.com/gradio-app/gradio/commit/54d21d3f18f2ddd4e796d149a0b41461f49c711b) - Ensure `HighlightedText` with `merge_elements` loads without a value. Thanks [@hannahblair](https://github.com/hannahblair)!
- [#5284](https://github.com/gradio-app/gradio/pull/5284) [`5f25eb68`](https://github.com/gradio-app/gradio/commit/5f25eb6836f6a78ce6208b53495a01e1fc1a1d2f) - Minor bug fix sweep. Thanks [@aliabid94](https://github.com/aliabid94)!/n - Our use of **exit** was catching errors and corrupting the traceback of any component that failed to instantiate (try running blocks_kitchen_sink off main for an example). Now the **exit** exits immediately if there's been an exception, so the original exception can be printed cleanly/n - HighlightedText was rendering weird, cleaned it up
#### Improve startup performance and markdown support ([#5279](https://github.com/gradio-app/gradio/pull/5279) [`fe057300`](https://github.com/gradio-app/gradio/commit/fe057300f0672c62dab9d9b4501054ac5d45a4ec))
##### Improved markdown support
We now have better support for markdown in `gr.Markdown` and `gr.Dataframe`. Including syntax highlighting and Github Flavoured Markdown. We also have more consistent markdown behaviour and styling.
##### Various performance improvements
These improvements will be particularly beneficial to large applications.
- Rather than attaching events manually, they are now delegated, leading to a significant performance improvement and addressing a performance regression introduced in a recent version of Gradio. App startup for large applications is now around twice as fast.
- Optimised the mounting of individual components, leading to a modest performance improvement during startup (~30%).
- Corrected an issue that was causing markdown to re-render infinitely.
- Ensured that the `gr.3DModel` does re-render prematurely.
- [#5215](https://github.com/gradio-app/gradio/pull/5215) [`fbdad78a`](https://github.com/gradio-app/gradio/commit/fbdad78af4c47454cbb570f88cc14bf4479bbceb) - Lazy load interactive or static variants of a component individually, rather than loading both variants regardless. This change will improve performance for many applications. Thanks [@pngwn](https://github.com/pngwn)!
- [#5046](https://github.com/gradio-app/gradio/pull/5046) [`5244c587`](https://github.com/gradio-app/gradio/commit/5244c5873c355cf3e2f0acb7d67fda3177ef8b0b) - Allow new lines in `HighlightedText` with `/n` and preserve whitespace. Thanks [@hannahblair](https://github.com/hannahblair)!