Next.js: The Future Of React?

💡 Introduction

Next.js is becoming more and more popular recently.

This article explains exactly why it's getting called "The Future Of React" and what improvement does it do to our favourite React.

Vercel calls it "The React Framework for the Web".

Let's see why.

🧠 TL;DR

• Next.js is a React framework for building full-stack web applications. It provides extra functionalities on top of React.js

• SSR(Server-Side Rendering) offers several benefits, including improved performance and enhanced SEO.

• Rendered data can also be cached to improve performance further, which makes it easier for search engines to index the content.

• Next.js also takes care of SEO and Performance.

🤨 Why do I need to use another framework?

I can just use React.js which is already a library!

Well, you can build cool applications with React, but by using a framework like Next.js, you will be creating a React.js app but with some extra superpowers(read till the end for a better understanding of what I'm referring to).

🚀 Here's all you need to know about Next.js

and why it is so good:

Next.js is a React framework that enables the following:

✅ Middlewares
✅ Typescript Support
✅ Fast Code Refresh
✅ Server Side Rendering
✅ Static Site Generation
✅ Incremental Static Regeneration
✅ SEO, Images and Font Optimizations
✅ Optimized for Production Out of the Box
✅ Improved development and deployment toolchain (w/ Vercel)

and many more...

💪 What are the benefits of SSR with Next.js?

Let’s talk about it from two angles: Performance and SEO. ✨

By rendering on the server, the fully-rendered initial state of an application can be served up on a single request.

What does that mean?

This means less work for the browser to do, and it also means that the content can be easily indexed by a search engine.

It also means rendered data can be cached (in part or in whole) to improve performance even further.

These Next.js features, along with others, help to build on React’s strong foundation.

They also make up for some of the disadvantages of a solely client-side rendering.

If SEO and performance matter to you, Next.js is an amazing addition to your tech stack.

🆚 Next.js V/S React.js

In a typical React application, the source code of an application will not be available initially and is populated later using JS when the files are requested from a server by a browser.

This creates a problem for search engines as their crawlers will not be able to crawl the websites beforehand which results in search engines not listing/ranking these websites.

This causes problems for social media applications as well.

They aren’t able to generate a preview of the application(refer to the image below).

🤔 Final Thoughts

But, the question remains, Would you use Next.js over any other framework? and why?

Is it the future of React.js and Frontend Development?

I hope you liked the article! ❤️

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Happy Coding! 🚀
Thanks for 18744! 🤗