My Favorite Open-Source Next.js Project for 2024

Summary

In this video, the creator explores an exceptionally fast and innovative open-source e-commerce template built with Next.js. The template, called 'Next Faster,' is designed for lightning-speed performance, leveraging advanced strategies such as partial pre-rendering, aggressive prefetching, and caching to achieve instant navigation and image loading. By discussing techniques like preloading data on hover, avoiding database joins, and using fast ORMs like Drizzle, the creator demonstrates how these optimizations lead to unparalleled website speed. The video also provides insights on how these techniques can be applied to your own apps for improved performance, especially in static environments.

Takeaways

• 😀 The 'Next Faster' open-source project is built with Next.js and demonstrates exceptional website speed, making it one of the fastest websites seen this year.
• 😀 The project uses **partial pre-rendering**, which splits the page into static and dynamic sections, serving static content from a CDN for faster load times.
• 😀 **Aggressive prefetching** is used to preload data and images on hover, ensuring almost instant navigation, although this increases the load on infrastructure.
• 😀 The project makes extensive use of **caching**, storing content to reduce database calls and improving speed, with a cache revalidation every two hours.
• 😀 The trade-off for high performance is that the website is mostly static, meaning users cannot dynamically update the content (e.g., adding products), as it would interfere with the caching system.
• 😀 By **avoiding complex database joins**, the project ensures that database queries remain fast and efficient, simplifying the database interactions.
• 😀 The app uses **Drizzle**, a lightweight ORM, which is faster than other ORMs like Prisma due to its lack of a large query engine, optimizing database access.
• 😀 The aggressive prefetching strategy involves preloading data and images when hovering over elements, ensuring content is ready for quick access upon navigation.
• 😀 **Visibility-based prefetching** ensures images and data are preloaded when they are in the user's viewport, reducing delays in navigation and improving user experience.
• 😀 By preloading images and data aggressively, the project reduces the need for runtime calculations, leading to faster load times for end-users.
• 😀 The **Next Faster** project's speed comes from a delicate balance of performance optimizations, with the core of the app being static and the aggressive use of prefetching and caching.
• 😀 If you want to apply similar techniques to your own app, focus on **aggressive prefetching** and **aggressive caching** as they are the most transferable and impactful strategies.

Q & A

What makes the open-source project 'Next Faster' stand out?

The 'Next Faster' open-source project stands out due to its incredibly fast performance, achieved through strategies like partial pre-rendering, aggressive prefetching, and aggressive caching. It delivers instant navigation and immediate image loading, even on slow internet connections.

How does partial pre-rendering work in the 'Next Faster' project?

Partial pre-rendering works by splitting the page into static and dynamic sections. Static content is served from a CDN, while dynamic content is fetched from the server on request. This reduces runtime calculations and speeds up page loads.

What are the trade-offs of using aggressive prefetching in this project?

The trade-off of aggressive prefetching is that it places a heavy load on the infrastructure, with numerous API calls made to prefetch images. While this leads to faster performance, it can strain servers and increase infrastructure costs.

How does the custom link component in 'Next Faster' contribute to performance?

The custom link component in 'Next Faster' prefetches images for the path before a user clicks on a link. By preloading images on hover, it ensures the images are already loaded when the user navigates, resulting in instant page transitions.

What is the role of the unstable cache in 'Next Faster' and why is it important?

The unstable cache in 'Next Faster' is used to cache database call results, which reduces the need for repeated database queries and ensures fast performance. It also enables periodic revalidation of cached data, balancing speed and data freshness.

Why does 'Next Faster' avoid database joins, and how does this affect performance?

'Next Faster' avoids complex database joins to keep queries simple and fast. By reducing the number of joins, the application minimizes overhead, which improves database query speed and overall performance.

What is the significance of using Drizzle as the ORM in the project?

Drizzle is chosen for its speed since it doesn't ship with a large query engine like Prisma. Instead, it uses TypeScript to define database schemas, making it lighter and faster, which contributes to the overall performance of the 'Next Faster' project.

How does aggressive caching help the 'Next Faster' project achieve its fast performance?

Aggressive caching ensures that most data, including images and database results, is stored temporarily and reused. This minimizes the need for repeated calculations or database calls, leading to faster page loads and less strain on the infrastructure.

What are the limitations of 'Next Faster' in terms of dynamic content?

'Next Faster' is designed as a static website, meaning that it doesn't support dynamic user-generated content or product changes in real-time. This is because the cache is aggressively used, and dynamic content would not be updated frequently enough to provide a smooth experience.

How does the project manage preloading images and data on hover?

The project uses a combination of Intersection Observer and a custom prefetching strategy. When a user hovers over a link or entry for a certain period, the system preloads the relevant images and data in the background to make the content instantly available when clicked.