10 Rendering Patterns for Web Apps

Summary

This video explores the complexities of web development, highlighting the myriad of frameworks and rendering strategies available. It discusses 10 different web app rendering patterns, from static websites to advanced techniques like SSR, SSG, ISR, and resumability. Frameworks like React, AngularJS, and Next.js are mentioned, each offering unique solutions for user experience, performance, and SEO. The video aims to guide CTOs and developers in making informed decisions for their web projects.

Takeaways

• 🌐 **Rendering Patterns**: The video discusses 10 different web rendering strategies and their associated frameworks, highlighting the trade-offs in user experience, performance, and developer experience.
• 🏗️ **Static Websites**: The most basic rendering pattern is the static website, which involves pre-built web pages uploaded to a cloud storage bucket and served directly, suitable for sites with infrequent data changes.
• 🔄 **Multi-Page Applications (MPA)**: MPAs dynamically generate HTML and data on the server for each browser request, allowing for dynamic content changes, and are built using frameworks like Ruby on Rails, Django, and Laravel.
• 📱 **Single Page Applications (SPA)**: Introduced post-iPhone era, SPAs render the UI in the browser with JavaScript, providing a smoother user experience but can suffer from slow initial loads and SEO challenges.
• 🎉 **Server-Side Rendering (SSR)**: Combines the benefits of server-rendered HTML with client-side JavaScript, offering a faster initial load and improved SEO, supported by frameworks like Next.js, Nuxt, and SvelteKit.
• 📚 **Static Site Generation (SSG)**: Similar to SSR but with all HTML rendered in advance and deployed as static files, offering low-cost hosting and simplicity, with frameworks like Next.js and SvelteKit supporting this pattern.
• 🔄 **Incremental Static Regeneration (ISR)**: Allows for static sites to rebuild individual pages on demand, providing dynamic data handling without full server deployment, pioneered by Next.js.
• 🌊 **Partial Hydration**: A technique to improve the perceived performance of SPAs by rendering non-interactive components first and deferring interactivity until needed.
• 🏝️ **Islands Architecture**: Focuses on hydrating only interactive components on a page, reducing the initial JavaScript payload and improving performance, supported by frameworks like Astro.
• 🚀 **Streaming SSR**: A method to render server-side content in multiple chunks, making the UI interactive faster and enhancing perceived performance, featured in Next.js with its app directory.
• 🔁 **Resumability**: A novel rendering paradigm by the Quick framework that eliminates the need for hydration by serializing the entire website into static HTML, with JavaScript loaded lazily as needed.

Q & A

What is rendering in the context of web development?

Rendering is the process of converting data and code into HTML that can be viewed by the end user. This can occur on the server or in the browser and can be done all at once or incrementally, each with different trade-offs for user experience, performance, and developer experience.

What are the limitations of using static websites for web development?

Static websites are not ideal for sites where data changes often. They are suitable for basic websites that do not require much interactivity or dynamic data, as they consist of pre-built web pages uploaded as static files to a storage bucket.

How do multi-page applications differ from static websites?

Multi-page applications dynamically generate HTML and data on a server with each request from a browser, allowing the website's appearance to change with underlying data. This is unlike static websites where pages are pre-built and do not change without re-uploading.

What is a single page application (SPA) and how does it improve user experience?

A single page application is a web application that loads a single HTML page and dynamically updates that page as the user interacts with the app. This approach provides a smoother user experience compared to multi-page applications, as it avoids full page reloads with each interaction.

What are the main challenges with single page applications in terms of performance and SEO?

Single page applications face challenges with initial load performance due to large JavaScript bundles and can struggle with SEO because search engines have difficulty understanding content on dynamically rendered pages.

What is the concept of SSR (Server-Side Rendering) in web development?

Server-Side Rendering (SSR) is a rendering strategy where the initial HTML is rendered on the server and then 'hydrated' with client-side JavaScript to provide an app-like experience. This approach combines the benefits of server-rendered content with the interactivity of SPAs.

How does SSG (Static Site Generation) differ from SSR (Server-Side Rendering)?

Static Site Generation (SSG) involves rendering all HTML in advance and uploading it to a static host, similar to SSR, but it hydrates to JavaScript after the initial page load. SSG sites are often referred to as Jamstack sites and offer simplicity and low-cost hosting.

What is ISR (Incremental Static Regeneration) and how does it help with dynamic data?

Incremental Static Regeneration (ISR) allows for static sites to be deployed but rebuild individual pages on the fly when the cache is invalidated. This approach enables handling dynamic data without the need for server deployment like SSR, offering a balance between SSG and SSR.

What is partial hydration and how does it improve the performance of web applications?

Partial hydration is a technique where only certain parts of a web page are initially rendered and made interactive, while others are loaded lazily. This can improve performance by reducing the initial JavaScript load and focusing on visible components first.

What is the islands architecture in web development and how does it optimize rendering?

The islands architecture is a rendering paradigm where only interactive components are hydrated with JavaScript, while static parts remain as static HTML. This approach minimizes the JavaScript required for interactivity, optimizing the rendering process and reducing unnecessary loads.

How does streaming SSR improve the user experience compared to traditional SSR?

Streaming Server-Side Rendering (SSR) allows for server-side content to be rendered in multiple chunks rather than all at once. This results in a faster interactivity of the UI and a more performant feel for the end user, as parts of the page can load and become interactive independently.

What is resumability in web development and how does it address hydration issues?

Resumability is a rendering paradigm that serializes a website and its data into HTML, with JavaScript broken into tiny chunks. This approach eliminates the need for hydration, as the initial page load is static HTML, and any required JavaScript for interactivity is lazily loaded in the background.