Building Modern Web Apps with Next.js

August 10, 2024

Next.js has become one of the most popular React frameworks, and for good reason. It provides an excellent developer experience while delivering great performance for end users.

Key Features I Love

Server-Side Rendering (SSR)

Next.js makes it incredibly easy to render pages on the server, which improves:

SEO: Search engines can crawl your content more effectively
Performance: Users see content faster, especially on slower connections
Accessibility: Content is available even with JavaScript disabled

App Router

The new App Router introduced in Next.js 13 brings:

File-based routing with nested layouts
Server and client components
Improved data fetching patterns
Better TypeScript support

Developer Experience

Some of my favorite DX features:

Hot reloading that actually works
Built-in TypeScript support
Automatic code splitting
Image optimization out of the box

Code Example

Here's how easy it is to create a server component that fetches data:

// app/posts/page.tsx
export default async function PostsPage() {
  const posts = await fetch('https://api.example.com/posts')
    .then(res => res.json());

  return (
    <div>
      <h1>Latest Posts</h1>
      {posts.map(post => (
        <article key={post.id}>
          <h2>{post.title}</h2>
          <p>{post.excerpt}</p>
        </article>
      ))}
    </div>
  );
}

What's Next?

I'm excited to continue exploring Next.js features like:

Middleware for advanced routing
Edge Runtime for global performance
Integration with modern databases
Advanced caching strategies