Summary
When it comes to building websites for our clients, React appears to be the logical solution. You get an ex cellent community, incredible performance, and a pleasant development experience. On the surface, at least. When we go deeper, we will discover weaknesses. To begin with, the library is rather massive. It adds valuable loading time and increases the Time to Interactive. Second, it is not as quick as we would want. Granted, one can't typically complain, but it does highlight how slow it can be at times. It's also rather problematic since if you don't keep an eye out, it's easy to make a mistake, resulting in poor user experience.
So, what do we do now? Fortunately, there are various solutions to React's issues. While not all of them are addressed, the vast majority are. Each framework brings distinct advantages to the table, which we will discuss.
At this point, Next.js is virtually synonymous with React. It is usually always the best option when developing larger applications, however this is not always the case, Remix being the other option.
In addition, NextJS is equipped with support for features like as automatic code splitting, routing, hot-reloading, and many more. Several web applications might benefit more from using Next.js instead of React because of its enhanced development process, performance, and search engine optimization. It makes it easier for search engines to index websites, makes them load more quickly, and gives developers with a more efficient approach to developing websites. In addition, it is simpler to use than React when developing complicated web applications because it provides powerful capabilities out of the box, such as automatic code splitting and routing, while still having a simple learning curve.
Even though Google claims its indexing bot parses Single Page Apps correctly, you will surely get bonus points for statically generated pages, as they load quicker, as they do not depend on JavaScript as heavily as SPAs do.
SPAs will not display anything if JavaScript is not enabled. The majority of the material, if not all of it, will be displayed on statically generated pages more often than not (unless you have some advanced features). It's possible that it's out of date, but having anything to look at is vastly preferable to having nothing at all.
Take a look at the difference between vercel.com and the logged in view on facebook.com when you disabled JavaScript. In the first scenario, you will be presented with two different logos, and the page will not load properly. In the second scenario, you will be shown with the complete page, but some animations will be disabled.
Next.js has an enormously large set of 3rd party packages available. When you must add certain functionality, there is a big chance that there is a library that will add the desired feature. Authentication? Next-auth. PWA? Next PWA. Internationalization? Next-i18next. We could go on, but we think you get the point.
Although static generation is wonderful for SEO, using it on pages with a lot of material that is frequently updated can make it less effective than it otherwise would be. You will want to opt in for server generation if you are going to leverage it for blogs or any other use case.
When the app can only be run in browsers, one of the most important features won't be accessible to users. You won't be able to process requests that involve sensitive keys, among other things. In addition to this, the conversion of rich text to HTML will also take place on the users' local computers. That is a significant amount of JavaScript that needs to be shipped. Using Next.js, you can complete all your work on your own servers. It will be more efficient, and users will be grateful to you.
Next.js is the most versatile, and the most popular among React frameworks. You won’t make a mistake picking it, but in certain cases go for either Remix or Astro instead.
https://nextjs.org/docs/migrating/from-create-react-app
Too often, single page app frameworks attempt to conceal the underlying technology. That is not the case with Remix.
Remix enables developers to work with web standards such as HTTP, HTML, and JavaScript rather than abstracting them away. It reduces the amount of data sent over the network by embracing the server/client model while still allowing progressive enhancement so users can use the app without JavaScript enabled. Remix makes it simple to learn web development in general because its APIs make it simple to work with standard technologies without hiding them from view.
Remix is a framework that will make your app available to users almost instantly, while the data loads. That’s thanks to React 18’s new feature, streaming. In simple words, it’s about showing a placeholder before showing the right content. That indicates that something is coming, and gives users the right feedback.
Luckily, we won’t have to show anybody skeleton loaders for too long. That’s because Remix will run loaders before users navigate to a route. This is to shave off any unnecessary time you would otherwise have to add.
React forms are often breaking the way forms usually work. You read that correctly. Remix developers made sure that you may handle user input working with the web, not against it. This is to ensure that forms will work with JavaScript enabled as well. In comparison, most likely Next’s forms will not work without JS.
Thanks to Remix’s mutations, you won’t have to worry about a thing. JS on or off, it doesn’t matter.
If you have a website, where having the most recent dynamic data is crucial, Remix is for you. Thanks to streaming, it will also show the fresh information faster than Next.js would.
https://remix.run/docs/en/v1/guides/migrating-react-router-app
This static page generator isn't usually mentioned alongside Next.js and Remix. However, we decided to include it because it allows you to create faster and lighter React sites.
After rebuilding a simple blog in Astro, you can reduce the size of your site by more than 90% - imagine how much you can save by building a more complex website with a lot more going on.
With Astro, you don’t have to choose which framework is your favorite. Vue, Solid, Svelte, Lit, and more will work.
React is cool for sure, but it’s not always the best. Sometimes you will want to opt-in for a different library. One that is perhaps lighter, is reactive, or does something else better than Facebook’s library.
The static generator, which is popular among the larger web community, controls when certain components become interactive.
React loads all JavaScript on page load (unless you explicitly decide otherwise), making sure everything is interactive as soon as your users load your page. That is extremely wasteful.
You can choose whether you want your component to be interactive on page load, when it's visible, or even on specific screen sizes with Astro. Maybe you only want to load something on the client. You have control here.
When your page is lighter, your users are happy. Astro makes sure your site ships less JavaScript out of the box. No effort needed.
Marketing landing pages, blogs, real estate agents' listings. In general, it’s site that won’t have
https://docs.astro.build/en/guides/migrate-to-astro/
Even though the current version is 2.x, and not 1.x, this video from Jack Harrington is still relevant.
React is the logical solution for building websites, but it has its weaknesses such as a large library size, slow loading time, and not as quick as expected. To address these issues, there are various solutions, such as Next.js, Remix or Astro.
They make the library more efficient when developing complicated web applications due to their enhanced development process, performance, and search engine optimization. Additionally, Google's indexing bot will give developers bonus points for statically generated pages, as they load quicker and use less resources.
There is no one-size-fits-all framework. With prerendering, even a React SPA can suffice for the most basic use cases. If you care about your users, you should seek the best technical solution after carefully considering the best tool for the job. JavaScript developers tend to follow trends as quickly as the seasons change, but all the frameworks we mentioned will not let you down, are stable and tested. If you want to know more about transitioning your large Single Page Application to a framework, feel free to contact us.
.svg){kind=small}
