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How we switched our template rendering engine to React

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Re: How we switched our template rendering engine to React

#3
Would have liked to have seen some figures or graphs visualising the React performance boost.

Also I thought one of the advantages of using a js framework is that rendering can be done on the client? It sounds from this article that server rendering is more advantageous?

Also SEO was mentioned, but I thought javascript was taken into consideration by web crawlers?

Re: How we switched our template rendering engine to React

#4
post #3

Would have liked to have seen some figures or graphs visualising the React performance boost. Also I thought one of the advantages of using a js framework is that rendering can be done on the client? It sounds from this article that server rendering is more advantageous? Also SEO was mentioned, but I thought javascript was taken into consideration by web crawlers?

Real world experience with clientside rendering for SEO has tons of downsides. Inconsistency in indexing, delayed indexing (yes Google), some (many) bots not doing it... etc.

Re: How we switched our template rendering engine to React

#5
post #3

Would have liked to have seen some figures or graphs visualising the React performance boost. Also I thought one of the advantages of using a js framework is that rendering can be done on the client? It sounds from this article that server rendering is more advantageous? Also SEO was mentioned, but I thought javascript was taken into consideration by web crawlers?

It isn't solely server side rendering - the power of React and Node is that you can render on both server and client side, and get the best of both worlds.

Re: How we switched our template rendering engine to React

#6
post #3

Would have liked to have seen some figures or graphs visualising the React performance boost. Also I thought one of the advantages of using a js framework is that rendering can be done on the client? It sounds from this article that server rendering is more advantageous? Also SEO was mentioned, but I thought javascript was taken into consideration by web crawlers?

Crawlers/indexers take JS into account to varying degrees. In my experience they will execute client side code, but AJAX calls are ignored. So at the very least you want to send down data for the initial load.

Re: How we switched our template rendering engine to React

#7
post #5
post #3

Would have liked to have seen some figures or graphs visualising the React performance boost. Also I thought one of the advantages of using a js framework is that rendering can be done on the client? It sounds from this article that server rendering is more advantageous? Also SEO was mentioned, but I thought javascript was taken into consideration by web crawlers?

It isn't solely server side rendering - the power of React and Node is that you can render on both server and client side, and get the best of both worlds.

Creating a universal JS app on the web has some extra cons too - not only is the code run on the server, but also a not insignificant JS payload is downloaded & executed on the client, as well as increased app complexity in order to maintain client/server separation at extension points.

One should be cognizant that one doesn't get benefits for free with the choice to go with universal JS.

Re: How we switched our template rendering engine to React

#8
post #7
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn't solely server side rendering - the power of React and Node is that you can render on both server and client side, and get the best of both worlds.

Creating a universal JS app on the web has some extra cons too - not only is the code run on the server, but also a not insignificant JS payload is downloaded & executed on the client, as well as increased app complexity in order to maintain client/server separation at extension points. One should be cognizant that one doesn't get benefits for free with the choice to go with universal JS.

The data is transmitted yes. In practice, after gzip, this is negligible compared to say... any average image loaded on that page.

Re: How we switched our template rendering engine to React

#10
post #3

Would have liked to have seen some figures or graphs visualising the React performance boost. Also I thought one of the advantages of using a js framework is that rendering can be done on the client? It sounds from this article that server rendering is more advantageous? Also SEO was mentioned, but I thought javascript was taken into consideration by web crawlers?

>It sounds from this article that server rendering is more advantageous?

Rendering on the server feels faster to the user. With client side rendering, you will often get a skeleton of the site that loads, and then the content that fills that skeleton 100ms or so apart from one another. This sounds like nothing, but it is perceptible to the user.

There are absolutely ways around this, but even the Big Guys get it wrong sometimes (for instance: facebook).

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