Next.js is built on top of React and adds everything React deliberately leaves out - routing, server-side rendering, static page generation, API endpoints, image optimisation, and more. React gives you the tools to build a user interface. Next.js gives you the full framework to build and ship a complete web product. For most web projects we take on at Brickwin, Next.js is where we start.
Next.js enables you to build high-performance web applications with the power of React and the efficiency of server-side logic.
One of the most important things Next.js handles is how pages are delivered to the user. A standard React application sends a blank HTML page to the browser and then loads all the content with JavaScript. This works, but it means the user sees nothing until JavaScript has downloaded, parsed, and run - which is slow, especially on mobile connections. Next.js can render pages on the server before they reach the browser, so the user gets a fully-formed page immediately. For content that doesn't change often, it can generate pages at build time so they're served instantly from a CDN with no server involved at all. Each page uses the approach that makes sense for its content.
Next.js also handles the smaller things that add up to a fast, professional product. Images are automatically converted to modern formats, resized for the device requesting them, and lazy loaded so they don't slow the initial page load. Fonts are hosted alongside the application so there's no layout shift as they load. The metadata for each page - the title, description, and social sharing preview - is easy to configure and colocated with the page it applies to. These details matter for performance and search engine ranking, and Next.js makes them straightforward to get right.
What this means for your product:
- Pages that load fast because they arrive from the server already rendered
- SEO-friendly structure out of the box - search engines can read the content immediately
- Images and fonts handled correctly without manual optimisation work
- A single framework that covers both the frontend and the API layer
Chips:
App Router · Server Components · SSR · SSG · ISR · next/image · API Routes · Middleware
