Instead of going:

Fetch index.html -> Fetch JS bundle -> Evaluate -> Fetch /users/me

You do:

Fetch index.html (your page is rendered at this point) -> rehydrate with client side JS for interactivity in the background

It's a pretty smart solution I think, and many people are still sleeping on the whole SSR topic.

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anon7000 2 hours ago | parent [-]

It makes sense for sites with a lot of static pages, but you barely need react in that case. NextJS does not perform that well out of the box. I’d argue that a basic SPA with no SSR using something like preact would be a better choice for many building dashboards or applications (not marketing/docs sites). It’s also easier to host & operate and has fewer footguns.

Getting SSR right is tricky and barely even matters for a lot of use cases I’m seeing with Next.

Better server/client integration when it comes to rendering UIs is neat, but there are other technologies that solve for that at a more fundamental level (htmx, phoenix)

	▲	user34283 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		It rather appears to make sense for any site that currently makes additional requests to fetch data as part of the page load. It is broadly useful and relatively easy to use while still staying within the React framework the developer knows well. That said, I didn't build more than a demo app with NextJS, so I don't know a lot about possible issues. Just the concept seems to be good.