Announcing The Ultimate React & Next.js Performance Guide
Learn how to write ultra high performance React and Next.js applications here on Substack
Hey Full Context Developers & Company
I’m really sorry I’ve kept silent for a long while. There were multiple reasons (like switching jobs, now I’m at Tesco, sadly some health issues) but the biggest one was the giant effort I put into the preparation of (… drum roll)
The Ultimate Guide to High Web Performance React and Next.js Applications
For a long time I have been a huge fan of web performance, React and Next.js. All 3 of them are super interesting and awesome tools for delivering full context value. Long story short, while there are tons of resources covering web performance, there’s none that’s covering the whole field yet laser focused on Next.js and its basis, React. That’s why I decided to connect all of these topics to deliver a unified guide, here on Substack, that will help anyone to gain comprehensive knowledge of the field and the self-confidence that’s coming with it! I believe it will be truly helpful and absolutely thrilling for all of you passionate frontend engineers!
I will be covering a ton of advanced performance optimization techniques and the basics necessary to understand them. I’m personally stoked by the unique blend of practical tips, real life case studies, technical details and code examples I’ve managed to put together. (Hope that doesn’t sound weird, I mean, it’s not crazy to be excited for what I’ve done, right?) All these, tied to their effects on user experience and business results.
That’s one of the cool things about web performance. It’s strongly connected to the profitability of products so it’s super easy to see the relationship between the optimization work and its effects over the Full Context. As the perf gurus say: “Fast is cash” and I will show why later.
With this post I want to share an overview of what’s in the making because, I believe, if you are interested in any of these topics this will get you super excited. (Ordered quite randomly). Just one more thing before that. I will resume writing about the news too!
Elementary and advanced React performance optimization techniques
Using web workers with hooks, Redux or simply by themselves to speed up processing-heavy tasks.
Introduction to core Web Vitals, their practical importance and how React and Next.js can affect them.
Performance Scoring, Performance Budgets and Performance Comparison best practices.
Deep dive Into the usage of React Developer Tools for performance optimization
Case Studies, Code Examples and Pro Tips
The ultimate guide to Controlling the client-side browser cache (including cache invalidation strategies for single page web applications)
Surprising ways to use Storybook for performance aware design (and more optimization related work)
Introduction to performance measurement and analysis using Chrome Dev Tools, Google Lighthouse and WebPageTest
The RAIL model in the context of React and Next.js
Strategies for cache management using Service Workers: cache first, network first, cache with network fallback
Next.js specific web performance optimization tools and techniques
You can already check out a much more complete and comprehensive list in the full Table of Contents, up on the website and read the first complete chapters including a free premium one: Lazy Loading in React and Next.js.
How to access it
The format I’m going to use - and I think the process as well - is a little unconventional. I will incrementally release chapters here on Substack and once I manage to release a good amount of in-depth posts some of the performance guides will be paywalled behind the subscription. Ultimately this will become premium content for the publication.
Exactly when and how, I don’t know yet. But until I get there I’ve decided to enable paid subscription on the publication with the lowest price allowed by the platform, while keeping it completely optional. I’m doing this because I would like to give everyone a chance who wants to support my work on the guides to do so. If you decide to keep up a paid subscription that would be 1) super awesome and mind blowing 2) a great way to ensure I can work on producing a high quality, polished product that will help you all with everyday pains or just with learning fun and interesting stuff. I also plan to offer more premium community features so we can engage and shape the material together.
As the work continues, I will surely update and refine already published content. Don’t worry, if there are substantial changes or improvements I will notify all subscribers! Oh yeah, one more important thing, I won’t be completing chapters in any order set upfront but as it makes the most sense to me and our community.
So this is the plan! Many things are in the works already, I have the draft version for every chapter in the table of contents and some more. The journey itself will be an interesting one to follow. I hope it will teach you all a lot of interesting and useful performance hacks and proper optimization techniques too! See you around web performance ninjas and full context developers! Reading the guides will make you a better one of both!
Best,
Joe