Empowering Change Through Words

Next.js vs. React: A Comparative Tutorial
React, which debuted in 2013, is much more established than Next.js. But the younger framework, released in 2016, is growing in popularity, with more than 100K GitHub stars as of March 2023 and millions of weekly npm downloads. Let’s see how the two compare in four major areas:Development speed:Next.js provides out-of-the-box features that ease the development process for making an advanced React app. With the introduction of its own compiler in Next.js 12, the framework also increased build speeds. Compared to React, Next.js reduces the amount of time an engineer needs to wait for code to refresh, minimizing developer frustration and slowdowns.Data fetching and load times:Next.js can traverse the React tree and query for data in the server, allowing for pre-loaded page data. This often results in lower application load times for pages served by Next.js compared to pages written in vanilla React.Rendering and SEO:Next.js offers pre-rendering, whereas React uses client-side rendering. Pre-rendered pages enable effective SEO strategies that are challenging to achieve in a plain React app.Routing:Next.js provides a structured, predefined file system for routing. Its system offers reduced flexibility compared to React’s various library options (e.g., React Router), but simplifies page setup and routing.
9 MINUTES READ
How to Approach SVG Animations in CSS
Animations are a ubiquitous part of the web. Unlike the flashing GIF images that plagued websites in the internet’s earlier days, today’s animations are more subtle and tasteful. Designers and front-end specialists use them to make websites look more polished, enhance the user experience, call attention to important elements, and convey information. Web developers can benefit from combining the power of SVG and CSS to create animations without using external libraries. This SVG animation tutorial shows how to build custom animations for real-world projects.
SVG Animation: CSS and Core Concepts
Before using CSS to animate SVGs, developers need to understand how SVGs work internally. Fortunately, it’s similar to HTML: We define SVG elements with XML syntax and style them with CSS, just as if they were HTML. SVG elements are purposely built for drawing graphics. We can use <rect> for drawing a rectangle, <circle> for drawing circles, etc.—SVG also defines <ellipse>, <line>, <polyline>, <polygon>, and <path>. Note: The full list of SVG elements even includes <animate>, which allows you to create animations using synchronized multimedia integration language (SMIL). However, its future is uncertain and the Chromium team recommends using a CSS- or JavaScript-based approach to animating SVGs whenever possible. The available attributes depend on the element, so while <rect> has width and height attributes, the <circle> element has the r attribute, which defines its radius.
14 MINUTES READ