15 Next JS Best Practices To Implement For Clean & Responsive Apps

Are you looking to optimize Vercel Logging to enhance your app's performance while following NextJS best practices? Imagine a scenario where you want to create a clean and responsive app but are unsure where to start with Vercel logging. This article provides valuable insights and a guide to implementing Next JS best practices.

Alerty's NextJS logging solution is a powerful tool for achieving the goal of a clean and responsive app.

Table of Contents

• What Is Next JS?
• Key Features of Next JS UI Framework
• How To Approach Next JS
• The Significance of Performance Tuning Next JS
• 15 Next JS Best Practices To Implement for Clean and Responsive Applications
• Catch Issues Before They Affect Your Users with Alerty's NextJS Logging Tool

What Is Next JS?

Next.js is a full-fledged JavaScript UI framework that enables you to create superior, user-friendly static websites and web apps using React. It effectively handles the configuration and tooling related to React, offering necessary optimizations, features, and architecture to support each development stage.

Key Technologies Powering the Framework

• React
• Webpack
• Babel

Cross-Platform Compatibility

• Mac OS
• Windows
• Linux
• iOS
• Android

Hybrid Apps with Next JS

With Next.js, you can quickly build hybrid apps that hold statically generated and server-side rendered pages. Simply put, your pages would be reactive in every manner as the framework pushes your app’s client side to offer complete interactivity and interoperability.

Famous companies using Next JS in building their successful applications are as follows: 

• Hulu
• Twitch
• Uber
• Netflix
• Nike

Key Features of Next JS UI Framework

Image Optimizations

Next.js provides automatic image optimizations with instant builds. Image optimization is a powerful feature prebuilt into Next.js because managing and optimizing images requires many configurations, and manually optimizing images can take a toll on your productive time.

Internationalization

Creating an enterprise application can be easily translated into different languages worldwide. Internationalization takes less configuration to get set up, making Next.js internationally recognized.

Next.js Analytics

Next.js provides an analytical dashboard that can be configured to show accurate visitor data and page insights out of the box. Quickly build an analytical dashboard and gain valuable insights into your visitors and page insights without extra coding or configuration.

Zero Config

Next.js compiles and builds automatically with hot refresh without any extra configuration. It automatically scales and optimizes your production application with hot refresh right out of the box.

Prebuilt SSR, SSG, and CSR Support

With Next.js, you support server-side rendering, static generation, and client-side rendering in one application. Decide the type of application you want to build and how you intend to compile your application to best suit your use case.

Code-Splitting and Bundling

NextJS has the potential to render pages with the needed libraries as per the project requirements. It concentrates on creating multiple resources rather than a large solo JavaScript file. Whenever a page loads, you can view the required JavaScript page.

Incremental Static Regeneration(ISR)

Develop or modify your static pages with this framework. It enables your NextJS developers to use static generation page-by-page with Incremental Static Regeneration and avoid the complexities of rebuilding the site. Achieve high scalability while retaining the advantages of being static.

TypeScript Support

The NextJS framework offers automatic TypeScript configuration and compilation for APIs, Pages, and more. This built-in support feature gives an integrated TypeScript experience to start a new project from scratch or change an existing one.

Simplify Setup & Catch Issues Faster

Alerty is a cloud monitoring service tailored for developers and early-stage startups. It provides application performance monitoring, database monitoring, and incident management. Key features include:

• Support for Next.js, React, Vue, and Node.js, helping developers identify and resolve issues.
• Monitoring of databases such as Supabase, PostgreSQL, and RDS, tracking key metrics like CPU usage and memory consumption.
• Quick incident management and Real User Monitoring (RUM) to optimize user experience.
• Universal service monitoring for dependencies like the Stripe API, OpenAI, and Vercel.

Alerty leverages AI to streamline the setup process, offering a more affordable solution than its competitors. It's user-friendly, allows quick and easy setup, and seamlessly integrates with tools like Sentry. This makes it perfect for developers and small teams seeking efficient, cost-effective monitoring.

Use Alerty's NextJS logging tool to detect issues before they impact your users!

Related Reading

• NextJS Error Boundary
• Vercel Analytics
• NextJS Opentelemetry
• NextJS Error Handling
• NextJS Error

How To Approach Next JS

HTML and CSS are the building blocks of web development and play a crucial role in establishing a solid front-end environment.

Essential Concepts for Mastering Next.js Best Practices

• Document Object Model (DOM) elements in HTML/CSS
• Basic attributes and tags
• Pseudo-elements
• Box model
• Pseudo-selectors and selectors
• Layout systems like Grid and Flexbox in CSS

JavaScript

Having a solid foundation in JavaScript is beneficial when working with Next JS. 

Key Concepts to Kickstart a Next.js Project

• Basic understanding of DOM
• Language syntax
• ES6+ features

Fundamental Programming Concepts for Next.js

• Loops
• Variables
• Functions
• Typecasting

React

A deep understanding of React is crucial for Next JS development. Learning React independently can help you familiarize yourself with critical topics such as: 

• JSX expressions
• State management using useEffect and useState hooks
• Data fetching with React Query
• Routing with React-router 

Being comfortable with a layout system like Tailwind CSS or Material UI can set you apart in the vibrant world of Next JS development.

Related Reading

• Javascript Error Logging
• NextJS Debugger
• NextJS CSRF
• NextJS Security
• Javascript Monitoring
• Next JS Speed Optimization

The Significance of Performance Tuning Next JS

Performance tuning your Next JS application is crucial for enhancing user experience and boosting sales. Slow loading times can lead to high bounce rates, adversely impacting your website's search engine rankings and revenue. By following best practices, you can ensure your website is fast, reliable, and efficient.

Next JS offers a range of features and advantages that can significantly improve website functionality. These include: 

• Lazy loading
• Code splitting
• Efficient data fetching
• Static generation 

You can create a visually appealing, practical, and user-friendly website by incorporating these best practices.

Optimizing your Next JS application involves adhering to top best practices. These include:

• Implementing lazy loading
• Enabling code splitting
• Optimizing images
• Leveraging efficient data fetching techniques
• Utilizing static generation
• Enabling server-side rendering
• Deploying incremental static regeneration 

Following these best practices can significantly enhance your Next JS application's speed, reliability, and performance.

15 Next JS Best Practices To Implement for Clean and Responsive Applications

1. Use Static Generation

At build time, HTML pages are produced using static generation. The HTML pages are created once and served to the user as static files. Websites with information that doesn't update regularly can benefit the most from this method. Static generation can enhance website performance by lowering server load and improving page load times.

'getStaticProps' for Pre-rendered Content

NextJS simplifies static generation implementation. The 'getStaticProps' function gathers data at build time and provides it to your components, enabling you to produce high-performance static web pages.

'getStaticPaths' for Dynamic Flexibility

The 'getStaticPaths' function can also create SEO-friendly dynamic routes. The HTML files produced by static generation are pre-rendered during construction and can be directly provided by a web server or a content delivery network (CDN). This results in quicker page loading speeds and less strain on the server by eliminating the requirement for server-side processing or database queries when a user requests a page.

Popular Static Site Generators

• Gatsby
• Next.js
• Hugo
• Jekyl

Using templates, components, and data sources, these frameworks enable developers to create websites that are later converted into static HTML files during construction.

2. Dynamic Loading of Client-Side Script

One of the best practices is to keep all the Next.js client-side code in small bundles. This is commonly known as code splitting, and it is done so one can use dynamic imports. Code splitting helps download or install dependencies only when required, allowing you to load the application lazily.

There are many advantages of breaking the code into smaller JavaScript files. Here are some of the benefits:

• Less JavaScript code needs to be compiled and executed
• Faster loading of pages
• Bundles can be individually cached
• Loads only require code; hence, it is less to download

3. Lazy Loading of Images

Without images, any website would be incomplete, but they can also increase page load times. For this reason, image lazy loading is crucial. Lazy loading is delaying the loading of images until they are required.

Lazy Loading for Faster Page Loads

This indicates that images are only loaded when a user can see them. Lazy loading can enhance website performance by lowering page load times and improving user experience. It is simple to create using Next JS.

next/image for Effortless Lazy Loading

The next/image component can render images when lazy loading is turned on. This component creates responsive images and serves them in the most effective format to automatically optimize images for performance.

Load Images Only When Needed

Lazy loading loads only the images now visible in the viewport or those that will enter the viewport when the user scrolls down the page instead of loading all photos at once when the page loads. With fewer network queries and initial load time, the user experience is enhanced as pages render more quickly.

4. Take Advantage of Next.js’ Built-In Optimization Features

Next.js comes with built-in optimization features to take the performance of your production application to the next level. To leverage these features, simply integrate them into your project following the documentation. 

Image Optimization

next/image introduces an <Image> component that enhances the traditional HTML <img> element with automatic image optimization capabilities.

Image Optimization With Next.js

• Serve images in optimal sizes based on the user's device.
• Automatically convert images to modern formats like WebP and AVIF.
• Prevent layout shift errors during image loading on the front end.
• Lazy load images, loading them only when they enter the viewport.
• Resize images on-demand, even for remote files.

Font Optimization With Next.js

next/font optimizes local fonts, eliminating external network requests for enhanced privacy and performance. Starting from Next.js 13, it supports self-hosting any Google Font to avoid fetching font files from Google.

Script Optimization With Next.js

next/scrip` provides a <Script> component that extends the traditional HTML <script> tag. It optimizes performance and ensures JavaScript scripts are loaded only once across multiple pages.

5. Choosing a Favorable Rendering Mode in Next.js

Next.js comes with three rendering modes: 

• Server–Side Rendering
• Incremental Static Regeneration
• Static Site Generation

All three have pros and cons, so one should use them according to the situation. 

SSR (Server-Side Rendering) is highly used for dynamic content that needs to be updated frequently. This type of rendering should be done with well-planned catching strategies. ISR (Incremental Static Regeneration) is the best choice for displaying articles, blogs, and publications. 

SSG for Static Content

It is used where you render it once and will not change it afterward. If your website does not have a lot of content but you want fast loading, then SSG (Static Site Generation) is the best match for you.

6. Use code splitting

Code splitting is a method for breaking your code into smaller portions only loaded when necessary. This can speed up page loads and lighten the load on servers because the user does not have to download all the code simultaneously. By minimizing the amount of code that needs to be loaded, code splitting can improve website performance.

Techniques for Code Splitting in Next.js

Code splitting is simple to implement using Next JS. The 'dynamic' function can be used to load components asynchronously. This lets you divide your code into smaller units that only load when necessary. The 'next/dynamic' component can also dynamically load modules. 

By only loading the code needed for the current page or feature, code splitting reduces the time it takes for your application to load fully. This may significantly reduce the code the browser must download and process, resulting in quicker load times and better performance.

Performance Optimization

Code splitting is commonly used in modern JavaScript frameworks like React, Angular, and Vue.js. These frameworks provide built-in tools and features to facilitate code splitting.

7. Loading of Non-Vital Code

Most developers have no choice but to integrate with a third-party script. This is a business requirement for analysis, tracking, or communication between customers and clients. Due to this, the loading time of the pages decreases, resulting in a poor user experience.

However, with Next.js, there are three loading strategies for next/script. There is lazyOnload, which loads when the page is idle, And beforeInteractive, which loads before the page is interactive. Finally, there is afterInteractive which loads immediately after the page is interactive. Note that the latter, i.e., afterInteractive, is the default mode.

8. Configure Caching and Use Incremental Static Regeneration Whenever Possible

Next.js treats files inside the /public folder as static assets. For example, if you store a logo.png image file in /public, you can then reference it in your code as /logo.png:

• <Image src="/logo.png" alt="Company's Logo" width="200" height="200" />
• Code language: HTML, XML (xml)

Usually, /public contains static images, JavaScript, CSS, and other media files. Caching these resources is an excellent way to improve response times and reduce the number of requests required to render a page.

Here is why, by default, Next.js add the following header in production for those assets:

• Cache-Control: public, max-age=31536000, immutable
• Code language: PHP (php)

This instructs the browser to cache those files for one year. So, if your Next.js site relies on some static resources, you should download and place them inside /public.

Next.js also provides the minimumCacheTTL configuration to specify the TTL (Time To Live) in seconds for caching images optimized through <Image>. Set it in next.config.js as follows:

// next.config.js

module.exports = {  

  images: {

    // cache optimized images for 60 seconds    

    minimumCacheTTL: 60,  

  },

}

Similarly, Next.js can cache statically generated pages through Incremental Static Regeneration (ISR). Thanks to this feature, new static pages can be created or updated after the application has been built.

To enable ISR, set the revalidate option in getStaticProps():

export async function getStaticProps() {

  // ... 

  return {

    props: {

      // ...

    },

    // Next.js will re-generate this page 

    // when a request comes in, at most once

    // every 10 seconds

    revalidate: 10, 

  }

}

This is how ISR works:

• The site initially shows the pre-rendered page generated at build time.
• Within 10 seconds, it will continue to display the initial page.
• When a request arrives after 10 seconds from the last regeneration, the framework triggers a background regeneration of the page.

Note that a Next.js production app only regenerates static pages that users request to save resources.

9. Integrate an Analytics or APM Tool

Once a Next.js site is in production, you need a way to track its performance. In particular, you should have a system to monitor page views and get information about site traffic.

When deploying to Vercel, you can achieve that with Next.js Speed Insights. This tool allows you to analyze and measure the performance of your application’s pages using various metrics. To enable it:

• Turn on the Web Analytics option in the Vercel Dashboard.
• Add the @vercel/analytics package to your project’s dependencies with npm i @vercel/analytics
• Use the <Analytics /> component to inject the analytics script into your app.
• Deploy your app to Vercel; data should flow to the Analytics view.

Similarly, you need a service that tracks site performance, alerts you when something goes wrong or the site goes offline and collects information about bugs and runtime errors. This is what Application Monitoring (APM) is all about. One tool that makes this extremely easy is Alerty. Alert uses AI to help you monitor your application performance at a lower cost compared to tools like:

• Sentry
• New Relic
• AppSignal

10.  Improve CSS

The term "optimize CSS" describes increasing the effectiveness and speed of CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) code. It entails methods like decreasing HTTP requests, deleting unneeded styles, optimizing selectors, and tactics like reducing file size.

Although CSS is a necessary component of every website, it can also cause page load times to increase. Because of this, it's critical to optimize CSS performance. You can speed up the loading of your CSS files by lowering their size. 

11. Utilize Efficient Data Fetching

Any website needs to fetch data, but doing so might increase the time it takes for a page to load. Therefore, it's critical to employ effective data-collecting strategies. By minimizing the quantity of data that needs to be fetched and optimizing the data retrieval method, you may enhance website performance and user experience.

Developers can increase their productivity by using the effective data-fetching methods offered by Next JS. For the best user experience, you can get data at both build time and runtime using the built-in functions:

• getStaticProps
• getServerSideProps

You may efficiently fetch and cache data with the 'SWR' package, producing blazing-fast speed. You may easily construct dynamic and customized web applications using Next JS.

12.  Mobile-friendly design

Optimizing your website for mobile is critical because a sizable amount of website traffic comes from mobile devices. You can enhance website performance and user experience on mobile devices by mobile-optimizing your website.

It's simple to mobile-optimize your website with Next JS. The 'next/dynamic' component can load components and optimize their loading asynchronously. The 'next/image' component can also render mobile-friendly images with slow loading enabled.

13. Minimize Third-Party Dependencies

Be cautious when adding third-party libraries and packages to your project, as they can increase the bundle size and affect performance. Opt for lightweight alternatives or, where feasible, write custom solutions to reduce dependencies.

14. Set Up a Logging System

You must add logs to your code to track what happens in a Next.js production app. The easiest way to log messages on both the client and server is using the methods exposed by the JavaScript console object. The most popular ones are:

• console.clear(): Clears the browser console.
• console.log(): Logs general information.
• console.debug(): Logs a debug message in the browser console and a regular message on the server.
• console.error(): Logs an error message.
• console.warn(): Logs a warning message in the browser console or an error message on the server
• console.time(): Starts a timer that can be used to compute the duration of an operation.
• console.timeEnd(): Stops the timer and prints the duration of the operation.

15. Remove unused dependencies

Many applications depend on third-party packages. While dependencies are suitable for your app, they increase its size and loading time. You should watch for unused dependencies using npm packages in your Next.js application. They take up space in your final bundle and might cause unexpected behaviors in your application.

Manual vs. Automated Detection

If you have a small project, you can easily find the unused dependencies and remove them from the package.json file of your Next.js app. Finding the unused dependencies may be challenging if you have a large project with many different dependencies. 

In this case, use the depcheck package to find unused dependencies in your project (this package is included with npm). Remove dependencies one by one and restart your application after each removal to ensure that the dependency was unnecessary and that you didn’t break your application.

Related Reading

• Datadog NextJS
• Posthog NextJS
• NextJS Prometheus
• Newrelic NextJS
• Front End Monitoring Tools

Catch Issues Before They Affect Your Users with Alerty's NextJS Logging Tool

Alerty is a robust cloud monitoring service tailored for developers and early-stage startups looking to enhance their application performance and incident management. By supporting a vast array of technologies like:

• NextJS
• React
• Vue
• Node.js

Alerty positions itself as a versatile tool for a wide range of developers. Alerty is not limited to just application performance monitoring; it also includes database monitoring capabilities, supporting databases such as:

• Supabase
• PostgreSQL
• RDS

This breadth of compatibility ensures that developers can effectively monitor key metrics like CPU usage and memory consumption, allowing for more informed decisions regarding performance optimization.

Optimizing Development Workflow

One of Alerty's standout features is its quick incident management system. This feature is handy for developers looking to swiftly and efficiently address any potential issues that may arise. Alerty also offers Real User Monitoring (RUM), a key tool for developers aiming to optimize user experiences. 

By tracking user behavior and interactions, RUM allows developers to pinpoint areas for improvement, resulting in a more user-friendly application. Additionally, Alerty's Universal Service Monitoring extends its reach to various dependencies such as:

• Stripe API
• OpenAI
• Vercel

This broad coverage ensures that developers can monitor all aspects of their applications, providing a comprehensive view of their system's health.

AI-Powered Efficiency and Seamless Integration

One of Alerty's main strengths is its AI-driven setup process. Alerty offers developers a cost-effective monitoring solution compared to competitors by utilizing artificial intelligence to simplify the setup process. This approach makes Alerty attractive for developers and small teams looking for efficient and affordable monitoring options. 

Alerty integrates seamlessly with popular tools like Sentry, further streamlining the monitoring process for developers. Alerty's emphasis on ease of use and efficient setup makes it an invaluable resource for developers seeking a robust monitoring solution. With Alerty's NextJS logging tool, developers can catch issues before they impact user experience, ensuring a smoother application performance overall.