My pals in BBC World Service have been doing some awesome work on “lite” versions of their news articles (other page types to follow). They essentially skip the Server-Side React hydration which means you end up with a simpler HTML+CSS page, no JS. Page sizes drop significantly:
- Transferred: ~600KB -> 30KB
- Total: 1.65MB -> 135KB
Just append
.lite
on a URL e.g. https://www.bbc.com/mundo/articles/crgyyvdz1dro.lite There’s no on/off UX at the moment but they’re working on that too. #WebDev #WebPerf #WebPerformance #BBC
Skipping React hydration… so, only rendering on the server? BBC just re-invented server-side rendering, bravo 👏😆
I say this as an 8-year React developer. Damn, our industry really drank the kool-aid on on this one. Of course, plenty of people have been saying that React for static content like this has always been a misapplication of the tool, I’ve been reading opinions like that the entire time I’ve been working with it.
I’m glad BBC is doing this, though. Legitimate kudos to them for recognizing the issue and working towards fixing it. I actually think there are some great benefits that React has given us:
I would be happy if React was supplanted in the near future, but I also have some fondness for it. I know I’m way off topic on this post, just felt like talking about React.