This blog post compares three main rendering methods, client-side vs. server-side vs. pre-rendering strategies to help you choose the best option for your own app.

1. Client-side
Rendering Vs.
Server-side
Rendering Vs.
Pre-Rendering
for Web Apps –
What to Choose
When?
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2. A decade ago, webpages were displayed as
static content; I am talking about a time
where the web pages were simply plain, no
interaction at all. The organizations were
running with a motive to showcase the
information of its products as well as the
organization to generate sales leads only.
The Server-side was the only available
option to get your HTML onto a screen.
Whereas moving forward to today, server-
side rendering is getting more traction,
and for that credit goes to the front-end
community. Today the server-side solution
is not only one available solution; client-
rendering and pre-rendering are also
available solutions and indeed a pretty
good strategy.

3. I am writing this blogpost to discuss three
main rendering methods; server-side
rendering (SSR), client-side rendering
(CSR), and pre-rendering.
You may also like: React.js for Efficient
Server Rendering, Using Node.js as a Proxy
Server

4. What is
Client-side
Rendering?

5. With client-side rendering, you can make
the entire website rendered in the browser
with JavaScript, and your first request
loads the page layout, CSS, and JavaScript.

6. In this procedure, connection with the
server happens only for getting the run-
time data. It is not required to reload the UI
after every call to the server. The client-side
framework contrives to update UI with
changed data by re-rendering only that
particular DOM component.
Single Page Applications only fetch data
from a RESTful API that provides data to
the client and then displays that data.

7. Client-side includes productive, animated
interactions and transitions or fade a
dialog into view. It can be hosted via a
content delivery system to improve
performance as well as scalability by
removing the load from your server. You
can easily create automated deployments
by using services like Surge and Netlify.

8. What is
SSR- Server
Side
Rendering?

9. You may also like, How to Do Server-side
Rendering With the Help of Vue and
Nuxt.js?
In server-side rendering, when a user
creates a request to a webpage, the server
equips an HTML page by eliciting user-
specific data and sends it to the user’s
machine over the internet.

10. After completing this process, the browser
then interprets the content and displays
the page. This entire method of fetching
data from the database, creating an HTML
page, and sending it to the client happens in
mere milliseconds.
If your content is crawlable via server-side
rendering by search engines, then your site
and pages will appear in Google search
results, and a preview will show up with the
page title, description, and image. SSR is
one of the conventional ways of rendering
web pages on the web browser.

11. What is
Pre-
rendering?

12. Pre-rendering is a tradeoff between client-
side and server-side rendering and a
process of loading a webpage ahead of time,
waiting for it to finish rendering, and then
reversing the resulting HTML and
JavaScript as a result to the requesting
entity.

13. Once the page is fetched, internal routing is
done dynamically to take benefit of a client-
side rendered website as well as the pre-
rendered page displays a template when
the data waits to be rehydrated with AJAX/
XHR requests.
When you design the architecture of a page
that is shown before the final content is
rendered to the screen, a static snapshot of
the page is immediately taken that can be
useful to represent the content to search
engines on page load without providing
anything.

14. Pre-rendering is a solution where you send
bots of the rendered version of the DOM,
which is the most crucial element that
makes sure the search engines are being
served a legitimate, authentic
representation of the JavaScript-based
equivalent at all times.
Search engines can execute JavaScript
when your web page depends on some data
to expand the content of the page; that’s
where you run into problems.

15. When to
use?

16. CLIENT-SIDE
RENDERING
You can use CSR if your application has a
complex UI with fewer features.
Available data is large and dynamic.
Read preference of the site is less than
write preference.
The focus is on rich sites with a large
number of users.

17. SERVER-SIDE
RENDERING
You can choose SSR if the model of your
graphic is complex and computationally
intensive.
Available data can be small or large.
Write and read preference of the site is
comparatively equal.
The focus is on rich sites with only a few
users.

18. PRE-RENDERING
Adopt pre-rendering if your application
has a simple UI with fewer features.
Available data is less and dynamic.
Write preference of the site is less than
reading preference.
The focus is on rich sites.

19. Final
Thoughts

20. In this blog about rendering, you can
quickly know how to create dynamic
content for the web and the fundamentals
of when you should consider using CSR,
SSR, and pre-rendering. If you are using any
kind of front end technology like Angular,
Vue.js, or React and want to implement SSR,
then kindly get in touch with us as we are
experts at implementing SSR in your front-
end web application.

21. Hopefully, you have a better understanding
of what is client-side rendering, server-side
rendering, and pre-rendering and, most
importantly, when to use them as the
mechanisms differ from each other. The
three types of rendering have valid use-
cases and make sure you study each of
them and that you gather
enough information about the project to be
developed to make a conscious decision
before starting development.

22. Frequently
Asked
Questions:

23. WHICH IS FASTER CLIENT-SIDE
OR SERVER-SIDE?
Generally, a client machine has a lot of
spare computational power that is not
used rather than the server can run
requests for thousands of users. If you
look at the client machine, it is not
powerful compared to the server as a
server manages the code much faster
than scripting. Hence,
Is server-side rendering better?
Is JavaScript client-side or server-side?

24. Thank
you