I’ve definitely been guilty of thinking about rendering on the web as a two-horse race. There is Server-Side Rendering (SSR, like this WordPress site is doing) and Client-Side Rendering (CSR, like a typical React app). Both are full of advantages and disadvantages. But, of course, the conversation is more nuanced. Just because an app is SSR doesn’t mean it doesn’t do dynamic JavaScript-powered things. And just because an app is CSR doesn’t mean it can’t leverage any SSR at all.
It’s a spectrum! Jason Miller and Addy Osmani paint that picture nicely in Rendering on the Web.
My favorite part of the article is the infographic table they post at the end of it. Unfortunately, it’s a PNG. So I took a few minutes and <table>-ized it, in case that’s useful to anyone.
See the Pen
The Client/Server Rendering Spectrum by Chris Coyier (@chriscoyier)
on CodePen.