Nextjs is a front-end framework used for building fast, responsive, and SEO-friendly web apps. It was released in 2016 by a company called Vercel. But to make it more developer-friendly, different versions of Nextjs have been introduced in the market since 2019. Just recently, on October 26, 2023, Nextjs 14 was released. But what’s the difference between this version and the previous Nextjs.13 version? Let’s take a look at both today.
Next.js 13
Next.js 13 was released on October 25, 2022. It contains an app directory that’s an advanced version of page routing systems. It contains special files that help with the UI and state of web apps. The incremental builder for JavaScript and Typescript, Turbopack, in Next.js 13 takes only ~ 2 seconds in a startup. It’s also faster in updates.
It has a new async/await function to get the data. There are also various ways to optimize your font in Next.js 13. These fonts are automatically optimized for better performance. The image in Next.js 13 can also be loaded faster.
Additionally, while doing a client-side transition, you don’t need to write <a></a> anchor tag yourself. Next.js 13 will handle this automatically. There are varying libraries shipped like @vercel/og that will allow you to create social media cards. There are also built-in features for TypeScript. This means that developers can now say goodbye to installing dependencies. This very feature will help them find and fix bugs. It will also decrease runtime errors.
Security features in Next.js 13 will make your app more secure. You don’t need a server to deploy an app. There’s serverless deployment in Nextjs.13
Now, contrary to next.js 13, next.js 14 local server startup and code updates are faster. There’s an improvement in local development performance because of pages and app routers. Server actions are also stable. You don’t have to create API routes to create endpoints in the backend alongside your frontend code. Instead, you can directly call functions from React components. The router is also stable enough to have new features.
Next.js 14
In Next.js 14, in one network roundtrip, mutating data, re-rendering the page, redirecting, and many other actions can be composed and reused. It can be done even when the upstream provider isn’t working faster. There is fast static response and streaming dynamic content as well. What’s even better? There are a lot of courses related to streaming, mutating data, and handling errors in Next.js 14.
Metadata has also improved. Both blocking and non-blocking metadata have been decoupled. Turbopack has passed over 4000 integrated tests. There’s also a preview for partial prerendering. Using this feature, you can handle dynamic content.
All in all, it seems that some really cool features have been introduced in Next.js 14. Undoubtedly, there may be some issues with Next.js 14. But as compared to previous versions of Next.js, Next.js 14 stands out as superior. So, developers are you ready to explore?
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