Rendering techniques, and how to choose between them

The way we choose to populate and deliver the pages of our sites and applications can have profound effects on performance, accessibility, discoverability, and complexity.

There is a seemingly endless number of options available. SSR? SPA? MPA? SSG? DPR? ISR? So many acronyms! So many choices! Which is the best? The answer of course is “it depends”. But on what does it depend? How can we make the best decision for our projects, our users, and our developers? What are the questions we should ask to help us make the most appropriate and most informed choices?

In this talk, we’ll explain and compare popular rendering models in order to understand their relative strengths and weaknesses. We’ll consider what project requirements might call for different types of rendering. And we’ll walk through a practical example which combines a number of rendering techniques to see how a web project can use a variety of complementary technologies with compelling results.