Next.js 8 is available now. Added features include the new serverless mode and static rendering acceleration.
What is Next.js ?
Next.js is a framework for developing web applications with React and JavaScript. Version 8 of the framework comes with several new features. These include support for serverless, faster port listening in development, and accelerated static rendering. Tim Neutkens (Lead-Maintainer of Next.js), Connor Davis (Staff Software Engineer, ZEIT Inc.) and Shu Ding (Web Developer & Designer, ZEIT Inc.) will review these and other new features in Next.js 8 on the official Next.js blog.
The first new feature the trio will introduce in the blog post is Serverless support. If the new serverless mode is selected, Next.js 8 generates a standalone executable file for each page, which does not require dependencies. To enable serverless mode in Next, serverless must be serverless as the export destination in next.config.js Server mode remains available in serverless mode.
Earlier port listening and accelerated static rendering
In Version 8 of Next.js, the HTTP server will begin port listening in development mode immediately after the development server launches. In previous versions of Next, there were error messages that the requested page could not be reached if a request was sent to the HTTP server immediately after startup. These errors should be avoided by earlier listening. The processing of the requests, however, occurs only when the compiling is completed after the server start.
Another update related to exporting files in Next.js 8 is accelerated static rendering. The new version of Next.js recognizes, according to the description of Neutkens, Davis and Ding, if the computer of the developer has several CPUs or CPU cores. In this case, Next.js 8 should perform the static rendering tasks on all cores, making these tasks quicker. Changes to the code of a project should not be necessary to use this faster static rendering.
Other new features of Next.js 8, such as reduced memory requirements for HTML code, removal of redundant head code, or omission of inline JavaScript, are also featured in the blog post .