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Streaming HTML: The Performance Hack Nobody Talks About
You’ve built a beautiful frontend. It works. It’s snappy on localhost. But when you ship it? Users wait. They click. Nothing happens. And by the time your app wakes up, they’re already gone.
Today, we’re breaking down what actually causes slow frontend load times — and how you can fix it with one powerful technique: streaming HTML from the server. We’ll walk through a real example using Node.js and React, explain the problem with Client-Side Rendering, and show you how to get serious performance gains with just a few lines of code.
Why Frontend Load Times Still Suck
Here’s the deal. Most modern apps use JavaScript-heavy frameworks like React, Vue, or Angular. These are awesome for building complex UI’s — but there’s a catch: by default, they use Client-Side Rendering (CSR).
That means:
- When someone visits your site, they don’t get a full HTML page.
- They get an empty
<div>and a big fat JavaScript bundle. - Only after the JS is downloaded and run, your app makes API calls, builds the UI, and then the user sees something.
Now, imagine your users on a slow connection. Or using a low-end device. Or your API server is just having a bad day.
