July 2020 Summaries

Vercel has introduced major end-to-end enhancements to its platform, focusing on a real-time developer workflow with Next.js and Vercel CLI, aiming to improve frontend teams' success at scale. The new features include faster performance, improved developer experience, enhanced local development, and better edge infrastructure. With the introduction of Next.js, Vercel brings unmatched performance to localhost, while the Vercel CLI enhances local dev and env sync. The revamped edge infrastructure ensures faster page loads, optimal routing, and apex support, drawing customers to Vercel's ability to stop worrying about scaling infrastructure.

We are introducing a new default production deployment configuration for newly created projects, where instead of the Git repository's default branch, new projects will issue deployments to the main branch by default. If the main branch does not exist, the master branch is used, and if that also does not exist, the Git repository's default branch is used. This change allows users to customize their production deployment configuration from their project settings, including selecting any custom branch for production deployments. The master branch was intentionally left out as an option due to its association with terms that evoke prejudice, but users can easily switch to the main branch if they rename the branch in the future.

Next.js is a React framework that supports pre-rendering, allowing for faster and more consistent performance. It offers two main strategies for pre-rendering: Server-side Rendering (SSR) and Static Generation (SG). SSR pre-renders the page into HTML on the server on every request, while SG pre-renders the page into HTML at build time, globally caching it by a CDN to serve instantly. However, this approach can lead to stale data if not addressed. Incremental Static Generation allows for adding and updating pages incrementally after build time, overcoming these challenges. This approach enables using Static Generation for maximum performance without sacrificing Server-side Rendering benefits. Additionally, Next.js supports Client-side Fetching, which combines pre-rendering with fetching data on the client-side, enhancing performance and user experience. With its API Routes feature, Next.js also provides a secure way to write data back to external data sources. By leveraging these features, developers can create fast, scalable, and maintainable applications.

Vercel has released several updates and improvements in July 2020, including enhancements to caching, deployment options, and features for Next.js Incremental Static Regeneration and Docusaurus Deployments. The platform also made changes to its dashboard, logs, source protection, and project settings, such as improved error messages, new templates, and the ability to import GitHub repositories more easily. Additionally, Vercel has expanded its domain management capabilities, including the option to add up to 50 domains in quick succession without hitting a rate limit. The company has also released updates to its documentation, CLI tools, and integrations with services like GitLab and Bitbucket.