web dev//rendering//SSR

Server-side rendering: the server generates HTML with the content already in it before sending it to the client. The house arrives assembled.

Server-side rendering: the server generates HTML with the content already in it before sending it to the client. The house arrives assembled.

Server, then HTML with content, then the browser can read it right away.

It helps enormously with crawling, SEO and every tool that does not run JavaScript well: the fetched document already carries the text (Crawler). Static generation (SSG) is the same idea done once at build time instead of per request.

What the server sends is inert HTML; making it interactive again is hydration. Frameworks such as Astro and Next.js exist largely to manage that handoff.

SSR costs server work per request and complicates anything that depends on the browser (window size, local storage) at render time. The trade is the subject of Rendering.