Microsoft's much-anticipated .NET 8 framework is set to bolster web app performance through significant improvements in both Blazor server-side rendering and WebAssembly runtime. With its fourth preview now available, the development framework will see significant enhancements in server-side rendering with Blazor components, advanced navigation and form handling, and streaming rendering capabilities.
Content updates on the response stream can be streamed using .NET 8's streaming rendering. This feature is particularly useful for server-side rendered pages that require executing long-running async tasks for full rendering, thus offering an enhanced user experience. Server-side rendering and streaming rendering were introduced in .NET 8 Preview 3 and Preview 4, respectively, with more features to be added in future previews.
Developers will also have the flexibility to add client interactivity on a per-component or per-page basis and choose a rendering mode at runtime. Moreover, with .NET 8, a Blazor component can be rendered fully outside of an HTTP request context. This enables components to be rendered as an HTML string or a stream, independent of the ASP.NET Core hosting environment. This capability is particularly useful when generating HTML fragments, such as automated emails. Post-.NET 8, Microsoft plans to enable static site content generation for Blazor.
Expected to be released in production in November, .NET 8 will also provide notable performance improvements in browsers using WebAssembly. Benchmarked tests featuring .NET 8's jiterpreter with partial JIT (just-in-time compilation) support showed 20% faster UI rendering, as well as JSON serialization and deserialization running at double the speed. Microsoft has been leveraging the latest WebAssembly specifications, including SIMD for ahead-of-time compilation and hot reload enhancements, to maximize improvements.
A new web-friendly packaging format, Webcil, is featured for Blazor WebAssembly apps. Furthermore, QuickGrid, a fast data grid component introduced in .NET 7, will become stable in .NET 8. Additional APIs have been implemented in Blazor Server to monitor activity on circuits, potentially freeing up resources.
With companies like AppMaster offering powerful and efficient no-code platforms, including backend, web, and mobile applications, .NET 8's enhanced capabilities in web app performance could boost the landscape for IT professionals and businesses alike. AppMaster-generated applications' scalability and versatility for various needs, from small businesses to enterprise use cases, make it an ideal choice to complement the upcoming release of .NET 8.
