Welcome to this Next.js tutorial on soft navigation!

In this tutorial, you will learn how to implement soft navigation in your Next.js applications. Soft navigation refers to the process of navigating to a new page without actually reloading the entire page, which can be useful for improving the user experience on your site.

We'll start by introducing the core concepts of soft navigation and setting up a development environment. Then, we'll cover topics such as using the Router and Link components to navigate between pages, as well as techniques for prefetching routes to improve the performance of your application.

By the end of this tutorial, you should have a solid understanding of how to implement soft navigation in your Next.js applications and be well on your way to creating seamless user experiences for your users.

So let's get started!

In Next.js, soft navigation refers to the process of navigating to a new page without actually reloading the entire page. This can be useful for improving the user experience on your site, as it allows you to update the content of the page without requiring the user to wait for a full page load.

To implement soft navigation in Next.js, you can use the Router component provided by the next/router module. This component provides several methods for navigating to different pages in your application, such as push, replace, and prefetch.

Here's an example of how you might use the Router component to implement soft navigation in a Next.js application:

	
    	import { useRouter } from 'next/router';

        function MyComponent() {
          const router = useRouter();

          function handleClick() {
            router.push('/new-page');
          }

          return (
            <button onClick={handleClick}>Go to new page</button>
          );
        }
    

This code creates a button that, when clicked, will navigate to the /new-page route without reloading the entire page.

You can also use the replace method to update the current route without adding it to the browser history, or the prefetch method to prefetch a specific route in the background to improve the performance of your application.

To implement soft navigation in Next.js, you can use the Link component provided by the next/link module. The Link component is a wrapper around the Router component that makes it easy to navigate to different routes in your application by creating an anchor tag that points to the desired route.

Here's an example of how you might use the Link component to implement soft navigation in a Next.js application:

	
    	import Link from 'next/link';

        function MyComponent() {
          return (
            <Link href="/new-page">
              <a>Go to new page:</a>
            </Link>
          );
        }
    

This code creates an anchor tag that, when clicked, will navigate to the /new-page route without reloading the entire page.

You can also pass a prefetch prop to the Link component to prefetch the route in the background, which can improve the performance of your application.

Here's an example of how you might use the prefetch prop:

	
    	import Link from 'next/link';

        function MyComponent() {
          return (
            <Link href="/new-page" prefetch>
             <a>Go to new page</a>
            </Link>
          );
        }
    

To improve the performance of your Next.js application, you can use a content delivery network (CDN) to cache your pages and serve them to users more quickly. This can be especially useful for pages that receive a lot of traffic, as it reduces the load on your server and allows users to access your content more quickly.

To use a CDN with Next.js, you will need to set up your application to build and deploy to a CDN-compatible environment. There are several ways to do this, but one common approach is to use a static site generator like Next.js to build your application and then deploy the built files to a CDN.

Once you have your application set up to build and deploy to a CDN, you can configure the CDN to cache your pages based on their URL. This will cause the CDN to store copies of your pages on servers around the world, which can then be served to users more quickly when they request the same URL.

Here's an example of how you might configure a CDN to cache your pages in Next.js:

	
        // In your CDN's configuration settings:
        Cache-Control: public, max-age=3600
	

This configuration tells the CDN to cache your pages for a period of one hour (3600 seconds). You can adjust the max-age value to suit your needs.

To use an Amazon Web Services (AWS) Simple Storage Service (S3) bucket as a CDN for your Next.js application, you will need to set up your application to build and deploy to an S3-compatible environment. There are several ways to do this, but one common approach is to use a static site generator like Next.js to build your application and then deploy the built files to an S3 bucket.

Once you have your application set up to build and deploy to an S3 bucket, you can configure the bucket to act as a CDN for your content. To do this, you will need to create a new CloudFront distribution and associate it with your S3 bucket.

Here's an example of how you might set up an S3 bucket as a CDN for your Next.js application:

1. Create an S3 bucket and upload your built Next.js application to it.
2. Go to the CloudFront dashboard in the AWS Management Console and click the "Create Distribution" button.
3. Select "Web" as the delivery method and click the "Get Started" button.
4. Under "Origin Settings", select your S3 bucket as the origin and enter the appropriate origin domain name.
5. Under "Default Cache Behavior Settings", set the "Object Caching" option to "Use Origin Cache Headers".
6. Click the "Create Distribution" button to create your new CloudFront distribution.

Once your CloudFront distribution is set up, you can use the distribution's domain name as the base URL for your Next.js application. This will cause CloudFront to cache your content and serve it to users more quickly when they request the same URL.

I hope this helps! Let me know if you have any questions.