The front end is the shell, the outer covering that makes your website attractive. After all how often are we influenced by the packaging? How often do we indulge ourselves in buying something because we love its packaging so much? It’s the visual aspect that makes us form an opinion and makes our customers wonder what it can offer.
With this note, selecting an appropriate front-end development framework is the first essential step in rendering a user interface that is seamless and appealing for an effective user experience. The list starts with the most prominent ones and goes until the most used ones that enjoy a large community.
Here’s a review on best frontend frameworks in 2023 (subject to change):
ReactJS
React supports code splitting, and concurrent rendering, making it the most developer-friendly front-end framework. It is suitable for creating single-page web or mobile applications. It often requires the help of additional libraries for routing, state management, and interaction with an API. Available on github.com/facebook/react, it is an open-source framework that enables iOS, Android, and UWP development. Featuring JSX, React simplifies DOM and API handling, allowing applications to make changes in HTML and XML documents, and has become the most popular javascript framework. ReactJS can be used to develop code across multiple platforms – web app development, mobile app development, static site building, desktop app development, and VR app development. It is used to create:
- interactive user interfaces
- standalone UI components
- visual elements
- underlying logic
React is integrated with other third-party libraries and MVC frameworks. The corresponding cross-platform mobile applications render fast, have rich user interfaces, uplifted productivity, are SEO friendly, and have a strong community. React interfaces are easy to test as it makes use of JEST. Because React components can be tested in a Node environment to avoid disruptions and ensure test reliability, Reactjs developers are highly productive.
ReactJS has a higher satisfaction rate than AngularJS due to its ability to build improved interfaces. React allows manually adding Dev Print Statements or specialized debugging instruments to see if all the components are working properly, instead of writing console logs. It is favored because of its components, virtual DOM, and performance.
Why should you opt for React?
- Reusable components
- Virtual DOM offers improved performance and better UX
- Open-source library (contributions invited)
- Stability of code
- Rendering on the server side is easy
If you plan to build a website or web app with React, you need to consider how to bundle your code with Webpack and transform it using a compiler like Babel. Learn code splitting, pre-render pages for better optimization, production optimization, client-side rendering, use server-side rendering and write server-side code to connect the React app to the data store.
Angular
AngularJS is a prominent front-end framework for web development. It follows Microfrontend architecture, a fully-featured MVC framework, and a low toolchain (libraries). It is written in JavaScript and HTML and has a steep learning curve, client-side rendering, bi-directional data binding, and regular DOM. It is suitable for developing cross-platform apps as it complements Apache Cordova, and provides appealing customer experiences, bringing websites or mobile apps to life in various unique ways. It offers to present relevant information, making for a captivating user experience.
AngularJS is an open-source front-end web framework on github.com/angular/angularjs, it is suitable for developing single-page applications. No other framework has been making use of MVW (Model-View-Whatever) till now and has clearly reached new heights after the release of Angular 6. It eases the tasks of both testers and developers by providing a framework for both client-side MVC and MVVM along with components commonly used in a rich internet application. It is suitable for startups and mid-size businesses.
Why should you opt for AngularJS?
- DOM manipulation
- Responsive web
- Improved server performance
- Two-way data binding
- Highly testable products
- Faster application prototyping
- The MVVM architecture
- Plain HTML templates
- Fast development
- Use of directives
- Strong support from Google
- Support for progressive web apps
- Support for a large community base
- It comes with a built optimizer to improve the integration of material design
VueJS
Vue.js allows web applications to be flexible, progressive, futuristic, collaborative, and full of features. When the website’s complexity scales up, libraries like (1) Vuex, and (2) Vue-router can be incrementally adopted. Vue.JS is a small but very powerful front-end development framework. It is suitable for web development and is lightweight. It was initially released 5 years ago and is an open-source JavaScript framework that is used to build single-page applications, especially user interfaces, by featuring incrementally adoptable architecture that focuses on component composition and declaration rendering. Vue.js combines the best features of React.JS and AngularJS and is a JavaScript library for the view layer. It stores the component logic and layout besides the style sheets in one file.
Why should you opt for VueJS?
- Presence Of Redux Library
- Vue.JS is lightweight and small in size
- Flexible and scalable
- Readability
- Less Time Required To Make Changes
- Ease Of Integration
- Versatility
- Ease Of Learnability
It is easy to learn but requires some decent knowledge of JSX and CSS in JS and various concepts before being productive. Its complexity is directly proportional to the framework’s focus on complex applications. Its code is not over-engineered and lean.
jQuery
JavaScript has been the de-facto programming language for front-end development since people have started accessing the internet for commercial and domestic purposes more vigorously. It is open source, has a steep learning curve, and has vast community support. It is applicable across multiple platforms, and easy to code. AngularJS, ReactJS, Vue.JS, Ember.JS, and Backbone.JS are 5 trending JavaScript frameworks. Out of these three, AngularJS, ReactJS, and Vue.JS are most preferred according to workplace adoption.
NextJS
Next.js can be used to create front as well as backend so it eliminates the need for a dedicated backend framework. It solves the problem of rendering web applications on the client side. It is used to create single-page applications (SPA) with improved user experience due to less reloading which is more interactive. Next.js offers tools and features to minimize the development process.
React definitely has better resources for the front-end development of mobile and web applications. It allows the creation of applications that are rendered on the server. Both React and Next.js are the building blocks to creating fast web applications.
Next.js handles the tooling and configuration needed for React and provides additional structure, optimizations, and features for your application. Next.js is a fully functional framework that can be used to build full-stack applications with server-side rendering using React framework. It is used to create Static websites, blogging websites, content related sites.
Next.js also facilitates incremental static regeneration (ISR) and suits well for single-page application development. If you wish to create one-page resumes, landing pages of software companies, and brochures, Next.js can be your next front-end development framework to pick.
BackboneJS
It is a flexible JavaScript framework that allows developing applications and the front in a much easy way by using JavaScript functions. It brings models, views, events, routers, and collections for assembling the client side of web applications. It is favored because it features a JavaScript structure, and models, and is simple.
Svelte
It is incredibly lightweight and fuels highly performant applications. It works as a declarative code in the imperative programming environment of the browser API. It works as a compiler at build time instead of cutting down on a bundle size. It ships the code with some enhancements. Svelte is often known for being the future of the JavaScript framework. Three main features that define svelte are the presence of less code, reactive natures, and no virtual DOM. It helps write efficient code by achieving reactivity like no other library/framework.
Concluding on a Positive Note
JavaScript has been the de-facto programming (scripting) language that has gone through several paradigms – raw AJAX in vanilla JS to event-driven frameworks such as jQuery and Mootools. It is only now that it assembles with the state-driven approach of the current framework champions like React, Angular, and Vue. JavaScript, TypeScript, JSX, and DevTools improve developers’ experience by offering them handy debugging tools.
Modern Javascript frameworks can be deployed to build static web applications that are fast, lean, and fun to develop. Often web development agencies use these frameworks are used to build single, reusable components for projects including larger applications written in Angular, React, Vue, or any other frameworks above.
