Today, there are a large number of front-end frameworks available, each with its own strengths and weaknesses. Consequently, it is difficult to tell whether you should learn one of them, or whether one of them is best suited to your next task.
As part of this article, I will compare five of the most popular front and back-end JavaScript frameworks on the market. This article offers an overview of the main features of both, evaluating their tooling, learning curves, and other considerations.
There’s no way I can tell you which framework is the best: that’s subjective and depends on a number of factors, including your current level of JavaScript proficiency and the kind of app you’re developing. But I’ll help you learn about all the key players so you can decide which framework deserves further exploration.
Businesses today prioritize the customer experience as the most important aspect of their business. It is common for developers to be briefed on the simplicity of the user interface they are supposed to deliver to their clients. The user’s experience must be seamless regardless of the complexity of the background functions and operations. Those are the general principles Netflix, Facebook, Instagram, and other successful companies operate by.
There are many websites out there, and you will find that they are easy to use, powerful, and have an excellent user interface. The myriad frameworks run behind the scenes make this possible. There is, however, a constant need for usability and functionality to improve as demand increases from customers and the market. When designing a website, whether you opt to use the services of any Web Design Company in Pakistan or do it by yourself, the crux is to do it right. Those are the moments when concerns start to surface.
Innumerable clients have come to me to find out how to choose the best javascript framework that will solve their problems quickly.
In order for us not to put you in their shoes, we have written this article for your benefit. We discuss some of the best front-end frameworks of 2021 in this article. In case you’re wondering what some popular front-end frameworks are, here are some recommendations.
Frameworks for best front-end development
According to the following graph, each framework listed in the best frontend frameworks for 2021 is used more frequently than the others. We can see that Angular and React are extremely popular after the years 2015-16.
As far as jQuery is concerned, its popularity has never waned. The reason being, jQuery still performs beautifully when you don’t need to use giant frameworks like Angular and Ember but need to develop faster with minimum functionality.
The 5 Best Front-end Frameworks:
- React
- Angular
- Vuejs
- jQuery
- Emberjs
1. React:
The Facebook React framework was initially released in 2013 and has since become one of the most popular JavaScript front-end frameworks. There are a lot of companies using React in production, including Facebook, Netflix, and Airbnb. It also has a huge developer following, which means that there is plenty of online assistance.
Composing interactive user interfaces using reusable components is the primary goal of React. For templating, JSX (a JavaScript extension) is used. A one-way data flow model enables data to be fed into components. The virtual DOM used by React allows the page to be instantaneously and efficiently updated when component data is changed.
It is easy to use the developer tools. In addition to a CLI (Create React App) to scaffold a new project quickly and easily, the React team maintains extensions for both Chrome and Firefox. Several third-party packages have emerged to deal with a wide range of tasks (such as routing, handling form inputs, and animation). There are also a few React-based frameworks, such as Next.js and Gatsby.
According to the “Learn once, write anywhere” philosophy, React is meant to be a tool for learning. Apps can be built with React Native, and server-side rendering can be accomplished with Node. As the development of something called server components nears completion, this will mean improved SEO support.
React is often criticized for being too unaffected: it only focuses on the view layer of your application, leaving the rest up to you. It may appeal to some developers, but new developers, in particular, can be overwhelmed by the unstructured approach to creating React apps that it encourages.
Learning React is a moderately challenging task. As a result, developers should understand the basics of development paradigms (such as immutability and pure functions) before crafting anything serious.
For data-driven apps of any size, React’s unopinionated approach and the fact that it leaves much to the developer make it an excellent choice.
2. Angular:
If we are talking about the best front-end development frameworks, there has to be Angular on the list. On this list, Angular is the only framework that is based on TypeScript. Google launched Angular in 2016 to address the growing demands of technology with conventional concepts that worked.
Because of the two-way data binding feature, Angular differs from React. The model and the view are synchronized in real-time, so any change to the model or the view is reflected instantly.
When it comes to creating mobile or web apps, Angular is the best solution. Moreover, you can use this framework to create progressive web apps and multi-page applications. Some of the biggest companies in the world deploy Angular applications, including BMW, Xbox, Forbes, and Blender.
The learning curve for Angular is higher than that for React. In spite of a large amount of documentation available, it is too complex or confusing for most people to understand.
Pros:
- A built-in feature allows updates to the model to be reflected in the view and vice versa
- Most of the features included in the core are available by default, which reduces the amount of code that needs to be written
- By defining the components as external elements, the dependencies are decoupled from the components
- With dependency injection, you can reuse components and manage them easily
- Learning and support are available in a large community
Cons:
- The steeper learning curve comes from the dynamic nature of Angular since there are multiple ways you can do the task. Because of Angular’s large community, newcomers can easily gain knowledge about its concepts and technology
- Because of the complexity of their structure and size, dynamic apps sometimes don’t perform as well as they should. Although, Angular best practices and code optimization are important
When to use Angular:
With Angular, you are able to dynamically update the contents of browser-based applications to improve their performance. Angular is the best option for enterprise application development and dynamic web development.
When not to use Angular:
Angular is a front-end framework that provides a complete solution. The resources provided by Angular will be inaccessible if you want to design applications with a limited scope. You might also consider switching to a smaller framework with simple syntax and fewer complexities when you have a smaller team.
3. Vue.js:
More than 700k websites have been built using Vue.js, which is reported to have been used by 40% of JS developers. As opposed to other frameworks, View isn’t supported by large, established companies. This popular JS framework was originally released in 2014 by Evan You, the same developer of another popular JS framework, Angular.
What are the main features of Vue.js?
Vue has a virtual DOM, component-based architecture, and two-way binding, which contribute to its high speed of updating and tracking data changes, requirements for real-time applications. If developers choose Vue.js, they will benefit from the framework’s small package size as compared to React or other frameworks (the framework’s ZIP package is only 18 KB.)
In order for Vue to deliver a simpler concept than Angular, it has well-developed documentation and a supportive community. This is what makes Vue one of the best-suited frameworks for beginners. It has an extensive set of tools, including testing tools, plugin installation systems, debugging tools, and server renderers and state managers.
Advantages of Vue.js
- Fast and tiny
- Suitable for beginners
- Documentation in detail
- The syntax for simple sentences
- Binding data two-ways
- Positively affects SEO
Drawbacks of Vue.js
- Language barriers (many Chinese texts) and lack of plugins
- Privately developed and pretty new
- Developers are few (yet growing)
- Limits on how big a project can be
- Are not backed by big businesses
When to use Vue.js?
If you are contemplating the creation of a single-page app from scratch or are looking to launch a relatively small project, it may be the best option for you. Developers can easily integrate vue with existing server pages and benefit from web-pack integration, tree shaking, grouping, code splitting, etc.
When not to use Vue.js?
Vue is a new framework, so it’s not well suited for large-scale projects. It cannot guarantee a sufficient level of stability, support, and response time (hopefully, all this is on the way).
4. jQuery:
It was one of the most famous frameworks of the frontend when it was introduced in 2006. Even though it was released a long time ago, it still has relevance as we live in today’s interconnected world. Furthermore, jQuery reduces the need for extensive JavaScript coding, as well as ensuring simplicity and ease of use.
Since jQuery has been around for so long, there is a very large community that has developed around the solutions. The primary purpose of jQuery is to perform CSS and DOM manipulations and improve the functionality and interaction of websites.
In spite of our inability to build mobile applications with jQuery, jQuery Mobile has recently expanded the usage boundary. Recent application development in this framework has also made it possible for developers to create mobile native applications using jQuery Mobile’s HTML5-based UI system. Furthermore, jQuery supports all browsers, so you can use it with any device you intend to use.
Pros:
- DOM elements can be added or removed with ease
- HTTP requests are simplified
- Provides dynamic content
- Requests over HTTP are simplified
Cons:
- The working capacity that is relatively slow
- jQuery is not the only advanced alternative available
- This model’s APIs have become obsolete
When to use:
Javascript desktop applications can be developed with jQuery. With the framework, the code is pretty concise and straightforward. Animations and events are handled by it.
When not to use:
If you are creating a large-scale application, the use of jQuery is not possible since adding extra javascript code to your application makes it heavy. Modern frameworks with advanced javascript support, less coding, and reusable components are far superior to the frameworks in this category.
5. Ember.js
Ember was one of the very first front-end frameworks, so I’m featuring it as the final framework in this article. The development community has continued to use it since the initial release in 2011:
Since it’s almost a decade old, it was well before React, Vue, Svelte, and all the other CSS frameworks. Qonto and CLARK are two of Europe’s Top 50 FinTechs in 2020 that have relied on the framework quietly and sustainably without the backlash of the frontend hype train.
In a similar fashion to Angular, Ember comes with everything you need to build a front-end JavaScript application, including batteries. There are a variety of solutions to address these problems, such as a routing solution defined at the data layer and a fully-featured, modern test harness fixed into every application. Releases are scheduled every six weeks (when a new minor version is released) and stability is emphasized. The developer can avoid being left behind by the faster-moving frameworks by constantly rewriting their apps instead of rewriting them all the time.
A wide array of tooling has sprung up around Ember, from the official way to create, build, test, and serve Ember apps to the Ember Inspector.
Conclusion:
So there you have it, my comparison of the top five front-end frameworks on the market today.
While this was not an exhaustive examination of each framework’s features, I hope it has given you some insight into which of the big players might be a good fit for your next project or a candidate for you to further investigate.
