JavaScript is a web programming language that helps web developers to make static web pages more dynamic for a better user experience. In recent years, JavaScript frameworks are on their high that provides a road map for building client applications. These frameworks have become popular in web development because they provide a better user experience with code separation systems.
When designing a frontend of web applications, it is crucial to know how to code these JavaScript frameworks. When working as a web developer, you may need knowledge about libraries like React, Angular, or Svelte. You might be wondering which framework is the best option for web applications. In this article, we'll discuss what JavaScript is, the function of JavaScript frameworks, and the top JavaScript frameworks in 2022 so you can make a choice. Let's dig deeper into the details:
JavaScript is a multi-pattern programming language for event-driven, object-oriented, and prototype-based web applications. Initially, JavaScript code only targeted the client-side, but in recent years, it has also been used as a server-side of the web.
Today, JavaScript is the popular programming language on the web. It is the only language on the web with several frameworks available. JavaScript frameworks allow users to build scalable web applications with the help of standard tools. They have multiple JavaScript code libraries with JS code templates that help to complete standard programming tasks. Most people confuse web frameworks with libraries due to their functions, but they're different in their tasks and scope.
A JavaScript library contains packaged code, classes, methods, and functions that can be reused to develop a web application. These libraries offer JavaScript code that developers can reuse. Contrary to JavaScript code by JavaScript libraries, JavaScript frameworks define the design of web applications, call a JS library, and use code within it to complete the application. These frameworks offer a complete roadmap for building web applications instead of a single solution. Developers have added these frameworks to their toolbox when developing web solutions for their clients. The benefit of using these frameworks is that you can design multiple web pages using their reusable components.
Before the penetration of modern frameworks, jQuery was the popular library used by developers to write JavaScript code that was compatible with all web browsers. All the functions were abstracted into a simple and easy-to-learn library that developers would use on their web pages.
jQuery set a new way for modern frameworks like React, Backbone, Angular, and Ember that provide an architecture to build new web applications with dynamic pages.
Role of JavaScript Frameworks in Web Applications
A JavaScript framework provides a layout to help developers to build applications faster and cheaper. Using these frameworks, you can run code without errors.
With the help of their layouts, you can build web applications and build the different parts of user interfaces to reuse these components independently by creating highly interactive and sleek web applications.
Furthermore, these frameworks also help the developers to:
- Implement your user interfaces components on data
- Mitigate frontend problems
- Write code that is reusable and easy-to-read
- Reuse the increments to build applications
- Abstraction of ideas into an understandable language
- Standardize elements for the user interface such as color scheme, buttons, and font style to make a better user experience
Moreover, these frameworks help the developers to use languages that are domain specific to keep the code in a more understandable format. These languages may include JSX and Handlebars. All these functions make the development easy for the developers with the help of integrating tools for testing and debugging the code. Besides, these JavaScript frameworks help the developers to automate the installation, updating, and library configuration without errors.
Why Use JavaScript Frameworks?
No doubt, JavaScript frameworks are popular, but there are still tasks where you don't need to use them. Let's say that developing a web application is easy and does not require complex functions. In these cases, using a framework is not recommendable. Frameworks offer multiple features, but all of them have a pricing policy. These frameworks undoubtedly provide more declarative code, but you can end up with an application with a higher computational cost than regular JavaScript.
If you work on a small project that requires interactivity from the user, we recommend you not use the framework. In this case, you can simply go with JavaScript to build applications. After going through our guide, you'll explore different JavaScript frameworks and can decide which is the best option for your project.
Benefits of Using JavaScript Frameworks
As a web developer, it's worth using JavaScript frameworks for several reasons. We are enlisting the benefits of using frameworks to build web applications. Let's begin:
- Provide Strong Community Support
As these frameworks have become popular among web developers, some of them may already encounter a problem you are facing. So, by connecting with the community of developers, you can find a solution to a particular problem.
- Offer Reusability
Since these frameworks have built-in methods, you can reuse a template to develop applications without writing a single code line.
- Fast Development
Using a JavaScript framework allows the users to build and launch their applications faster by saving time.
- Cut Down the Costs
Most JavaScript frameworks are free to use and cut down the development cost. Using these frameworks is economical, especially for small business owners.
Which JavaScript frameworks to choose for your project?
When developing a web application, you need to use modern frameworks. You might no clear about the best option to use for web applications. Don't worry! There are multiple frameworks available for developers to build applications, but we are enlisting the seven most popular frameworks in 2022:
- React
- Svelte
- Vue
- Angular
- Ember
- Backbone
- NextJS
Before selecting any framework, make sure that:
- The framework has tutorials and guides for beginners.
- Choose the framework adopted by the developers over the years.
- Choose the framework that has a strong community and documentation.
In this article, we will discuss the most popular JavaScript frameworks in 2022. Let's dig deeper into the details:
React JS
React is an open-source framework owned by Facebook (Meta). React is a free and declarative framework widely used to design intuitive user interfaces for web applications. You can use this framework to build scalable applications faster. Moreover, React has small packages, so it's easy to learn for beginners. You can use React framework to develop large-scale web applications using different data. React was initially used on Facebook and would be used for Instagram feeds. Moreover, you can use this framework for large web projects with a small team.
According to the Survey by the State of JavaScript, React is the most used framework. React.js provides fast user interfaces to instantly build web applications with components rather than updating individual parts as a library does. This framework allows the incremental use of the components to add faster updates to web pages. React also provides a user interface called JSX for a better user experience. Let's take a look at the features of React framework:
Features
- Allows the Incremental Use of Components
React allows users to divide a web page into multiple components. Each part belongs to the UI, has its own code and structure, and helps developers build web applications with reusable code.
- Work with Virtual Document Object Model (DOM)
React provides a virtual document object model (DOM) for data representation in a tree structure. Moreover, React also categorizes data into components containing a code for each independent element of a user interface in the document. The availability of DOM in React framework refreshes only a part of the web page rather than the whole website.
- Support JavaScript XML (JSX)
JavaScript XML (JSX) is similar to the embedding HTML into JavaScript calls. These calls help web developers to embed JavaScript modules within HTML elements.
- Provide Dynamic User Interface (UI)
JavaScript allows you to control the design and flow of your application using JSX's HTML-style syntax. Choosing a web architecture helps to decide how your web application should look.
Svelte
Svelte is an open-source JavaScript framework that helps web developers to turn the raw code of static web applications into intuitive and interactive user interfaces. This framework, created by Rich Harris, has enriched the JavaScript ecosystem. Like React, Svelte is more than a framework; it works as a compiler to turn Svelte code into vanilla JavaScript to get faster web solutions than VueJS and React.
Note: If you are interested in application building with the Svelte framework, you should go through the SvelteKit. Svelte compiles code as independent JavaScript components and loads the applications faster without a little task by the browser. Let's take a look at the features of Svelte:
Features
- Work without virtual DOM
Unlike React, the Svelte framework directly works with code without a Document Object Module (DOM), and it shifts most of the code for compilation achieving faster results than other frameworks.
- Provide Reactivity
Svelte framework converts modules into DOM functions that react to data changes and render modifications as JavaScript code.
- Requires Minimum Code by the Web Developer
The svelte framework requires minimal code than React and Vue, helping the web developers spend more time on tasks other than coding.
- Provide Modular Styling of the Web Pages
Svelte provides a consistent design flow across all web pages of applications by adding unique styles and creating unique names for classes.
Vue
Vue was developed in 2014 by Evan You and used an MIT license. Evan is a former Google employee and still helps the team maintain this framework. It is an open-source framework that helps to build intuitive user interfaces. This framework combines the popular features of Angular and React. It uses Angular's templates and data binding, and props of React.
Vue framework has a prominent feature from other frameworks as it is incrementally adoptable to build applications. The increments include a routing solution, toolchain, Command-Line Input(CLI), and state management.
This framework offers incrementally adoptable modules, so you can code to add new increments to your web project. The architecture of this framework is easy to use, and you don't need to understand all the features. It is worth noticing that Vue is a lightweight framework of 23kb. Vue requires extensive knowledge of JavaScript, HTML, and CSS to build large-scale web applications and combine them into new or already existing applications with JSX. Let's take a look at the features:
Features
- Provide Interactivity
Vue allows for adding transition effects to bring more life to the web pages. Moreover, you can add third-party animation libraries for more interactivity of web applications.
- Bind the DOM with Object Data using HTML Templates
Vue framework provides HTML templates to bind the DOM with the object data. Moreover, this framework starts the compilation of templates as HTML, compatible with all browsers.
- Allows Users to Navigate Faster
Vue routers switch between the pages without frequently refreshing the web pages and make navigation faster for the users.
- Provide Directives for Code Integration
Directives are a set of instructions to integrate the code of Vue instances. These visuals provide interactivity to your application for a better user experience.
Angular
Angular, created by Google in 2010, is an open-source framework written in Typescript language. It is an increment-based framework that offers multiple integrated libraries and tools to build, test, and maintain code for web applications. This framework is a robust option for web developers to develop interactive applications with JavaScript code.
The angular framework integrates interactive templates and end-to-end integration tools to mitigate challenges in web projects. You can use this framework for building single-use web applications. Due to the massive popularity of this framework, many versions of Angular are available. This framework is the best option for developing enterprise-level applications by integrating complex features. Often people confuse Angular with AngularJS, but there is a difference between these two frameworks. Angular is compatible with all mobile browsers, while the JS version only supports desktop browsers.
Now, let's deeper dive into the features of the Angular framework:
Features
- Support Data Binding in Two Dimensions
The angular framework supports two-way data binding to represent the model layer. The beauty of this framework is that it has a preview to monitor the changes in the model. So users can view changes in the model automatically, cutting down the time for application development.
- Provide Interdependency
This framework allows classes, methods, functions, and modules to work with interdependent modules and maintain code consistency by reducing class changes.
- Provide Model View Controller(MVC) Architecture
The structure of this framework sets apart the application code from the user interface that helps web developers to save their code time.
Ember
Ember framework, created in 2011 by Yehuda Katz, that web developers use widely to build applications compatible with desktop and mobile browsers and single-page web applications. This popular framework uses the HTMLBars template that automatically updates the changes in data. Let's take a deeper dive into the features of the Ember framework:
Features
- Provide a Template Language
Handlebar syntax belongs to a template language. It uses a template and input data to create HTML or other data formats. These templates are similar to the regular text that use the handlebars syntax with curly braces.
- Provide Inspection Tool
This framework provides an inspection tool to check their Ember code, monitor the performance of applications using Ember, and debug the errors in applications faster.
- Provide Authentication
This framework offers security patterns to authenticate and authorize the applications. Moreover, it provides abstract patterns and integrates with other security options for more strict protocols.
- Provide Application Initializers
This framework offers the feature of application initializers to start and configure the dependency injection of your application.
Backbone
Backbone is a minimalist JavaScript framework created by Jeremy Ashkenas in 2010 for event-driven allows you to design client-side applications compatible with all web browsers. This framework offers MVC modules for data abstraction and combines these components to build sleek user interfaces (UI) by writing a few lines of code.
This framework uses imperative programming to build your desired web applications, while other frameworks offer declarative style development. Let's dig deeper into the features of Backbone:
Features
- Use JavaScript Methods and Functions
Backbone framework uses JavaScript functions and modules as the building blocks of JavaScript code and provides modules binding and custom occurrences.
- Free and Open Source Framework
Backbone is a free, open-source framework for web projects offering 100 plus libraries to build applications.
- Support Cross-Platform Application Development
Backbone frameworks help web developers to build applications compatible with all devices and browsers.
NextJS
NextJS is a free and open-source framework for building static web applications with React. This framework provides a better user experience, improved performance, and faster development of web applications. Today, this framework is on its high due to strong community support. This JavaScript framework helps to develop applications from the existing templates rather than writing code from scratch. NextJS is the best framework for businesses due to complete control over the products like websites or applications. Using this framework, you need not rely on plugins like other frameworks. Most developers prefer to reuse the React components as it reduces the time and cost of development.
Final Thoughts
In recent years, application development has got a new direction, such as no-code. No-code is a promising direction to allow developers to eliminate routine tasks and do more complex and exciting things, such as designing architecture. But some developers are still skeptical about development without code, believing that this is only the MVP level, but the platforms have come a long way and may surprise you.
Similarly, JavaScript frameworks are an extension to no code development that offers faster and cheaper web solutions. JavaScript is a popular scripting language used for web development. This language allows development by using libraries and frameworks. We recommend you use any framework of your choice to reduce the time and cost of developing web applications.
