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Which JavaScript frameworks to use and why? We are about to find out!
The JavaScript community recently experienced some huge changes.ECMAScript 2021 was finally standardized and published, and most popular compilers and web browsers are working hard to adapt to new changes and regulations.
To fully understand such a huge update (the last ES update was in 2009), it’s necessary to immerse yourself within a solid step-by-step guide that discusses all aspects of the new standard.And the best such guide we could find comes from Lars Kappert, who shared his ES6 list of changes post at Smashing Mag.
In terms of implementing ECMAScript 2021 features into browsers themselves, Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome are currently leading the pack for everyone else to follow.But JavaScript is much more than just a standard, some great apps and platforms have been built and published for the public this year, one of the latest being OS.js — a fully functional cloud platform that integrates Desktop Computer features within the browser.
JavaScript is growing fast, it’s becoming more native, but most importantly — it’s becoming more stable.
The number of web development frameworks that have come into the JavaScript sphere in the last years has boomed.Many of the frameworks have already established huge communities around them, Angular, Meteor, and React, to name a few.In today’s post, we will be taking a closer look at the currently most popular JavaScript frameworks.We strongly believe that these frameworks will be seeing a lot of growth, engagement, and exposure.Would you mind sharing your personal experiences with the frameworks you have used from our list, as we would love to hear more input about the use cases for each framework? Reactive JavaScript Frameworks
Reactive web development is all about responsiveness, resilience, scalability, and accuracy.
We want to build applications and software responsive to the real-time demands imposed on them.We also want our systems to be resilient against peak performance or demands from unknown sources.Moreover, we want our projects to be scalable to easily upgrade or downgrade our software for optimal performance when the time comes.The following JavaScript frameworks have been built with reactive web development in mind.
We look forward to hearing about more such frameworks that we perhaps left out of this particular list.Webix
Webix is a multi-widget JavaScript UI framework that focuses on cross-platform web development.
It contains 100+ UI widgets and fully-featured CSS / HTML5 JavaScript controls.Webix offers a collection of templates and ready-made complex widgets that help speed up business web applications’ development.
The library provides a Skin Builder tool and 5 ready-to-use skins that ensure responsive UX design.
The library stands out for its Visual designer.It serves for business analysis needs and enables quick UI prototyping.Moreover, the library contains Webix Jet – a free opensource microframework for creating single-page applications that work with large volumes of data.Webix easily integrates with other JS frameworks such as Angular, React, Vue.js, and Meteor.
MobX
With MobX you will be able to begin observing your data structure, while also having the capability of making your functions reactive.That means they will reassess themselves whenever data is changed in real-time.Take any piece of data from your structure and turn it into a separate row, then turn your functions into auto-updating formulas.MobX’s mission is to help developers simple and effective views that are always fully rendered, without needing the extra fat that other full-render frameworks might bring to the table.Omniscient
Omniscient provides developers with features and tools to build functional UIs based on clear components; enabling a more static development model.
Very similar to static web development we would do in HTML, but Omniscient enables the features of programming.You can still manipulate your Views to be eloquent, just without the need to work with things like templating engines, or domain specific languages.
Omniscient encourages small, composable components, and shared functionality through mixins.Anime.js
Animating objects and elements happens easier than you think when utilizing the power of Anime.js.It is a lightweight and easy to use animation library for JavaScript with a flexible API.Even though the animations you plan to include are complex, Anime.js simplifies things for your convenience.Staggering, layered CSS transforms, controls, callbacks, you name it, Anime.js covers it.In short, with this resourceful library, you can animate pretty much anything your heart desires.Also, you get documentation and different examples for easy flow of execution.You can preview all the samples first and go from there for your information.
Download and put Anime.js to use right away.Chart.js
Chart.js is fully open-source, welcoming contributors at any time to take this JavaScript charting to the next level.
As the name suggests, Chart.js will help you create all sorts of charts for your projects.Mixing different charts, custom scales, animated transitions, the list of features goes on.In the bundle, you get eight different styles of charts for beautiful presentations.Turn boring stats and other information into visually appealing end products that beautifully decorate your app.Keep in mind, everything you plan to create will also be responsive and flexible.Various samples are available to preview and better understand what is possible with Chart.js.
Cleave.js
Formatting input text content automatically happens quickly and effortlessly with Cleave.js.When working with this JavaScript library, you do not need to undergo a tedious building it all from scratch.Of course, you still need to validate data in the back-end to make it work properly.Moreover, some of the formatting features of Cleave.js are credit card number, date, phone number, numeral, custom delimiter, and time, to name a few.You can also employ it for various custom options, which expands the possibilities of Cleave.js further.Get the entire installation process and documentation on GitHub.
Popper
If you are looking for tooltips and pop-overs, you better let Popper do the hard work for you.With the tool, you can avoid the hassle of positioning a UI element that floats near a target element.
With tooltip, you can also use Popper for pop-overs, drop-downs and other variations.Moreover, Popper works flawlessly with Bootstrap, Material UI, React, Angular, Foundation, etc.It operates in unison with your other elements, is lightweight and saves you plenty of time and energy.Learn about the installation process and inform yourself about other details to get the gist of it before you fully commit.
Ractive.js
Ractive has been around for a while.Many of the leading World’s websites have embraced its native functionality for building template-oriented User Interface components that support JavaScript features and flexibility.Creating interactive application like experiences within the browser is not an easy task, it never was, but Ractive is one of those rare frameworks that help to bridge this gap and helps to build for a more seamless experience.
Eugene Mirotin from Toptal goes deeper into the capabilities of Ractive and explores the process of building a simple, reactive and interactive application.Riot.js
React has been a huge influencer for most of the reactive JavaScript frameworks we see in today’s development World, and Riot.js is no exception.In their own words, Riot.js is React-based UI library that focuses on micro functions.Streamdata has explored this approach in huge detail on their blog.(Once you’re done with that article, scroll to the bottom to learn about more Riot.js content they’ve published!) Riot.js is being maintained by the developers at Muut — one of the most prominent discussion platforms we have seen to date, which is also super-reactive and interactive, so expect the same kind of performance in your apps once you begin using Riot’s functionality in your projects.Mithril
Mithril stands out with its flexible library size (7kb), as well as proactive documentation that’s constantly updated with new contexts and approaches as the library itself progresses in the development process.Compared to other famous JavaScript frameworks, the benchmarks are staggering and will leave you intrigued to try them out.
Vue.js
Vue.js is very modest when it comes to describing itself as a framework.It prefers to use the term ‘library’ which then combined with other tools can be turned into a fully functional framework.
Vue is for developing and creating modern and sleek web interfaces.Up until very recently, it was still a beta project, but October 2015 marked the released of the V1 which means that Vue is ready for real-world development, and so many are already sharing their insights and experiences with the framework.If you love to create code that makes sense from the moment you look at it, then it’s definitely worth giving Vue a try.Download MVC JavaScript Frameworks
MVC is a software approach that separates application logic from presentation.In practice, it permits your web pages to contain minimal scripting since the presentation is separate from the PHP scripting.
MVC frameworks that we will be looking at in a moment have progressed extensively over the years, and the majority provide features that enable seamless mobile application development.
Web frameworks like Angular ( which is soon coming into V2 ) and React have changed the web development landscape for the better, and so much excitement is hidden within the anticipation of what is yet to come.Angular.js
In recent years, Google’s ever-popular web development framework Angular has exploded with popularity.It continues to provide a solid base foundation for developers who are working strictly with the latest industry standards and abilities.Angular.js provides a set of modern development and design features for rapid application development.Google has gone as far as creating a separate part of the site that offers the Material Design specification to help you build apps that stay in touch with the most modern approaches there are.
Angular 2 is approaching the first BETA release, which you can learn more about in the latest post from Angular’s developer team.And because of the extensive framework nature of Angular, it fully supports extendable libraries and plugins.jQuery
With the kind of lifespan that this project holds already, even those living under a rock will have heard of jQuery before.
Whenever someone wants to extend their website (or mobile page) and make it more interactive; they rely on the functionality of jQuery.
This tiny library transforms the whole web into a fully interactive and entertaining experience, with a reported whopping 70%+ of the World’s leading websites having something to do with jQuery.jQuery plugins and widgets are amongst the most searched components within the front-end developer orbit.
Companies like WordPress, Google, IBM and many others rely on jQuery to provide a one-of-a-kind web browsing experience to its staff and of course the vast ocean of internet users.jQuery is also fully compliant with mobile devices, and has a separate jQuery Mobile library to take care of all things mobile.React
React is the web programming orbit’s latest crown jewel, even religious Angular.js users have made the switch to React as it allows for more smooth front-end development without the need of immersing in the complexity of a front-end framework.It’s a JavaScript library that Facebook maintains, and the main area of expertise behind React is to help developers implement a Virtual DOM; instead output a value called the Virtual DOM.
The developers now diff the Virtual DOM with the current state of the DOM, which generates a list of DOM operations that would make the current DOM look like the new one.They quickly apply this operations in a batch.
In terms of popularity, a developer recently published an interesting finding between the traffic stats of the sub-reddit r/React and r/Angular on Reddit — and both seem to be getting the same traffic volume each day now, which means that React has actually caught up with Angular in more ways than one.Socket
Socket’s gained a lots of momentum in the real-time developer community.With Socket you can enjoy fully functional real-time communication between the client and the server.The developers divided Socket into two different parts.They built the first part, which is the client library, to run from the browser.
In contrast, they built the second one, which is the server-library on top of Node.js.Both libraries share a very similar API, and they also made Socket event-driven; much like Node.js is.
With Socket, you can implement real-time streaming of binary, instant messaging platforms, and interactive document collaboration.You can also have real-time stats for your apps and projects (analytics), and so much more.
Microsoft Office relies on Socket to provide much of its real-time functionality, as does Yammer.
Socket works heavily with the WebSocket protocol to provide a transparent experience.Polymer
Google’s Polymer project doesn’t just spice things up with Material Design.This JavaScript framework is all about fast and modern web design through the ability to create and reuse web components.The project spent a long time in a BETA release.
Last year, we saw the first release of a V1 and the project has snowballed ever since.
While many are still wondering what is the true difference between Polymer and Angular (since both share many similar traits like code syntax and design features), we know for a fact that Polymer brings about a new kind of development experience that will propel the rest of the industry into a modern web component based development approach.
Node.js
Node.js is very likely to be the most powerful framework that we have seen since the inception of JavaScript.The project has grown incredibly big in a recent couple of years.While many were predicting the downfall of Node.js and the rise of other server-side frameworks, Node.js has maintained its leadership glory to this very day.Node.js has become extremely scalable and versatile with its capabilities, and many developers rank it above technical programming languages such as Java and .NET! (at least for the web)
The main purpose of the framework is to help build interaction vigorous web apps.Examples are community sites, content streaming websites, feature heavy one-page apps, and other apps that rely on heavy data interaction.
The creators built Node.js on top of Google’s V8 JavaScript engine.Beginners can easily learn this open-source project.
Also, developers who come from other languages can easily pick this too.The learning curve is the same for everyone.
Last year, Node made a full merge with IO.js — bringing about an extended list of features and potential.Meteor
Meteor has grown from a simple inspirational idea into a fully functional and funded project.It tuned into home to thousands of enthusiastic developers.It has revolutionized the development of real-time mobile and web applications that users can build from a singular development interface.You can convert your existing web apps into mobile apps and publish them on popular app stores! Any web application built with Meteor is also automatically compatible with mobile devices.
With the recent release of Galaxy (cloud hosting platform), Meteor is making front-end and back-end development a unified, complexity-less experience.Meteor’s a stable full-stack framework that supports native JavaScript language for helping you build modern web and mobile applications.The public package repository Atmosphere has thousands of published packages that will let you build multiplex applications on the fly.
D3.js
Visuals, animation, and graphics are an essential part of the web.Without implementing good graphics within our designs, we risk portraying our designs as bleak and shallow.Still, this depends on the given circumstances.D3 is a data-driven visual component library that helps developers and designers to use JavaScript.It helps them build great visual data reports, artworks, interactive bullet charts, and sunburst diagrams.
They can also use this to build varieties of data matrixes, word clouds, and countless other types of data visualizations.This will leave your customers inspired and pleased with the overall presentation.It takes time to learn the correct syntax usage of D3.js, but it is so worth it as you will see in the examples on this page .
The creator of D3 — Mike Bostock — did an interesting Ask Me Anything (AMA) on Reddit last year , and it’s packed with insightful questions and answers that will help you better understand the intention, the vision and the drive behind this project.
You need to prepare spending some time digesting all the answers.Ember
Ember is a modern web development framework for ambitiously-oriented developers.People know it for its ability to help developers build complex large-client-side applications.Ember also stands out with its simplicity and functionality flow to make web app development a smooth experience.Getting started with Ember is quick and painless, and many developers have gone out of their way to create tutorials and guides on how to get started with this adaptable framework.
Ember has managed to avoid gleaming terms and modules that make modern frameworks stand out from the crowd.
Instead, Ember maintains traditional functionality while bringing forth power necessary for building great applications, like the necessary.Aurelia
Aurelia is a self-proclaimed next-generation web development framework that primarily focuses on making programming (web development) a creative process.Perhaps what makes Aurelia next-generation is the fact that it has been built purely with ES6 (the latest JS standard) and also incorporates some of the available ES7 (the next JS standard) features already, whilst retaining the ability to function on all modern browsers.The developers built the framework upon a module-like framework.This means that it consists of several small and big libraries they can use to either together, or separately.Of course, this depends on the kind of application you are building requirements.
However, these are just a few of the more visionary features that Aurelia packs.And it’s highly recommended that you read Rob Eisenberg’s writeup about Aurelia to fully understand the purpose of the framework.
Knockout
The predominant features of Knockoutjs are declarative bindings, automatic UI refresh, dependency tracking, and templating features.Relate your existing DOM elements with data models using a simple syntax.Whenever you update your data models, it reflects UI changes in real-time.Create connections between your data models to combine and transform them.Create intricate UI models as part of the functions that you use for your data models.With the support of native JavaScript, Knockout will make it incredibly easy to integrate itself with any existing framework.This includes everyone on our roundup here.
Keystone
We should probably be mentioning this framework in a separate Node.js framework list (which we will).Still, Keystone’s capabilities stand out in modern front-end web development, and it’s not often that we see a full-fledged Content Management System (CMS) framework available.The developers built Keystone with the support of Express.js and MongoDB.Keystone has a lot more features to offer that make the CMS great! It can enable features like dynamic routes, database field management, an interactive and dynamic Admin UI.This UI can be available even while building your apps/content systems.
It can also enable form processing, email sending, and management.This framework is easy to work with the codebase.
Download Choosing the Best JavaScript Development Framework
Choosing a framework should never be about the number of features the particular framework can provide.
Terms like ‘next generation’ can sound very appealing, but what matters is the actual functionality of the framework.The functionality usage within your new project, app, and software can also be a factor.Some frameworks provide more experience by letting sensational developers with decades of knowledge building the framework.Whereas smaller web frameworks will focus on community-oriented features incorporated within different framework modules.Thank you for visiting Colorlib and reading this article! We highly appreciate it! Now you might want to learn how to make a website using our free WordPress themes .Share This.
