JavaScript Frameworks – Tools to Choose

Choosing the right JavaScript framework for your project can be intimidating and confusing as well. There is always a new one that receives a lot of validation from the community. While the known JavaScript frameworks already have a lot to offer, there are many new frameworks that you need to know. So in this post, we are going to talk in detail about the top JavaScript framework tools to choose from, along with the newer ones that you must know.

Talking about JavaScript also referred to as JS, is a high-level programming language which is also known as a dynamic language which supports several standards such as imperative, functional, event-driven object-oriented programming language. Since it is a lightweight language it is best suited for the web and is popularly known for making dynamic and interactive web pages. In addition, JavaScript can also be used to build server-side applications. Besides web development, JavaScript can also be used in building desktop apps, mobile apps, and game development.

Although JavaScript has been around for years, recently it has been widely used in programming languages. Mainly because it is highly versatile and easy to use. So, in this article, we are going to discuss some of the JavaScript frameworks. So you can make a better choice for your upcoming project.

JavaScript Frameworks, Their Significance in Web Development.

A framework (JavaScript frameworks in our case) can be considered as a skeleton, made up of lines of code based on which the developer can develop his web tool. A developer can choose any framework depending on his coding style and the type of tool he wants to build. Since both the libraries and frameworks imply the concept of code reusability, you might be thinking that why they have been termed distinctly in that case?

The difference actually comes in the inversion of control, in the case of libraries, you call the library in your code but in framework, it calls your code and uses it in a particular way. Thus frameworks have changed the conventional ways of coding in Web Development. Industry makes a significant use of frameworks in web development, in the upcoming portion of the article I will discuss few JavaScript frameworks.

JavaScript Frameworks for 2023 ( Review)

1. React

React is one of the most popular JavaScript frameworks. It is an open-source library  widely used to create user interfaces like Facebook, Netflix, Tesla, Dropbox, and more. In fact, it is maintained by Facebook and a huge community of developers. Reach is used in building single-page and mobile applications. Reach renders data from the DOM so creating applications requires additional libraries for state management, routing, and API interactions.

Notably, React is known for its simplicity, performance, and scalability thanks to virtual DOM. With the help of virtual DOM, the time needed to re-render the view when the state changes lowers. Also React supports server-side rendering, which also helps in enhancing the performance of the web apps by letting the data be fetched before it is rendered on the client side.

A Few Things to Note About React

Here are some of the React features you need to know:

• JSX which stands for JavaScript Syntax Extension is a combination of HTML and JavaScript. So you can embed JS elements inside the HTML elements. JSX simplifies the code and makes it easier to understand.
• Virtual DOM is the most crucial element of the web as it splits up into modules and executes the code. The virtual DOM is an exact copy of the real DOM.
• React supports one-way binding so the data flows only in one direction. This means the data is transferred from the top to the bottom.
• Since React uses Virtual DOM the updates are only modified at specific sections. And that is why DOM runs faster.
• React provides many extensions that can help in creating complete UI applications. It assists with mobile development and also offers server-side rendering.
• JSX also lets you write conditional statements. So the data in the browser is shown based on the conditions given inside the JSX.

2. VueJS

VueJS is another open-source JavaScript framework, built by Evan You, an independent software developer. Earlier he used to work with Google, on AngularJS. He liked some of the parts of AngularJS so much that he eventually decided to take them and build another, lightweight framework. Therefore Vue.JS is also known for its less size other than having an incrementally adoptable architecture. It boasts of having a versatile ecosystem that scales between a library and a full-featured framework. It was first released on February, 2014 under MIT License.

Vue.JS project is currently being backed by crowd funding and patreon sponsoring. Evan You(the developer of the framework), through the official website of Vue.JS, describes it as a front-end framework that is “Simple to use yet powerful in nature.” It is also popular for its light weight among all the JavaScript frameworks.

Like AngularJS, it also supports two-way binding with MVVM(Model-view-viewmodel) architectural pattern. MVVM is ultimately the modern pattern of MVC only, but provides a more clear separation between the View and the Model, with the viewmodel which acts as a connection between them.

Some of the big names in web development which use Vue.JS are Alibaba, Adobe, Grammarly.

Vue.JS: Few More Points

Now, we will discuss some more features of VueJS,

• Famous among the developers for its incrementally adoptive ecosystem.
• It removes the traditional disadvantage of SPA’s(Single Page Application) inability to link to any other items on the same page. It has a “vue-router” package that enables to fix that issue.
• Taking into account prior understanding of basic JavaScript, most of the developers consider its learning curve to be gradual and shallow, easy to follow.
• It is even possible to build another framework on the top of VueJS, some of the existing ones are nuxt.js, vuetify, NativeScript-Vue etc.
• The latest Vue release was Vue 2.6.10 “Macross”. Evan You, the main developer behind vue has also previewed about Vue 3.0 recently. He plans to make the next version even faster with smaller size and more maintainable source code.

The Contest,

Frameworks are very crucial part of web development these days. Less size, increased performance, various such JavaScript frameworks are coming up with a variety of advantages.

Next we will be discussing another such framework.

3. NextJS

Another one of our list of top JavaScript frameworks is NextJS. It is an open-source React front-end framework created by Vercel. It helps in creating user interfaces and static websites and it also supports API routes for the backend. The framework can also be used for server-side rendering and building universal apps.

Nextjs is a JavaScript library which also uses React components to build user interfaces. Nextjs is controlled by React Router, Webpack, Node ecosystem, and community libraries. One of the most interesting things about Nectjs is that it automatically generates pages based on the file system structure of the project. This feature helps in faster development, as you are not required to create pages for each piece of content manually. Also, Nextjs supports incremental static generation which helps in statically generating pages to be updated incrementally as new content is added or updated.

Features of NextJS

• Nextjs offers file-based routing which helps in installing any third-party package and avoiding configurations.
• Pre-rendering is one of the most useful features where the HTML for every page is generated in advance with all of the required components.
• Nextjs has built-in support for API routes. So it automatically creates routes for APIs depending on the file and the folder name.
• It also provides extensive support for CSS.
• Nextjs also supports client-side authentication, server-side authentication, API routes authentication and a way to continue user data in any database as needed.
• It uses image components for image size and format optimization.

4. ExpressJS

Expressjs is a web application framework for Node.js.  It is an open-source framework released by MIT License. Also it is mainly used in designing and building web applications and APIs. It is popularly named as a de facto standards server framework for Node.js. Some of the most intriguing features of this framework are high performance, easy routing, soft dependencies, and more.

Expressjs brought the component-based design back to Node.js web apps. This is useful for the developers as it helps in reusing middleware and also makes it easy to scale an Expressjs project as your team expands. Also, Expressjs v4 offers built-in middleware to manage AJAX requests for client-side, which makes it even easier to start without having to worry about third-party libraries. It is a great framework to quickly build web apps and APIs in Nodejs.

Features of ExpressJS

• It is easy to start with Express.js if you are already familiar with JS and backend software architecture.
• Expressjs is a basic framework, there are several middleware packages developed by developers to help resolve the issues.
• With the help of Express.s JS can be used in front-end as well as back-end.
• You can find a wide array of middleware modules that can be used to add requests and response operations.

5. AngularJS

AngularJS is one of the JavaScript frameworks maintained by tech giant Google and other community of developers. It is a client-side, open source framework. Released initially in October, 2010, Its licensing is through MIT. AngularJS, according to most of the developers, is one of the most powerful frameworks for building single page applications(SPAs). Its development has addressed many challenges that were previously encountered in building such applications. In AngularJS, user can achieve maximum functionality with a little code.

It supports two-way data binding with MVC(Model View Controller). In coding terms it simply means that any changes in the model will affect the view and vice-versa.

Netflix, PayPal, The Guardian are some of the leading brands which use AngularJS for building their UI and other components of their platform.

AngularJS: Few More Points

Now, we will discuss about some more features of AngularJS,

• It is famous among its developers for the flexibility provided. The whole process can be seamlessly executed as it provides all the resources that are needed to develop a user-friendly, flexible and platform-independent web applications.
• Two-way Data Binding and Dependency Injection brings most of the flexibility in AngularJS. Dependency Injection in Web Development helps to additionally achieve more of the code reusability.
• Its Learning Curve is steep. However it is still worth learning due to its wide range of functionalities, being one of the early JavaScript frameworks and having constant upgrades since then.
• It follows the inbuilt POJO(Plain Old JavaScript Object) model. You need not to worry for using additional getter and setter functions. This makes your code easier to test, reuse and maintain.
• Latest version of angular was Angular 1.7.8, and the upcoming one is AngularJS v8. The latest release has got new features such as improved accessibility of selects, better drag and drops and CLI (command line interface).

The Contest Continues,

Now since you know about one of the JavaScript frameworks, the secret behind modern web designing and development, you must want to explore more such tools which might help him to perform better in this contest. So let’s go on and explore about few more of these frameworks.

6. EmberJS

EmberJS, also used for building SPAs, is another JavaScript Framework. Notable features of EmberJS include pluggable architecture and over 3500 addons to enhance it. EmberJS is also open-source and client-side framework. Just like VueJS, EmberJS was developed by only one developer initially, named Yehuda Katz. Yehuda Katz is also a former key developer of jQuery and Ruby on Rails. Its first release was made on December 8, 2011.

EmberJS supports two-way data binding with MVVM(Model-view-viewmodel) architectural pattern.

Apple Inc. is one of the notable player that uses Ember.JS as onr of the JavaScript framework for their web development tasks. Some of the other big names that use ember are linkedin, playstation etc.

EmberJS: Few More Points

Some more features of EmberJS are listed as below,

• Other than being considered as a framework, ember can also be used to build desktop and mobile applications as well.
• It uses routes as a core-feature for managing URLs.(like “vue-router” in Vue.JS).
• Its debugger is “Ember Inspector”. Currently it is available as an extension for Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome. Debugging actually becomes easier this way.
• It has its own CLI(Command Line Interface) known as Ember CLI. It is the official way to create, build, test, and serve the files that make up an Emberjs app or addon.
• Most Ember apps have the same structure everywhere, which makes it easier to understand the codebase.

Why Do You Need JavaScript Frameworks?

The frameworks are the structural foundation of a bigger component, which means JavaScript is a framework upon which is the base upon which things are built. The JavaScript frameworks can be referred to as flexible templates that offer pre-defined functions which help speed up the process of building an application. This is highly beneficial when designing detailed user interfaces or managing huge amounts of data. Also, you can use the functions already mentioned in the framework to avoid coding everything from the scratch. It can help you save time and effort.

There are different reasons to consider using JavaScript frameworks:

• The framework offers a basic code that you need to start building an application. So you can put more effort into other things as well.
• The framework you select to build a JavaScript application has already been tried and tested by a huge community. Thus it makes these frameworks more reliable than writing code from scratch.
• A hugely accepted framework makes it easier to expand your team with new developers. Since most professionals are familiar with these frameworks.
• You can easily adopt constructive patterns on your app structure with these frameworks.

Bonus Tips: Making Web Development Easy

Whether you are a developer, a freelancer or a student, one thing is for sure that you are actually here because you are looking for ways to build a website or a web app. As we are proceeding towards the end of the article, let me tell you a scenario where you might face a client’s demand that requires more of designing work. In another scenario A student might have incredible ideas in his mind to build a website but is just a beginner.

I would recommend you a very powerful website builder software TemplateToaster, that provides an impressive solution in the above scenarios. Abbreviated as TT with love, it’s a one stop solution to transform all your web development ideas to reality with a set of mere drag and drops, simple steps. So while you grasp the concept of JavaScript Frameworks, what about giving a try on some of your projects, with tools like TemplateToaster.

Conclusion

Clever and smart coding is the key to take-over the other teams in big contests like WebHack. Team WebKnitters had been developing their tools with the help of frameworks in every round. They performed in the smartest way along with less coding. This is the significance of using frameworks in the current industry scenario. So think smart and research new things in your industry. Notably, the best JavaScript framework for your project depends upon the requirements and your proficiency. Consider the features each framework offers while choosing the right JavaScript framework for your project. This will help your team be more productive and also fit the unique needs of development and building applications.