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December 18, 2018

3 Popular JavaScript Libraries and Frameworks to Consider

App Development & Integration

December 18, 2018

3 Popular JavaScript Libraries and Frameworks to Consider

JavaScript is one of the best languages for creating web applications. There are many great options for JavaScript libraries and it’s hard to know what to choose. Which JavaScript Library is best? They all have similar attributes and a few areas in which they excel. We’ll talk about a few of the more popular ones and their various features.

Before we launch into the various libraries, it’s important to keep a few things in mind. When comparing JavaScript libraries, you need to ask yourself some questions.

  • Is it flexible enough to meet your changing needs?
  • Is it secure?
  • Is it consistently updated?
  • Does it have a supportive community to help?
  • Does it offer examples or easy-to-use documentation?


With those questions in mind, let’s examine three of the most popular JavaScript libraries and/or frameworks for 2018.

 

React

React is a JavaScript library that is open sourced. It is excellent for creating large web applications with consistently changing data. React is easy to learn thanks to its simplicity in terms of syntax. All you need is HTML writing skills and you can do this.

React has a virtual DOM which displays information quickly and allows for arranging documents in HTML, XHTML, or XML formats into a tree form that is better recognized by web browsers while also parsing different elements of the web app. One of the highlights of React is that it’s declarative; you can tell it what to do without having to tell it how to do it.

There’s also a high level of flexibility and a maximum of responsiveness. It also has downward data binding so that the child elements can’t affect the parent data. It’s very lightweight as the data performing on the user side is easily represented on the server side concurrently.

The 100% open source JavaScript library gets daily updates and enhancements from developers across the globe. Updating to different versions is usually easy with the “codemods” provided by Facebook to automate much of that process.

There are some aspects of React that need improvement. There’s a significant lack of official documentation. The rapid development lends itself toward documentation that is not kept updated and is chaotic. Developers contribute at random without a common process or method. React’s policy of being non-opinionated can lead to developers having too much choice. All of this contributes to React being hard to master, with a need for extensive knowledge and research on how to integrate user interface into MVC framework.

 

Vue

Vue is great for creating sophisticated, single-page applications and highly flexible user interfaces. Vue is empowered by HTML, it has similar characteristics with Angular which can optimize HTML blocks handling with a usage of different components.

Vue is highly adaptable with a quick switching period to other frameworks because of its similarity in design and architecture. It also has great documentation. It’s very detailed and circumstantial which helps quicken the learning curve for developers. You can develop and app with only basic HTML and JavaScript knowledge.

It can be very integrative, working well for both single-page applications as well as complicated web interfaces. There are small interactive parts which can be simply integrated into a current infrastructure without negative effects on the system.

Vue is a lightweight. 20KB can maintain its speed and flexibility, allowing better performance than expected with the ability to create large reusable templates with no extra time.

One area where Vue falls short is its lack of resources. It’s relatively small in the industry, so the knowledge base is slim. Along those same lines, its small status can be a problem when integrating into larger projects as there is so little experience and solutions out there to explore if things go wrong. But that will be fixed in time. It also has a limited amount of its documentation translated into English. This can lead to complications for various stages of development, but this is also something that’s being worked on.

 

Angular

This is the superhero of JavaScript framework. It builds great, highly interactive web applications. It has two-way data binding that enables singular behavior, minimizing the risks of errors.

It has great new features with compilation under three seconds. It’s kept consistently up to date and offers detailed documentation. You can find any information you need without having to reach out to others just from using their documentation. However, you will need to set aside some to read over the education materials provided by this documentation, which can be challenging for time crunched companies.

The MVVM (Model-View-View-Model) enables developers to work with the same set of data on the same application separately. It also offers dependency injection of the features related to the components with modules and modularity in general.

Angular is an overall great choice. But, it does have a couple downsides. Even the updated version of Angular has the complex syntax that’s existed since version one. It has improved with updates but is still difficult. There have also been noted migration issues when moving from one version to a newer one.

Hopefully, these notes on different JavaScript options help spark some thought and discussion on your part! For more information on choosing the right JavaScript library, or any other tech concerns, connect with us at Aspirant.

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Phil is Aspirant's Managing Director of the App Development & Integration practice with a focus on providing enterprise-grade solutions. His 30 years of experience have given him the opportunity to work across many markets, industries, and applications. Phil is leading a team of skilled web and mobile developers building strategic solutions for our customers.

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