Creating the perfect user experience on your websites, web apps and mobile apps is a great part of your product. At this point, front-end frameworks and libraries come into play. React, specifically, ReactJS is a web development tool that will reduce your development time. Its reusability plays a great role in helping you create a responsive user interface.
It is considered to be the most popular JavaScript library nowadays and is established in 2011 by Jordan Walke, a Facebook software engineer at the time. Facebook’s newsfeed used it first, afterward picked up by Instagram and it continued to evolve. In May 2013, Facebook chose to open-source it. It is still used by many web developers as the best JavaScript UI library for maintaining views.
Before react, web development revolved around rendering and scripting. HTML and CSS ruled the front-end development and PHP the back-end. You could put some static pages in folders and render them with PHP. It allowed you to establish the connection with the client with Server-Side Rendering (SSR). But ReactJS introduced so many component-based revolutions we never saw coming. In this article, we will talk about why React is so preferred, how you can use it, and its benefits.
Effects of React on Web Development
1) Easier to Learn
Unlike Angular and Vue, React is an elementary and lightweight library. Because it focuses only on the view layer of a web page, it has an easy learning curve. Just a basic understanding of programming is enough to get you started working with React.
2) Offers Reusable Components
Reusability allows the developer to spend less effort on greater results. Its components are independent pieces of code. Each can be reused in other parts of your code.
This reusability results in:
- Easier time with upgrades: System upgrades with reusable components often cause problems, because each affects the others! With react, one can isolate all components while reusable. Changing one of them doesn’t distort the rest.
- Wrapper components: You can keep on creating wrapper components using the already existing ones. In the end, you will have your application.
3) Debugging and Error-checking
Here, we need a little definition of something called a prop. A prop is an information inherited from a parent component in React. It cannot be modified by the child components due to the unidirectional flow of data React has. For this, it uses one side data binding and flux, an app designer that handles data flow from a single point.
4) Large Community Support
You can always have access to a large community of helpful experts to ask your questions. ReactJS has around 189k stars on Github. Approximately 38.9k active contributors provide more and more resources for creating a more robust fronted framework. Furthermore, you can find tons of tutorials for React from experts if you want to join the ranks of ReactJS developers.
5) Virtual DOMs
The Document Object Model (DOM) is a common interface for accessing, updating, and manipulating the style, structure, and contents of documents. A browser maintains a DOM tree for every HTML page. This DOM tree is based on the parent-child relationship between the components.
If a change occurs in the HTML code, the DOM tree has to be rendered again. This consumes a lot of power and time. Here, ReactJS introduces Virtual DOMs by creating a copy of the DOM. With each change, it examines the Virtual DOM and finds the nodes and components that need to be updated, then the most efficient method of making these modifications on the real DOM. This ensures high update speed and results in improved performance as well as a better user experience overall.
6) JSX
JSX (JavaScript XML) is a syntax extension for Javascript, developed by Meta. It removes the need for separate HTML and JS codes, extending the functionalities of HTML structures into JavaScript. Along with the Virtual DOM, JSX increases the performance and efficiency of your ReactJS apps. Other libraries and frameworks can use its flexible ecosystem as well.
The browser does not understand JSX so, JSX code creates HTML code while interpreting. Both users and JavaScript developers get a user-friendly platform.
7) Redux and Data Consistency
Redux is an open-source JavaScript library used alongside React by users. It contains the state of the application, considered to be a source of information for all components. When it gets difficult to manage each React component due to the big size of your web application or mobile applications, let’s say, Redux is there for you. It helps in updating and maintaining the state of each and every component of your application. With this central store, all components can directly access all the required data.
8) React Hooks
Similar to Redux, Hooks works to optimize problems in the React library. It enables JavaScript developers to manage state logic between components and share data with components without props. It is not a replacement for Redux as they focus on different problems. Developer tools such as the one React-Redux hooks API help you use both together.
The Great Functionality of React
Below are some use cases of React apps.
Single Page Applications
If you are developing Single Page Applications (SPAs), react is the best among javascript frameworks. You don’t have to refresh the page for it to update the content on your web page.
React Native
React Native is an open-source UI software framework initially released in 2015. It is used by development teams for Android, iOS, macOS, tvOS, Web, Windows, and UWP. It enables React to be used with native platform capabilities during application development.
“Newspaper agency New York Times, streaming service Netflix, and Customer relation system SalesForce also use ReactJS for the development of their mobile app.”
When Do You Use React?
“As we have seen, React JS is a very flexible, multi-purpose library. With the wide variety of features it offers, it can sometimes get a little tricky to comprehend when to use it. Airbnb and Uber started using React once Facebook released it in 2013. Cloud service Dropbox and news reporting channel BBC all use React in their websites and web and mobile apps.”
SPAs
Single-page applications (SPAs) work by rewriting the existing web pages with new data from the web server, instead of opening a new page. They keep repetitive templates such as the menu section and update only the desired content. This way, user interaction benefits from quicker transitions. It shows the expert handling of React when it comes to the data flow.
Dynamic Websites
ReactJS is the best solution for dynamic web frameworks as well. Usage of the virtual DOM mentioned above enables this quality.
Mobile Apps
Once again, React Native. With Native, you can be creative with mobile app development. Native apps work like web apps but have a native feel.
Server-Side Rendering
With React, you can use JavaScript code on both the client and the server side. This way, server-side rendering gets a lot faster and easier.
SEO friendly websites
Next.JS is an option that comes with React. Dynamic websites may get slow if rendered previously, but you can make a few SEO-friendly tweaks like pre-rendering. NextJS helps you achieve this.
Conclusion
Using ReactJS in your projects helps you with easy transitions and allows you to provide better user experiences. But it also eases the toll of development on your part. With its great community of experts, online resources, and APIs, there is no reason to not use React.
Find React Experts!
React came in as an extremely fluid and flexible library for so many developmental hassles. It provided plenty of resources. But if you need more, further resources are easily available for you with Gini Talent. We can help you find the best talents for your projects, swiftly help you find the experts needed for your React webpages, and many more. Just contact us now and let us help you with the specifics of your project.
