Top Five Most Popular Front-end Frameworks

Introduction

JavaScript is the most trending and popular language among developers as a front-end framework. JavaScript-based, client-side frameworks are usually used to design interactive Web sites because they help programmers design behavior of the Web sites. During the initial days of Web development, JavaScript was used to design beautiful interfaces, add functionalities to Web apps, and to modify Web pages in real time. Now, JavaScript is used on the server side, Web server, and database functionalities as well. Client-side JavaScript frameworks are used to submit data to the server, apply animation effects to page elements, validate user inputs, transmit user behavior on the Web site, and create interactive contents.

In this article, I will explain the present top five most popular front-end frameworks: Angular, React, Backbone, Ember, and Vue.

Angular

AngularJS is a full-featured, open source, JavaScript-based front end framework developed by Google for mobile and desktop application development in MVC. It has become the most popular Web development framework for building large scale Web applications. The AngularJS framework provides a number of features that make it trivial to implement complex requirements such as data binding, routing, and animations.

Angular includes platform-agnostic functions, developed for speed and performance, incredible tooling, simple to use, and excels at building dynamic single page Web apps (SPAs) and supports the Model View Controller (MVC) programming structure.

AngularJS is part of the MEAN (mongoDB, express, AngularJS, and node) Stack; it builds powerful applications such as Gmail. The modularity and code organization of the Angular framework make it great for dividing up large-scale work with a team. Modularity also makes testing and debugging easier. Angular can handle heavy user interaction via forms. AngularJS also works well with the ASP.NET framework and C# language on the back end of a site.

React

React, or ReactJs, is a popular and powerful JavaScript-based front-end framework library maintained by Facebook, Instagram, and their developer communities. React uses server-side rendering (SSR) and provides a flexible, performance-oriented, componentized solution for MVC (Model View Controller) applications. React follows the declarative views methodology that makes the codes simple to understand and easier to debug; a developer can quite easily choose the option to add new features without rewriting the existing code. React offers a simpler programming model with better performance.

A large Web application’s user interfaces can be developed with the React framework. You also can develop mobile applications using React Native. It allows developers to write UI components in JavaScript that compile to native code for iOS and Android.

React has a big community of developers in GitHub and Stack Overflow.

Backbone

BackboneJS, a lightweight JavaScript library, was developed by Jeremy Ashkenas. It allows a person to develop and structure client- side applications that run in a Web browser. Backbone, also known as Backbone.js, is one of the earlier JS frameworks with a RESTful JSON interface which offers MVC framework abstracts data into models. It allows developing applications and the front end in a much easier way by using JavaScript functions. This framework provides various building blocks such as models, views, events, routers, and collections for assembling the client-side Web applications. It has a soft dependency with jQuery and a hard dependency with Underscore.js.

Ember

Ember is an open source JavaScript Web framework for developers to create scalable single page Web apps, desktop, and mobile applications. Apple Music is a notable example of an app built with Ember. Also, some of the most popular Web sites developed using Ember.js are LinkedIn, Microsoft, Netflix, Groupon, Vine, Yahoo, and Twitch. Some of the most important features that make Ember.js stand out from the rest are Ember CLI, Routing, Templating engine, data layer, and Ember inspector. This framework allows developers to use future JavaScript standards. Ember provides a command line interface utility to integrate Ember patterns into the development process and focus easily on a developer’s productivity. Ember.js provides an Inspector tool for debugging Ember applications; it uses templates that help to update the model automatically, if the content of applications gets changed.

Vue

Vue, or Vue.Js, is another a popular JavaScript front-end framework for building user interfaces. Vue is capable of powering dynamic single page applications (SPA). With a basic knowledge of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, any Web developer can use Vue to develop Web applications.

Some of the most complex features that can be implemented using Vue are to build tooling, routing, and perform state management. The Vue core library is focused on the view layer only, and is easy to pick up and integrate with other libraries or existing projects.

Conclusion

JavaScript frameworks are the most preferred when it comes to Rapid Web Application Development. Developers can focus on the previously mentioned, well-known JavaScript frameworks and set a goal to learn them in 2018. But remember, before selecting a front-end framework, consider your skill level as well as the basic requirements of the project. I am sure one of these frameworks will fit in. Happy Reading!

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