React JS is a free, open-source JavaScript framework developed and managed by Facebook (now Meta), used mainly for developing single-page applications. Its popularity among developers can be attributed to its simplicity and efficiency in creating interactive user interfaces.
Since its inception in 2013, it has been a game-changer in web development. Each subsequent library release has brought significant improvements and new functionalities that have changed how modern websites are built.
Many times customers reached us asking about development with React js, because of the high performance, components reusability and all of these amazing features it gives many projects. But we all know, that besides the power of React.js, it’s the additional tech stack that brings strength to the project. Of course, if it’s chosen well, according to its nature and the business requirements we need to fulfil. Today we will share the best React js tech stack that we suggest for most of the projects. The final choice depends on the customer’s internal tooling, business preferences and project types, but still – here’s something we recommend, so you can use it as a guide through the best choices.
This is where React JS stands out. Developed by Facebook, React has become the go-to library for building smooth, scalable user interfaces. Its component-based architecture and intelligent diffing algorithm streamline front-end development, even as complexity rises.
In this blog, we will get into the top benefits and explore 13 compelling reasons why React could be the perfect choice for your next web project. By the end, you’ll have a clear understanding of its strengths to help decide if it aligns with your needs.
React.js has been a popular JavaScript library for building user interfaces since its release in 2013. Over the years, it has evolved and grown in popularity among developers due to its simplicity, flexibility, and high performance. As we look toward the future, it’s important to consider the React trends and developments that will shape the React.js development landscape in the years to come. In this blog, we’ll explore the top React trends to look out for in React.js development in 2024. Whether you’re a seasoned React.js developer or just getting started, these React.js trends will have a significant impact on your work and help you stay ahead of the curve. From new features and tools to emerging design patterns, there’s a lot to look forward to in the world of React.js development. So, let’s dive in and explore what the future holds for this powerful and versatile library.
What is React?
React is basically a JavaScript library built and maintained by Facebook. According to the creator of React JS, Jordan Walke, React is an efficient, declarative, and flexible open-source JavaScript library for building simple, fast, and scalable frontends of web applications.
Ever since its launch, it has taken the front-end development space by storm.
React.js is a JavaScript library created by Facebook that allows developers to create user interfaces for web and mobile applications. It is a component-based library, meaning developers can build complex user interfaces by combining individual components. React popularity has grown exponentially in recent years due to its ease of use and scalability, making it the preferred choice for many web development projects. With its efficient data binding, component reusability, and virtual DOM capabilities, React makes it easy for developers to create interactive user experiences with minimal coding effort. The wide range of third-party libraries available for React also makes it an attractive option for developers looking to extend their applications’ functionalities quickly and easily.
React is a JavaScript library developed by Facebook for building user interfaces. Since its release in May 2013, React has gained significant popularity among developers, with weekly downloads reaching millions. Primarily designed for single-page applications, React simplifies the process of creating dynamic and interactive user interfaces.
The foundation of React lies in its component-based architecture. This approach allows developers to build reusable UI components that can be combined to create complex user interfaces. Whether you’re building a small web app or a large-scale application, React’s components offer a modular and maintainable way to manage your codebase.
Key Takeaways
- React is a JavaScript library ideal for building dynamic user interfaces through its component-based architecture, enabling code reusability and maintainability.
- The virtual DOM feature of React significantly enhances application performance by optimizing rendering speed and minimizing direct DOM manipulations.
- With strong community support and a rich ecosystem, React provides developers with resources, tools, and best practices that facilitate efficient web development.
Top React Trends
1. React Native:
React Native is a popular open-source mobile app development framework based on React.js. It allows developers to build native mobile apps for both iOS and Android platforms using a single codebase. With the increasing demand for mobile apps, React Native is becoming more popular among developers.
React 19 introduced an experimental compiler to transform React code into JavaScript which boosts performance greatly. Earlier, React could only be run in the browser. Additionally, there was no compile step.
Now, the compiler automatically manages component rendering for the user interface state change, eliminating the need for developers to do so manually. With this, the use of Callback () and Memo () method calls are no longer needed. Instead, the compiler memoizes and optimizes the components as required, removing the need for hooks.
2. Serverless Architecture:
Serverless architecture is gaining popularity in React.js development as it provides a cost-effective and scalable way to develop applications. It allows developers to build and run applications without worrying about server infrastructure, which reduces costs and development time.
3. Static Site Generators:
Static site generators like Gatsby, Next.js, and Nuxt.js are becoming popular in React.js development as they offer faster page loads, improved SEO, and better user experience. They are ideal for building websites that require a fast and reliable experience.
4. Component-Based Design Systems:
Component-based design systems are becoming increasingly popular in React.js development as they offer a modular and scalable approach to designing and building user interfaces. They allow developers to reuse code and design patterns across projects, which saves time and improves consistency.
5. Functional Programming:
Functional programming is gaining popularity in React.js development as it offers a simpler and more efficient way to write code. It allows developers to write cleaner and more maintainable code, which reduces errors and improves overall application performance.
6. Machine Learning:
Machine learning is being integrated with React.js development to create intelligent and personalized applications. It allows developers to create applications that can learn and adapt to user behavior, providing a better user experience.
7. Redux:
Redux is a popular state management library for React applications. It provides a centralized store for managing the state and allows for easy sharing of the state between components.
8. Performance optimizations:
As React.js applications continue to grow in size and complexity, developers are increasingly focused on improving performance. Techniques like code splitting, lazy loading, and memorization can all help to improve the speed and efficiency of React applications.
9. TypeScript:
TypeScript is a popular superset of JavaScript that adds static typing and other features to the language. Many React developers are adopting TypeScript to help catch errors earlier and improve the maintainability of their code.
In conclusion, React.js development is constantly evolving with new trends and technologies emerging. Developers should stay up-to-date with the latest updates and trends to create better and more innovative applications.
10. ESLint Plugin:
React now offers an official ESLint plugin that ensures your code adheres to best practices and maintains consistency. This plugin helps catch common mistakes and encourages coding practices that enhance code quality and maintainability. It’s a valuable addition for teams striving to produce high-quality React applications.
11. Suspense for Data Fetching:
React Suspense for Data Fetching simplifies the management of asynchronous data fetching, reshaping how we handle loading states and rendering. This feature provides a unified way to handle asynchronous data fetching and error handling, reducing boilerplate code and ensuring that your applications display loading states gracefully. Suspense offers better control over UI rendering while data is being fetched, thus enhancing the user experience.
12. JSX Advancements:
JSX, the declarative syntax used in React, has also received some notable improvements in 2024. Features like conditional rendering without ternaries and enhanced support for fragments make writing JSX more concise, expressive, and readable. These improvements simplify component composition and contribute to cleaner codebases.
13. Concurrent Mode:
Arguably the most anticipated addition to React in 2024 is Concurrent Mode. This groundbreaking feature is all about making React applications more responsive and maintaining a seamless user experience, even when dealing with resource-intensive tasks. Concurrent Mode enables React to work concurrently on multiple tasks, prioritizing user interactions and rendering updates. This avoids UI freezes, resulting in improved performance and an overall smoother user experience.
14. Enhanced Developer Tools:
React’s commitment to improving developer tools will continue in 2024. The updated tools offer an even more streamlined debugging and profiling experience, helping developers identify and rectify performance bottlenecks efficiently. With these improved insights, developers can reduce debugging time, leading to faster development cycles and better-optimized applications.
15. GraphQL Integration:
GraphQL, a query language for APIs, is gaining widespread popularity, and its integration with React.js is set to become a prominent trend in 2024. This combination allows developers to efficiently fetch and manage data, resulting in faster and more optimized applications. The synergy between React.js and GraphQL is expected to simplify data fetching and provide more flexibility in building modern web applications.
16. State Management Evolution:
State management has always been a crucial aspect of React.js development. In 2024, we can expect an evolution in state management libraries and patterns. Innovations in this area will focus on simplifying state management, making it more intuitive, and optimizing performance. Developers can look forward to more streamlined solutions that cater to the specific needs of their applications.
17. WebAssembly and React:
WebAssembly (Wasm) allows developers to run code written in languages like C and C++ in web browsers at near-native speeds. In 2024, the integration of WebAssembly with React.js is expected to open up new possibilities for performance optimization. This combination will empower developers to build more complex and resource-intensive applications directly in the browser.
18. Micro Frontends Architecture:
In 2024, the adoption of micro frontends, an architectural approach that extends the microservices concept to the frontend, is expected to gain momentum in the React.js ecosystem. This trend involves breaking down large monolithic frontend applications into smaller, more manageable parts, each developed independently. This approach enhances scalability, promotes team autonomy, and facilitates easier maintenance and updates.
19. JAMstack Integration:
As the popularity of the JAMstack architecture rises, React.js is likely to be at the forefront of its integration. JAMstack, which stands for JavaScript, APIs, and Markup, offers a modern approach to web development by decoupling the front end and backend. React’s component-based structure aligns seamlessly with the principles of JAMstack, enabling developers to build faster, more secure, and scalable web applications.
20. Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) with React:
With the increasing interest in augmented reality and virtual reality applications, React.js is anticipated to play a significant role in this space. Developers can expect improved support for building immersive user interfaces and experiences. React 360, a framework for building VR applications, may see enhancements, making it more accessible for developers to create captivating AR and VR applications using familiar React patterns.
21. Real-time Features with React:
The demand for real-time features, such as live updates, notifications, and collaborative editing, continues to grow. In 2024, React.js is likely to see improvements in supporting real-time functionality. This trend will enable developers to build applications that provide users with dynamic and up-to-the-minute information, enhancing user engagement and overall user experience.
22. Enhanced Mobile Development Support:
While React Native has been a popular choice for mobile app development, React.js itself is expected to receive enhanced support for building mobile-friendly web applications. With an increasing number of users accessing the internet through mobile devices, React.js developers will have tools and features that streamline the process of creating responsive and performant mobile web applications.
23. Focus on Accessibility:
Accessibility has always been a crucial aspect of web development, and in 2024, it will be a major focus in React.js development. With an increasing awareness of the importance of inclusive design, developers will prioritize creating applications that are accessible to users of all abilities. React.js libraries and frameworks are likely to incorporate more features and tools that make it easier for developers to build applications that adhere to accessibility standards.
24. React and Web 3.0:
Web 3.0, the idea of a more decentralized and intelligent internet, is an emerging concept. As this vision takes shape, React could be a key player in building user interfaces and applications that leverage the principles of Web 3.0, such as decentralization, blockchain, and semantic web technologies.
25. React and Quantum Computing:
While still in its early stages, quantum computing has the potential to revolutionize various industries by solving complex problems more efficiently. As this technology progresses, we may see React developers exploring ways to incorporate quantum computing capabilities into their applications.
26. React and Edge Computing:
Edge computing, which involves processing data closer to the source (e.g., on IoT devices or edge servers), will gain momentum. React could play a role in building user interfaces and applications that leverage edge computing for improved performance and efficiency.
27. React and Jamstack:
The Jamstack (JavaScript, APIs, and Markup) architecture, which combines React (or other front-end frameworks) with serverless functions and static site generation, will continue to gain traction as a modern approach to building fast, secure, and scalable web applications.
28. React and Voice Interfaces:
With the rise of voice assistants and voice-enabled devices, we’ll see more React applications incorporating voice interfaces. This could lead to innovative new ways of interacting with web applications using natural language.
29. Atomic Design with React:
The concept of Atomic Design, which involves breaking down user interfaces into reusable components, has gained popularity in recent years. React’s component-based architecture makes it a natural fit for this design methodology, and we’ll see more developers embracing Atomic Design principles.
30. Suspense for Data Fetching:
React 18 introduced the experimental Suspense feature for handling asynchronous data fetching more elegantly. As this feature matures, we’ll see it become a standard approach for building data-driven React applications.
31. Micro Front-Ends:
As web applications grow more complex, the concept of micro front-ends (breaking up a monolithic front-end into smaller, composable pieces) will gain traction. React’s modular nature makes it well-suited for this architectural pattern.
Key Improvements
1. Asset Loading
React 19 also comes with improvements in asset loading. Files load in the background while you navigate the current page, shortening wait times, minimizing disruptions, and ensuring smoother transitions, enhancing the overall browsing experience.
It estimates when content is ready for display and removes ‘unstyled’ flickering. Additionally, the latest update brings new resource loading APIs, such as preload and preinit, offering users more control over when resources load and start.
2. Server Components
React 19 offers a big improvement in server components. It allows for components to be rendered in advance in a different environment from the client application. This could be done either at build time or per request to enhance the flexibility and performance of server-side rendering (SSR).
3. Document Metadata Management
As discussed in the features section, the upgrade simplifies SEO-sensitive component management within React components, reducing reliance on external libraries and improving efficiency in single-page applications.
React for front-end development
1. Speed
React basically allows developers to utilize individual parts of their application on both the client-side and the server-side, which ultimately boosts the speed of the React development process.
In simple terms, different developers can write individual parts and all changes made won’t cause the logic of the application.
2. Flexibility
Compared to other frontend frameworks, the React code is easier to maintain and is flexible due to its modular structure. This flexibility, in turn, saves a huge amount of time and cost for businesses.
3. Performance
React JS was designed to provide high performance in mind. The core of the framework offers a virtual DOM program and server-side rendering, which makes complex apps run extremely fast.
4. Usability
Deploying React is fairly easy to accomplish if you have some basic knowledge of JavaScript.
In fact, an expert JavaScript developer can easily learn all the ins and outs of the React framework in a matter of a day or two.
5. Reusable Components
One of the main benefits of using React JS is its potential to reuse components. It saves time for developers as they don’t have to write various codes for the same features. Furthermore, if any changes are made in any particular part, it will not affect other parts of the application.
6. Mobile app development
If you thought React is for web development only, you could not be more wrong! Facebook has already upgraded the framework for developing mobile native applications for both Android & iOS platforms.
Lazy Loading Images in React
Your application would contain several images. When a user opens a page, images are one of the heaviest elements on the page. So, it takes time for each of them to load completely. The images are displayed on the user screen only after DOM renders all the images together. This can slow down the performance of your app.
We can solve this problem by implementing Lazy loading, a technique that loads the image only when it appears on the user’s screen. This prevents the creation of unnecessary DOM nodes, which helps boost the performance of your React application.
Reduce Unnecessary Renders
Another reason why your app may slow down or become unresponsive is due to unnecessary re-renders. One method to reduce the number of rendering operations in your app is to use a Pure Component. The shouldComponentUpdate method is managed automatically here, providing a considerable boost to the React performance.
Spreading Props on DOM Elements
Unknown HTML attributes are added to the DOM elements when properties are spread into DOM elements. That is why the implementation of such should be eliminated.
const MessageText = props => { return ( <MessageLabel {…props}> {props.message} </MessageLabel> ); };
As an alternate solution to spreading props in DOM, you can set some specific attributes:
const MessageText = props => { return ( <MessageLabel specificAttr={props.specificAttr}> {props.message} </MessageLabel> ); };
Server-Side Rendering
Server-side rendering is beneficial as it helps deliver the viewable content more quickly compared to client-side rendering in the application. Although leveraging SSR improves the SEO and react app performance. There are also some downsides to it, like high setup costs and complex code.
If your app is data-intensive, SSR might eventually become one of the React performance issues for your React app. Though there are many good servers like NodeJS out there that can fulfill your requirements, NextJS is an ideal choice when it comes to server-side rendering. It helps save time in setting up the SSR and improves the loading speed.
Dependency Optimization
Your app would have a few dependencies, that need to be checked to determine how much code comes from them. It helps optimize your app’s bundle size.
For instance, developers provide multi-language support in their app with MomentJS. But if this support is not actively utilized, then you can remove it from your final bundle by utilizing the moment-locales-webpack-plugin.
Memoize React Components
Memoization is one of the best React performance optimization techniques that stores the result of an expensive function call and returns a cached result. So whenever the same execution is requested, this technique ensures the speed of the functions is optimized, instead of recomputing the logic.
At a component level, there are two ways to optimize the React apps.
- By using function components: The overall bundle size can be reduced by using function components to prevent the construction of class instances.
- By using PureComponent: When you convert the function components to the PureComponent class, UI updates are optimized. React PureComponents are used to compare the values in the primitive data types and object references. While utilizing the React PureComponent, make sure these two criteria are met:
- Component State/Props are immutable object;
- State/Props should not have a multi-level nested object.
Avoid Inline Function
Using the render method to define functions can lead to unnecessary renders. As a result, your app performance degrades. When React does a reality check, the inline function always fails the prop diff when the functions in JavaScript are objects ({} !== {}). If used in a JSX property, a new instance would be created by the arrow function on every render. As a result, the garbage collector would have more clutter.
React has become a preferred choice for web development due to its numerous benefits. One of the standout features is its fast and efficient framework, which is capable of handling high user traffic—a crucial requirement for modern web applications. The virtual DOM significantly reduces the time and complexity involved in manipulating the actual DOM, leading to faster rendering and improved performance.
Besides performance, React offers a flexible and modular architecture that promotes reusability and maintainability. This makes it easier for developers to manage large and complex applications.
