A website or any application contains two parts, frontend and backend. It is necessary to have strong backend services and frameworks to use in order to maintain the site’s availability and to manage the traffic load that might occur during certain scenarios. Creating interactive and good user interfaces is important and can be easily done using React and its popular frameworks. In this article, we will discuss the best ReactJS frameworks to use as a developer.
One of the famous applications of ReactJS is Instagram. Features like geolocations, Google Maps APIs, and tags that pop up without hashtags are all very impressive implementations of ReactJS. Even the makers of React, Facebook also use React for their webpage, and the mobile version is made using one of its famous frameworks called React native.
What is React?
React.Js is an open-source Javascript library used to create user interface (UI). It was developed by Facebook. It helps create reusable UI components and uses virtual DOM to improve app performance. It can be used with both client and server sides and is easily integrated with other front-end frameworks. Its component-based approach, reusability, developer tools, and performance optimization make it a great choice for developers.
To learn more, refer to this article: React.js Introduction
What are UI Frameworks?
UI frameworks are collections of pre-built components, libraries, and other elements. These components are reusable for web application development and are ready-to-use like buttons, links, forms, lists, etc.
The following reasons make the React UI Frameworks very popular among developers
- Fast Development: The pre-built components save time and effort and result in faster development.
- Consistent design: Since all components are designed in a similar pattern it helps create a more consistent and cohesive design.
- Theming System: The component’s appearance and behaviour are highly customisable thus proving a strong theming system.
- Cross-platform Compatibility: Using all browser-compatible components ensures that your application is also compatible cross-platform.
7 Best React.js Frameworks
React.js is a widely used library of JavaScript for frontend development, that uses components to make the UI more interactive and help the developers in making the process more simple. To further optimise the complex part of react, developers have made frameworks that have pre-build function which are commonly used. So, Following are the best react.js Frameworks that each developer should know and implement in their projects:
1. React Native
React Native is a React.js framework developed by Facebook used to create native mobile-based applications for both Android and iOS using a common language Javascript. It requires prior knowledge of HTML, CSS, JS and Node.js as it uses Node as to build the Javascript code.
To learn more, refer to this article: Introduction to React Native
Features
- Live Reload: React native does not require manual reload at every change in code. You see two windows side by side one of which contains the code you are working on and the other shows the live changes made to your UI as you code.
- Reusable Components: React Native Component Library provides versatile options of components to choose from. The reusability of react components provides consistency, cross-platform accessibility and higher speed.
- Cross-platform Functionality: A single code can be used for both Android and iOS. Every developer prefers this functionality to reduce coding time for various platforms.
- Migration: Migrate your code from React Native to AndroidX. Thus, since React Native 0.60 every app built using React Native can be run using AndroidX.
Installation
npm install -g react-native-cli
2. Next.js
Next.js is a React.js framework developed by Vercel. It has unique features as compared to other frameworks like server-side rendering and enhanced search engine optimization. It provides a built-in routing feature giving it an edge over React. Prior knowledge of HTML, CS, JS and React is required before learning Next.js.
To learn more, refer to this article: Next.js
Features
- Hot Code Reloading: As soon as any changes are saved in your code, they will reflect in your user interface automatically.
- Server Rendering: The next.js rendering feature enables you to render react components to the server side first before sending it to the HTML client which helps enhance SEO.
- Automatic Routing: For any project the files in the page directory are automatically mapped and do not require additional coding for routing.
- Prefetching: The link component used to link various pages together supports prefetching of the resources in the background.
Installation
- Install Node.js
- In your project folder –
npm init -y
npx create-next-app@latest
or
yarn create next-app
or
pnpm create next-app
3. Storybook
Storybook is a javascript tool used to create UI components making both the coding and documentation part easier and efficient. Once a component is built, you create a story containing various use cases of that component. It is advised to write one story per component and write stories for each type of component.
To learn more, refer to this article: Storybook
Features
- Component Development and Testing: Storybook provides isolated component development and virtual testing of these components.
- Support: It has built-in Typescript support.
- Integration with React components: It is easily integrated with React applications and the ecosystem can be expanded using add-ons.
- UI Creation: Helps create a clean and visually appealing UI and is compatible with most front-end frameworks.
Installation
npx storybook@latest init
Run the setup wizard.
Start Storybook –
npm run storybook
4. Material UI
Material UI is a UI framework built over the React library. It contains predefined components that can be used to create react applications easily and efficiently. It was designed by Google and works with Angular.js and Vue.js. The customizable inbuilt components provided by Material UI make it a developer’s choice.
To learn more, refer to this article: Material UI
Features
- Fast Loading: Material UI components are faster loading than components offered by other frameworks.
- Highly Customizable: The templates provided in Material UI are customizable and require minimum to no coding experience.
- Easy Backend Integration: Material UI provides easy integration to the backend making it one of the best deals for UI framework choice.
- Highly Responsive: The components provided are highly responsive and can adapt to various screen sizes easily.
Installation
npm install @mui/material @emotion/react @emotion/styled
or
yarn add @mui/material @emotion/react @emotion/styled
or
pnpm add @mui/material @emotion/react @emotion/styled
5. Gatsby
Gatsby is a UI framework for React used to create static web applications. It is built on top of React.js and Node.js thus knowledge of HTML, CSS, React and Node is required. It helps develop fast-loading and high-performance static web applications that can render data from multiple sources. It has a great data plugin ecosystem and allows users to directly fetch data into a Gatsby application using GraphQL.
To learn more, refer to this article: Gatsby
Features
- Fast Load: Gatzby ensures faster load time and shorter response time by loading only the critical parts first to load the site as fast as possible. Later it prefetches the resources for other pages that are linked to the loaded page.
- Automatic Routing: it provides automatic routing based on the structure of the directory of the application without having to code the routes.
- Data Combining from various data sources: It has a unified data layer where you can access and render data from multiple sources onto the web application.
- Performance: The build process is optimized to give higher performance by code splitting, inlining critical assets and smart preloading.
Installation
npm install --global gatsby-cli
6. Semantic UI React
Semantic UI is a UI framework for React applications that uses CSS and jQuery to build UI. It is similar to Bootstrap and is used for theming. It contains pre-built components that can be customised as per the developer’s need. It can be integrated with many frameworks like React, Angular etc.
To learn more, refer to this article: Semantic UI React
Features
- Responsive UI: Semantic UI is designed with em and rem to achieve responsiveness.
- Simple: Semantic UI is very beginner-friendly and area also easily debuggable.
- Tag agnostic: The interface definitions are tag agnostic mostly. Tags like div, article, section and span can be used without affecting the display of the element.
- Customizable UI Components: Semantic UI provides high-level theming by site-wide defaults for all the components. But these components are also individually customizable.
- Cross-browser Compatibility: The framework also ensures cross-browser compatibility.
Installation
Use either of the following methods:
- Default Installation using package manager –
npm install semantic-ui-react semantic-ui-css
or
yarn add semantic-ui-react semantic-ui-css
Import the minified CSS file into the entry file –
import 'semantic-ui-css/semantic.min.css';
- Use CDN by adding the following in the body tag of your HTML page.
<body>
<link async rel="stylesheet" href="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/semantic-ui@2/dist/semantic.min.css"/>
<script src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/semantic-ui-react/dist/umd/semantic-ui-react.min.js"></script>
</body>
7. React Bootstrap
React Bootstrap is a UI framework where the capabilities and features of both Bootstrap(CSS framework for responsive front-end development) and React can be used together. Using this package, you can combine the HTML and CSS-based design templates and elements to the React functionality.
Features
- Buillt-in Components: The pre-built components can be used directly onto your website without the load of coding the entire front end.
- Cross-browser Compatibility: The components offered are compatible across all browsers giving users a consistent experience.
- Easy Integration with Other Libraries: react Bootstrap can be easily integrated with other React libraries like Redux.
Installation
npm install bootstrap
Conclusion
The task of choosing the right framework involves understanding various frameworks. Thus, knowing about multiple frameworks helps the developer choose among the best frameworks available and the use case of the project. But the framework list for react.js continues. There are a lot more frameworks that a developer need to explore themselves to increase their knowledge and understanding and to become a professional React developer. The process of creating your own frontend starts with a full research of the available frameworks and then choosing the one that seems fit, learn the one by following tutorials and develop your frontend.
FAQs on Best React.js Frameworks
1. What are the best frameworks for React.js?
The best frameworks for React.js are React Native, Next.js, Storybook, Material UI, Gatsby, Semantic UI React and React Bootstrap.
2. Is React.js a tool or a framework?
React.js is a Javascript library used to build websites and can be easily integrated with the backend. It has a framework Create React App that is used to build web applications.
3. Why to use a React.js framework?
React.js framework can be used to build SEO-friendly websites and websites containing a consistent theme or complex UI.
