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Those features cover design, development, testing and maintenance stages. The best front-end frameworks simplify and advance the development process at the same time. It should provide flexibility for further achievements whereas the customer receives excellent UX and UI. As for the development team, look for the framework that is comfortable to work with. Top front-end frameworks are always easy to maintain and test. Regular updates are must-have due to the rapidly changing demands of the market, new security threats, and versions of technologies.

List of the Content

WHAT IS THE MARKET SHARE OF UI FRAMEWORKS IN 2019-2021?

When the new JavaScipt framework appears, it is always designed with some specific goals in mind. Thus we can observe the competitive market that is full of varieties and choices. At the same time, we faced the problem that many front-end technologies sharply increased their popularity and in a short time came across the moderate decline of developers’ interest. The market of UI frameworks anticipates those trends as the new ones constantly develop and take the leading positions.

At the same time, we can observe Vue.js as a new strong contender for the “older” JavaScript frameworks.

3 TOP FRONT-END FRAMEWORKS IN 2021

React

React is the front-end framework created and developed by Facebook. The team was interested in obtaining high performance by building an effective UI. Jordan Walke proposed to create the library based on XHP and JavaScript combination in 2011. As a result, they received the library to build the web interface with JavaScript where the news update happens at the same time while customers use the chat. Facebook released the open-source JavaScript tool in 2013. They continued the framework development and released React Native for Android and iOS in 2015.

React is characterized by the following number of pros and just a few cons:

React’s advantages

Virtual DOM improves both the experience of the user and the work of the developer – Virtual DOM helps to update any user’s changes without the other parts’ interference by applying isolated components. It greatly helps to smooth the experience of all participants in real time mode.

Saving time while re-using React components – React deals with isolated components, that’s why you can reuse them anytime you need. System upgrades will not impact or change your system.

An open-source library with a variety of tools – All updates are released to the community. React has had the open-source library and engineers can introduce the additional tools.

React’s disadvantages

Relatively long learning curve – It is unlikely to learn it in one day. It just requires a little bit more time to be aware of all the details than for example with Angular.

Lack of documentation due to high pace development – The popularity of this web front-end framework is extremely higher than other ones. It has so many updates and innovations, that sometimes it is hard to find all detailed information.

Vue.js

Vue.js is the web framework for building user interfaces. It is an independent tool that creates web interfaces and doesn’t require the additional extension. Vue.js was created by Evan You and initially released in February 2014. Probably you might not find the long list of big companies using Vue.js but it is definitely popular among developers and the framework popularity considerably increases.

As for the list of Vue.js’ pros and cons, let’s take a quick overview:

Vue.js’ advantages

Clarity and simplicity – This front-end framework has the smallest API surface area. It is quite easy to start not only learning but using it in a short time.

Detailed and extensive documentation – You can find all the necessary documentation which is up-to-date and well-written. Also, there is always a community of developers who can share their knowledge with you.

Simple integration and code reusability – Due to its logical structure, the user interface developers have the ability to create flexible components and reuse them later, even in the other projects.

Browser devtools extensions – As mentioned above, Vue.js doesn’t demand any extra libraries, but it owns browser devtools extensions. Thus you can change separate components manually when it is needed.

Vue.js’ disadvantages

Too much flexibility leads to the code irregularities – Some experts have brought up the point that a lot of flexibility is not too good. All web front-end engineers can contribute to its development, so it might cause certain irregularities

Smaller developers’ community – It is a relatively new and constantly improving framework. Vue.js is mostly supported by the individual developers but their user community fastly increases.

Angular

Angular or Angular v2 or Angular 2+ is a complete rewrite of AngularJS by the same team in Google who developed the original front-end framework in 2010. It was released in September of 2016 as a completely new framework with new logic and features to address the challenges of web development as we know it today. Even the naming called a hot discussion in the development community, and it is needless to say that the complete absence of backward compatibility with AngularJS caused a huge controversy. Those who trusted Google and Angular community weren’t able to just upgrade their application to the new Google front-end framework version to get all the new trendy dev tools and features. The app should be rewritten from scratch with Angular.

When making your own choice, it is important to check its pros and cons:

Advantages of Angular

Component-based architecture of Angular allows creating the UI with single parts (components) and reuse these components in the app. The elements also simplify user testing and maintenance.

TypeScript is the core language for Angular and it does compile to JavaScript, making the coding process easier for many engineers due to its improved navigation, and refactoring services.

High Performance – the Angular Universal Support helps render the apps on a server, and Google has already created the set of tools for this particular purpose. High performance is also predetermined by the Google Long – Term Support (LTS) maintaining the Angular ecosystem and developing it.

Angular Material streamlines Material Design interface engineering – Angular team is constantly refreshing its framework with material design components.

Disadvantages of Angular

Transferring legacy systems from AngularJS to Angular – the difference between AngularJS and Angular is huge, thus it takes a lot of time and effort to migrate the legacy systems.

Angular Complexity – despite the web-based structure, it is quite difficult to manage the components: e.g the devs need to have several files for one Angular component as well as maintain the elements’ lifecycle interfaces.

Learning difficulty – the junior developers have to cover the bundle of things while learning Angular such as components, modules, dependency injection, and many other things.

WHAT UI FRAMEWORKS WILL BE THE MOST
POPULAR IN THE NEXT COUPLE OF YEARS?

Analyzing the market share of JavaScript frameworks, the top three have been the same for the last few years. React, Angular and Vue.js have gained their popularity and continue increasing it. Each of the top front-end frameworks has a large community. They provide their supporters with the available learning resources, regular updates, and the latest innovations. We should admit that they do their best to keep their leading positions and succeed in it so far.

WHAT’S NEW IN 2021

Along with the current trends, it is worth paying attention to the fast-growing projects. After monitoring the market situation, we can’t forget to mention Flutter as one of the fastest-growing open-source frameworks. It is known that Flutter was initially released in 2015 as the framework for the Android developers. For the three following years, the Flutter team inside Google was working on support for both mobile platforms. And finally, they released the first official version Flutter 1.0 for iOS and Android in December 2018. This framework has been greatly supported by the community for good performance and detailed UI.

Advantages of Flutter

Open source – Being open to the community has resulted in many achievements. The Flutter team offers great support whereas the early adopters are encouraged to contribute the code, report bugs, and fixes and take part in various programs.

Same code – building a single application across various platforms will always remain a distinct functionality. The programming language Dart offers toolchain options for Intel, ARM, and JavaScript that enables compilation to almost any platform.

Detailed documentation – The Flutter for web support is just in beta whereas the developers can find extensive documentation, various samples, and real showcases.

Plugins availability – This allows developers to get access to other native JS libraries. All the packages are available on the official website and can be checked for web support.

Disadvantages of Flutter

Still developing – We never know what might be the next development step. Both the Flutter team and the community have made a lot of progress and come across impressive results. In the future, they have plans for numerous updates and improvements.

Much testing – Evolving from the mobile framework, it requires a lot of testing. The testing workload is increased since it should be tested and supported in different browsers.

IS THAT POSSIBLE TO CHOOSE THE BEST FRONT-
END FRAMEWORK?

Definitely, yes. It goes without saying, React will be the best choice here. This is not just the current trend, this web front-end framework is universal. It is constantly growing and not diminishing its popularity for the last few years. This JavaScript framework is easy to work and maintain. React has the one-direction data flow when Angular provides two-way data binding and Vue.js has both of them where one-way binding is the default state. React is supported by community and developers due to the vast choice of modules and libraries. You can deal not only with the state management but the side effects as well. React is offering excellent backward compatibility when for example only Angular 4 has got long support versions. Regarding the file size, React stands at 43K, Vue.js – 23k and Angular – 143k.

IN CONCLUSION

Taking about the top front-end frameworks in 2021, we can reach the conclusion that the market is represented by a great variety. And what’s more important, the user interface engineers have the possibility to choose from top innovating ones. The JavaScript UI frameworks such as React, Angular, and Vue.js have gained their top positions at the market share. They are greatly supported by the community and chosen for their distinctive features and flexibility. Regarding the best front-end framework, we have a definite leader – React. As long as you decide to go with it, you will certainly optimize the development efforts while web performance will greatly increase. Considering React for your next project, another benefit to receive is that you will have no problem to find its developers.