Top Features and Benefits of Using React JS for Web Development

The technology for frontend development has been evolving almost continuously, with new tools, frameworks, and libraries being launched nearly every day.

The plethora of options is indeed making it difficult for marketers and entrepreneurs to choose.

One of the most popular front-end development frameworks today is React JS.

What is React JS?

It is an efficient, flexible, and open-source JavaScript library, that was developed and is maintained by Facebook. It is capable of rendering front-ends of web apps that are simple, speedy, and scalable.

A survey conducted by Stack Overflow concluded that React is, in fact, the most popular framework for frontend development, ranking at No.1. 

More than 220,000 websites today use React; Apple, BBC, Paypal, and Netflix are some of the international giants who make use of this platform for their apps.

ALSO READ: Angular vs React

What Are The Major Features of React?

Before we look at why it is so popular, let us check out the React JS features properly. This will help us to understand how React JS works.

1. Virtual DOM

This characteristic of React helps to speed up the app development process and offers flexibility. The algorithm facilitates the replication of a web page in React’s virtual memory.

The original DOM is thereby represented by a virtual DOM.

Whenever the app is modified or updated, the entire UI is rendered again by the virtual DOM, by updating the components that have been modified. This reduces the time and cost taken for development.

2. JavaScript XML or JSX

It is a markup syntax that describes the appearance of the interface of the app. It makes the syntax just like HTML and is used to create React components by developers.

JSX is one of the best features of React JS as it makes it super easy for developers to write the building blocks.

3. React Native

Uses native, rather than web components to facilitate native React JS development for Android and iOS.

Basically, this feature transforms React code to render it compatible with iOS or Android platforms and provides access to their native features. 

4. One-Way Data Binding

This means that React uses a flow of data that is unidirectional, forcing developers to use the callback feature to edit components, and preventing them from editing them directly.

The controlling of data flow from a single point is achieved with a JS app architecture component called Flux. It actually affords developers better control over the app and makes it more flexible and effective.

5. Declarative UI

This feature makes React code more readable and easier to fix bugs. React JS is the best platform to develop UIs that are both exciting and engaging not just for web apps, but mobile apps as well.

6. Component Based Architecture

This simply means that the user interface of an app based on React JS is made up of several components, with each of them having its particular logic, written in JS.

Due to this, developers can relay the data across the app without the DOM being impacted. React JS components play a huge part in deciding the app visuals and interactions.

ALSO READ: Website Architecture Design

After this React JS introduction, I think you would have at least a basic understanding of this platform. Let’s move further to the pros and cons of this platform.

Advantages of React JS

The main reason for the immense popularity of this platform is that there are many benefits of react js:

1. Short Learning Curve

In comparison with other frameworks, React JS is very easy to learn, pushing it up the popularity charts; this allows developers to complete their projects in record time.

Businesses can be up and running online in minimal time.

2. Enables Building Rich UI

The UI of an app is extremely important nowadays; an app with a great UI that offers an exciting browsing and shopping experience to users definitely has much better chances of succeeding than one with a poor interface.

You can easily develop engaging interfaces with superior quality using React JS – chiefly due to the declarative components feature.

ALSO READ: Art of Drafting the Best UI/UX Design

3. Facilitates Creation of Custom Components

This is perhaps one of the biggest benefits of using react js.

JSX enables the creation of unique components to suit your requirements; they accept HTML coding and eases the rendering of sub-components.

It also facilitates the development of apps that are high volume, and helps to create React Element trees from HTML mockups.

4. It Boosts Developer Productivity

Thanks to the feature of reusing components, enables developers to redistribute the same digital objects.

Therefore, even with frequent updates or modification of components that usually impact others, in React it does not become problematic for developers.

Developers can just add text fields, buttons, or other simple elements and in the next stage, place them in wrapper components, and eventually to the root element.

The advantage here is that it offers improved maintenance and growth of the code since every React component has a unique internal logic that can be easily operated.

5. Quick Rendering

You need to define the app structure at the outset if you are developing a complex, high-load application.

It is here that the virtual DOM feature becomes valuable; the DOM structure is like a tree.

This means that a small edit made at a top-level layer can hit the app UI hard. Thanks to virtual DOM, all changes can be first tested in it to determine the risk level with every modification before finalizing it.

This way, developers can guarantee superior UX and high performance of the app.

6. SEO-Friendly

For any app to do well, it is important that search engines like it; two factors are critical for apps: fast load time and rendering. If both these boxes are ticked, your app will rank higher on Google result pages.

The super-fast rendering feature of React brings down the load time of the page drastically, enabling businesses to get their apps ranked on the first page of Google search.

7. Helpful Developer Toolset

Facebook has included several developer tools for React and Chrome in the react js framework, and they help developers immensely in discovering parent and child components, observe their hierarchies, and examine their present state, and so on.

Through self-learning, developers will be able to use the emerging technologies in actual, live, projects.

8. Enhanced Code Stability

The downward data flow in React Js ensures that the parent structure is not impacted by changes made to the child structure.

To change an object, the developer only has to edit its states and make appropriate modifications; in this manner, only a particular component will be updated while the others remain unchanged.

Consequently, there is better stability of code, and the app performance is very smooth as well.

9. Robust Community Support

There are innumerable React developers and who upload text and video tutorials online, answer queries on various forums and QA sites, and so on. They contribute towards improving the framework and making it even easier for other developers.

ALSO READ: Pros and Cons of using WordPress with ReactJS

Disadvantages of React JS

Just like with every platform or framework, in spite of its numerous benefits, React JS does have some disadvantages.

Fortunately, they are very few in number. They are:

• Lack of adequate documentation – in spite of there being a large community of React users and developers, there is a need for more documentation.
• Only covers User interface – it is not possible to develop the entire application using only react js; we need to use other languages as well.
• High pace – the development of applications based in React is very fast, and it can put a lot of pressure on the developer.
• Migrating data from React Js can be time consuming and cumbersome; if you are unsure about the app’s future, you may have to go in a different direction for your frontend framework.
• Setting up React can take more time than other popular frameworks like Vue

When to Use React JS?

Now that we have read about React JS basics, its pros and cons, let us move ahead and see what is React JS used for.

While it’s not exactly a one-size-fits-all solution, there are plenty of react js use cases.

This framework is especially ideal for:

• User friendly, fast, and responsive single page applications
• Creating interactive elements within any UI
• To develop components for high-volume, high performing apps
• Developing quick loading web apps
• Creating mobile apps in native platform
• Ensuring stable and steady coding
• Creating apps that are SEO friendly
• Making scalable apps where you may need to frequently add new features

Why Choose React JS for Web Development?

We have already seen the humungous advantages offered by React JS, and those are the very reasons why you should choose react js for developing web apps and mobile applications. Let’s do a quick recap of those benefits:

• It’s easy to learn
• You can create engaging interfaces
• You can build custom components as per your requirements
• Components can be reused
• It has stable code
• The development time is also quite fast
• The user community is large and supportive
• Facebook has provided ample tools for developers
• It enhances the productivity of developers
• Apps developed with React JS can load in a short time
• It is SEO friendly

Conclusion

React is a JavaScript-based front-end development framework that offers immense benefits to developers as well as business owners – small wonder then, that this framework shot to popularity rapidly, and is the hot favourite today.

Using this tool, one can develop a mobile app or web app that is fast, engaging, and user friendly. Win-win for everyone.