Wanted: The Best Front-End Design Tech for the Job

What tools should a developer use to build a front end for their application? This sounds too simple, but use the library or framework that is best suited for what you want to achieve. Only add in other tools as absolutely necessary.

Software developers who want to build an application front end can take many different approaches.

You could choose to use React because it has a short learning curve. It’s not a framework, so it’s more compatible with the front end of a customer who might be using Angular, Ember or no JavaScript framework at all. A developer whose company plans to embed self-service business intelligence within an application might want to use ReactJS as it makes sense to use most stack agnostic front-end technology in this use case.

Try Izenda with your data in a free trial.

Angular and Ember give you more power to design the front end while using fewer extra tools.  Angular, Ember, Aurelia, and other frameworks offer a single point of reference when support is required, rather than having to dig up documentation for each piece when using something like React.  React, along with the mentioned frameworks, offer a robust and active community, however. That is another key component to consider when choosing which front-end development tool to use. A developer can add many other tools such as React Router, or even Flux architecture. But most frameworks (such as Angular or Aurelia) come with built in routers and workflows to help get the job done. A bunch of other tools packaged with React can be used – but they aren’t required.

A developer who wants to build a front end application that won’t be touched by others might pick Angular as the best choice. That keeps control with the developer while not adding a lot of packages.

There is no catchall tool. There’s just whatever tool gets the job done best for you at this moment, in this job. One of our developers told me to treat a framework, library or any other software technology as a tool. If you need a Philips head screwdriver, you’ll grab that tool for the job. If a flathead screwdriver is required, that’s what you’ll use. He advises treating software tools the same way.

A Shallow Dive Into Some of Those Tools

For the non-programmer, ReactJS and AngularJS might sound as if they resemble each other. But that’s just not the truth.

ReactJS is not a framework. Consider that before you delve into designing your front end so you choose the right approach for your project.

The creators of React at Facebook claim creating interactive UIs will be painless if you use it. If you design simple views for each state in your application, React will efficiently update and render the right components when your data changes. And declarative views are supposed to make your code more predictable and easier to debug.

You can use React as just a view inside of your application. By using Angular’s more robust framework to build your application, and then creating views using React, your application should get a speed boost because of React’s use of the “Virtual DOM”. React maintains a fast in-memory representation of the DOM.

Separate components come together to make the Virtual DOM. All of these have pieces that can refresh just like refreshing a browser page. However, these refresh faster than manipulating the entire DOM. What might be a drawback for some people – or at least a slightly steeper learning curve than they want – is getting used to JSX syntax to create your own tags that call a piece of the React code, a module, using this to insert it into the regular function.

Stick within React’s “faked browser world” as much as possible. But if you need to access the underlying API, they’ve included some escape hatches to use the underlying DOM API directly. Perhaps you need to work with jQuery, which directly manipulates it.

React doesn’t force you to conform to any conventions. That’s a plus for some developers and a negative for others.

Ember and Angular work differently. Would those of you who use Ember agree that it’s been made to be simpler, with convention over configuration? Not a lot of time needs to be spent on boilerplate.

React lets you set it up however you want. You can use ECMAScript 5 or 6 syntax. All frameworks now support ECMAScript 6.

Facebook keeps on coming out with new things designed to work with React, probably faster than I can keep up with on this blog. But Angular and the other frameworks have active communities supporting them as well.

There’s more to come on Angular, Aurelia and Ember, but that’s it for today. Share your thoughts and suggestions.

Choose Izenda’s Self-Service BI and Analytics for Seamless Integration

Izenda’s OEM-friendly software lets you obtain maximum value from embedding BI and analytics inside your application. Izenda’s OEM software model supports your brand. Delivering true self-service business intelligence and analytics, our embedded BI platform matches the look, feel and navigation of your application.

Follow Izenda on social media for the latest on technology and business intelligence: