10 Most Popular JavaScript Frameworks 2020 For Developers

JavaScript Frameworks is an application framework which is written in javascript. It is a collection of JavaScript code libraries. JavaScript Framework is used to design application. It is very difficult to choose a framework among the most popular JavaScript framework for any project. So it is very important to know that the top javascript framework and features of that particular JavaScript Framework. In this article, we show Top 10 JavaScript frameworks with features and their pros and cons.

1- ANGULAR JS

• Angular JS is an open source framework built over JavaScript. It was built by the developers at Google. This framework was used to overcome the obstacles encountered while working with Single Page applications.

• AngularJS was born in 2009 as a component of a more immensely colossal commercial product, called GetAngular.

• Large organizations like PayPal, Freelancer, LinkedIn, Lego, Hopscotch and several others are powering their UIs by AngularJS.

• Angular makes it easier to work with dynamic rendering with its JSON based processing and rendering capabilities.

• Angular has been developed with the vision of making it modular, testable and maintainable.
  The latest version of Angular JS is 1.7.8

Features

• Dependency Injection – js has built-in dependency injection (DI) that helps natural development, understanding, and testing.

• Data-binding – The two-way data-binding feature saves developers from writing a lot of code. It is the automatic synchronization of data between model and view components.

• It can be configured in MVC as well as MVW architecture.

• Services − are a set of code that can be shared by different components of an application.

• Directives – With this feature, it becomes easy to create custom HTML tags that act like new custom widgets. It can also be used to manipulate DOM attributes.

PROS OF ANGULAR.JS

• Two-way data binding -AngularJS facilitates faster and easier data binding which doesn’t require a developer to intervene at all.

• DOM manipulation -the developer saves time and efforts to code, translate and update the DOM elements.

• Improved server performance -it only serves static files and responds to the API calls.

• Responsive web – AngularJS makes it possible by letting responsive, fast-loading and seamlessly -navigating websites and apps.

• Use of directives -AngularJS makes use of directives that keep the scripts and HTML pages mess-free and extremely organized.

CONS OF ANGULAR.JS

• Difficult learning – you may have to face great difficulty in getting adapted to the framework.

• The scopes -Quite layered and arranged hierarchically, scopes can be complex entities to handle if it is your first experience with Angular.

• Inexperience with MVC -If you are completely unfamiliar with the Model-View-Controller architectural patterns, using Angular can be extremely time-consuming.

Blog: Angular Blog

Getting Started: Angular JS

2- NODE.JS

• Node.js is an open source, a cross-platform runtime environment for executing JavaScript code outside of a browser.

• It is used for building back-end services or APIs and developing server-side and networking applications.

• It is a platform which is built on Google Chrome’s JavaScript Engine (V8 Engine).

• Node.js was originally written by Ryan Dahl in 2009.

• Node.js is developed by Joyent Inc.

• The latest version of Node.js is 12.2.0.

• It is used by companies like Uber, PayPal, and Walmart which is a mirror to its global acceptance as a back-end language.

• The applications built on Node, are written in JavaScript which can be run within the Node.js runtime on OS like Microsoft Windows, Linux as well as MacOS.

FEATURES

• The applications in Node never buffer any data. This is because the applications output the data in chunks.

• Node uses single-threaded models which consist of event looping. This event mechanism helps servers to respond in an asynchronous way that makes the servers highly scalable.

• Same code for client-side and server-side

• Node technology helps in streaming data from different sources and can be used to proxy some servers.

• The APIs of the Node’s library is asynchronous which means that the server doesn’t wait for an API to return data; thus rendering the data asynchronously giving a faster response to every request.

PROS OF NODE.JS

• Share the same piece of code with both server and client side.

• better efficiency and overall developer productivity

• it also serves as a marketplace for open source JavaScript tools, which plays an important role in the advance of this technology.

CONS OF NODE.JS

• Dealing with the relational database is a pain if you are using Node.

• Node.js is a single-threaded environment, which is often considered a serious drawback of the technology

• Without diving in depth of JavaScript, if someone starts Node, he may face a conceptual problem.

Getting Started: Node.js 12.2.0

3- REACT

• React is an open-source JavaScript most popular framework which is used by Facebook, Instagram and much more.

• React is maintained by Facebook, Instagram and a community of individual developers and corporations, and aims to address the challenges encountered in developing single-page applications.

• React was created by Jordan Walke, a software engineer at Facebook.

• Latest React version is 16.8.4

• React is mainly used for the V (view) in the MVC model since the UI can be updated without having to reach out to the server and fetch a new view.

Features

• Components – React is declarative and component based. The web pages are divided into small components to create UIs.

• Data binding – One-way data binding along with an application infrastructure called Flux controls. Flux is a pattern that keeps data unidirectional.

• Maintaining React is easy and straightforward due to its component-based architecture and reusability of the defined components.

• React can be used on the server-side as well as on client-side.

• You can use React with other frameworks.

• Maintaining React is easy and straightforward due to its component-based architecture.

• JSX – JSX is a javascript extension which indicates that the script needs to be processed and converted to actual javascript.

PROS OF REACT.JS

• React is the ability to reuse code components of a different level anytime, another meaningful time-saving effect.

• Virtual DOM in ReactJS makes the user experience better and the developer’s work faster.

• Stable code – ReactJS allows for direct work with components and uses downward data binding to ensure that changes in child structures don’t affect their parents.

• An open-source Facebook library – constantly developing and open to the community.

CONS OF REACT.JS

• JSX as a barrier – Developers and designers complain about JSX’s complexity and consequent steep learning curve.

• Poor documentation – developers struggle with integrating tools with ReactJS.

Blog: React Js Blog

Getting Started React Js

4- VUE.JS

• Vue.js is a lightweight progressive JS framework which gets a lot of its concepts from ReactJS and AngularJS.

• Vue.js is a JavaScript front-end framework that was built to organize and simplify web development.

• Vue was created by Evan You.

• It is easy to integrate into other applications and languages. For example, Vue.js bundles with Laravel and couples nicely with it to create frontends for Laravel applications.

• Vue uses an HTML-based templating syntax, allowing developers to write components quickly and easily.

• Vue has an incredibly small file size, making it easy to include in projects without creating a slowdown.

• The latest version of Vue.js is 2.6.8

Features

• Easy to understand and develop

• Transitions – Vue allows the application of transition effects when items are inserted, removed or updated from the DOM.

• Reactivity – Vue has a robust reactivity system.

• It consists of a clear separation between the components and directives.

• Vue proves to be more flexible and modular front-end development framework.

PROS OF VUE.JS

• Flexibility -This flexibility makes it easy to switch to Vue because developers who have experience with React, Angular and JS framework would find Vue’s design very familiar.

• Small Size – it should be noted that the Vue.js ecosystem is also small and fast.

• The advantage with Vue.js is that it enables the development of large-scale templates.

• Vue.js useful both for building entire single page applications and for contributing components into existing apps.

• For a beginner to write their first application, they just have to know some basic Javascript and HTML.

CONS OF VUE.JS

• Sometimes flexibility can cause some issues for the developers.

• Language Barrier – A Majority of the users are non-English speaking communities which are perhaps one of the biggest issues with this framework.

• Vue doesn’t yet have the widespread support of its fellow frameworks as it is not as popular as other frameworks like Angular.js.

Getting Started: Vue.js

5- EMBER

• Ember.js is an open-source client-side JavaScript web application framework predicated on the model-view-controller (MVC) software architectural pattern.

• Ember’s roots go way back to 2007. Starting its life as the SproutCore MVC framework, pristinely developed by SproutIt and later by Apple, it was forked in 2011 by Yehuda Katz, a core contributor to the popular jQuery and Ruby on Rails projects.

• It’s used for TinderBox, Netflix, Apple Music, Yahoo!, LinkedIn, PlayStation Now, and Vine.

• A complete development stack can be formed by using Ember and other important tools.

• Handlebars layout and Ember’s backend architecture allows writing developers own application-specific HTML tag.

• Ember has been a highly opinionated framework which was built to be very flexible.

• The Ember Inspector allows for easy inspection of Ember objects in your browser’s developer tools. This can be used both while developing and while debugging issues.

• The latest version of Ember is 3.8.0

Features

• Excellent data library.

• Ember’sCLI provides standard application structure.

• Ember works on the Model-view-view model (MVVM) pattern.

• Inspector tool is useful for debugging applications.

PROS OF EMBER.JS

• High performance

• Faster development due to Ember CLI

• Understandable documentation

• Two-way data binding

• Well-organized

• Own debugging tool (Ember Inspector).

CONS OF EMBER.JS

• Smaller community and the extensive amount of outdated tutorials on the web

• Due to a helper function, two-way data binding is more complex.

• Too big for small projects

• Complications with processing quick changes

• Difficult to learn
  Blog: Ember.js

Getting Started: Ember.js

6- BACKBONE.JS

• Backbone.js is a lightweight MVC framework. Born in 2010, it expeditiously grew popular as a lean alternative to cumbersomely hefty, full-featured MVC frameworks such as ExtJS.

• Backbone.js is developed by Jeremy Ashkenas.

• This resulted in many accommodations adopting it, including Pinterest, Sony Entertainment Network, Flixster, Airbnb, SoundCloud, and others.

• Backbone.js gives structure to web applications by providing models with key-value binding and custom events, accumulations with an affluent API of enumerable functions, views with declarative event handling, and connects it all to your subsisting API over a RESTful JSON interface.

• The latest version is 1.4.0.

FEATURES

• RESTful JSON interface – Backbone is a framework/ library that has a RESTful JSON interface, based on the Model-view-presenter (MVP) application model.

• Event-driven communication between views and models prevents the code from being hard to read.

• Models in Backbone.js can be tied to a back-end since Backbone provides excellent support for RESTful APIs.

• In case of any changes in a model, the HTML code is automatically updated.

• It is a simple library that separates UI and business logic.

PROS OF BACKBONE.JS

• Backbone gives you a lot more control over performance, particularly in mobile scenarios.

• Easy, fast and lightweight framework so very easy to understand the documentation and codes.

CONS OF BACKBONE.JS

• The biggest drawback of Backbone is that, instead of providing structure, it provides some basic tools to create structure. So, somewhere you have to depend on developers to decide how to structure the application.

• To update the view whenever your model changes, and to update the model whenever your view changes, you have to write a lot of boilerplate, because of lack of support for two-way data binding.

Getting Started: Backbone.js

7- POLYMER

• Polymer.js is the open-source JavaScript library for building web applications using Web components.

• It was the very first library to allow interactive building applications by composing components.

• Polymer.js is built to leverage the features that are present in the web platform to let developers build components.

• Polymer.js is being used by YouTube, Google Play Music and Netflix, to name a few.

• Polymer.js is considered to be one of the best to work with Spring Boot REST resources when compared to other JS frameworks.

• Version 3.0 of the Polymer library brings web components into the mainstream, embracing JavaScript modules and npm.

• The latest version is 3.2.0.

FEATURES

• Speed – It is three times faster in Chrome and four times faster on Safari.

• Polymer.js is built on top of the web standards API which allows building custom HTML elements

• Both one-way and two-way data binding is possible with this library.

• The web component standards are helpful in the creation of usable widgets in web documentation and application.

• Polymer elements consist of designs and themes which mean prevents developers from modifying complex web page source code to match the designer’s need.

PROS OF POLYMER.JS

• Quick -The Polymer is a new library which is three times faster on Chrome, four times faster on Safari.

• Developers use Polymer elements which include design and themes, which means there is no need to modify complex Web page source code to match designer specifications.

• Polymer.js provides new functionality such as Shadow DOM which enables the encapsulation of CSS.

CONS OF POLYMER.JS

• Dependency errors and pointing to a different version of dependencies.

• Downloading of entire library and Polyfills.

• Lack of server-side rendering.

Blog: Polymer.js Blog

Getting Started: Polymer 3.0

8- METEOR

• Meteor is a full-stack framework, which allows developers to learn one tool, and use it for almost everything in their application.

• It also makes it an exciting proposition for new developers who are aiming at full-stack positions or projects, as they can get productive faster with Meteor.

• Meteor uses a front-end JavaScript that runs on the browser and back-end on meteor server within Node.js.
  The latest version of Meteor is 1.8.

• Meteor is developed by Meteor Development Group.

• Companies like Mazda, Honeywell, and Qualcomm use Meteor.

FEATURES

• Meteor provides a full-stack solution for developing and using web applications.

• Highly scalable and beginner friendly.

• Easy to set up and start creating projects.

• It allows using the same code on the front-end as well as the back-end for mobile and web applications.

• Integrated live reloading allows refreshing only the required DOM elements without reloading the entire page.

PROS OF METEOR.JS

• Simplicity – Coding is very simple and beginner friendly.

• Official and community packages are a huge time saver.

• Velocity is the name of the Meteor’s testing tool. In addition to its core functions, Velocity enables integration with Mocha or Jasmine syntax.

CONS OF METEOR.JS

• There is a lot of magic going on when working with Meteor, so developers might find themselves limited in some way.

• Deployment and tool integration is not as simple as some other platforms.

• Meteor isn’t very suitable for large and complex applications.

Blog: Meteor Blog

Getting Started: Meteor.js

9- MITHRIL.JS

• Mithril is used for creating single-page applications on the client-side.

• It supports all the browsers like IE9 without the requirement of any polyfills.

• It is tiny, fast, provides routing and XHR utilities.

• Mithril has in-built modules for XHR and routing while React needs third parties for the same along with a lot of memory usage.

• Mithril is known to be pragmatic since it is straightforward to learn components, routing and XHR in less than 15 minutes to start building applications.

• Mithril is currently being used by companies like Nike and Fitbit and other open source platforms like Liches.

FEATURES

• It is Flux compatible, robust and un-opinionated

• Mithril templates are just JavaScript so that developers can test them in any JavaScript engine without a build step.

• In Mithril.js, components are created with an optional controller and a required view property.

• Mithril gives hierarchical MVC components, URL routing, safe-by-default templates, customizable data binding.

PROS OF MITHRIL.JS

• Easy to learn

• Mithril’s loading times are very fast. This is because it’s templates are compiled first and then served to the browser and because it uses a virtual DOM.

• Mithril gives to the developer the flexibility to chose the best JavaScript library to use for a specific task.

• Mithril’s API is pretty small compared to other frameworks.

CONS OF MITHRIL.JS

• Mithril isn’t recognized much, it often has a head to head competition with other JavaScript frameworks.

Getting Started: Mithril.js 1.1.6

10- AURELIA

• Aurelia is called as the “next-gen UI framework” written in ECMAScript.

• Aurelia is a collection of open source modern JavaScript modules.

• Aurelia is a JavaScript client framework for the web, mobile, and desktop that leverages simple conventions to empower your creativity.

• Aurelia is the only framework that lets you build components with plain, vanilla JavaScript/TypeScript. The framework stays out of your way so your code remains clean and easy to evolve over time.

-Aurelia provides a CLI for generating and building projects, a browser plugin for debugging and a VS Code plugin as well.

FEATURES

• Routing and UI Composition – Helps in using an advanced client-side router with its pluggable pipeline, child routers, and asynchronous screen activation.

• HTML Extensible

• Aurelia integrates with Web Components with no external dependencies.

• Aurelia supports ES5, ES2015, ES2016 and TypeScript.

• Testable for ES2015 using DI container. Unit code testing is very simplified.

PROS OF AURELIA.JS

• The framework itself is directed towards web standards so you will always stay up to date with modern concepts.

• it is very agile, knowledgeable and willing to help within short notice.

• It is directed towards the developers’ experience. It saves you lots of time.

• You can add or remove any tools that the framework offers and you can also add any other tools that aren’t part of the framework.

• It has a simple structure which makes the framework quicker and easier to learn.

• It is easy and quick to configure and set it up for use.

CONS OF AURELIA.JS

• There are no major limitations.

Blog: Aurelia.js

Getting Started: Aurelia.js.

Thanks for reading !

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