Lightweight Alternatives to React

React js alternatives – Lightweight Alternatives to React

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React js alternatives: React.js is a marvelous JavaScript library that employs Virtual DOM. React is the prime choice of developers when it comes to building single-page applications.

Why do you need an alternative to React.js?

  • Most of the React developers find it challenging to manage the huge library size of the React.js framework. Surely you can not afford to invest in a framework that demands an exquisite memory space.
  • Secondly, React lacks MVC architecture, especially since the View functionality is not managed by its Model and Controller. Hence, you need an alternative React framework, which is view-oriented.
  • React has a steep learning curve, and developers need to invest a lot of time to learn new technology. Project ignition is delayed.
  • Many React.js developers find it hard to grasp the documentation of JSX React. Beginners are never comfortable with this framework.

In this blog, I am recalling and bringing in front of you the list of React.js alternatives that those experts realized in the tech-talk show. Along with the javascript frameworks, I have mentioned the pros and cons of each of the frameworks and their comparison with React.js.

Preact

Alternatives to react: Jason Miller introduced Preact under the open-source MIT license. You can think of Preact as a lightweight alternative to the React library for developing mobile or web applications, and progressive web apps PWA.

Preact Pros

React js alternatives: It is much compact, precise, and lightweight in size (3KB) so your application can perform faster.

  • Preact uses ES6 API, which enables you to uplift your application from React to Preact very easily. You can even adapt it as a library to create fantastic user interfaces for your project.
  • Entrepreneurs can create new projects easily by using the official CLI without the trouble of getting into Babel and Webpack configuration.
  • You can get all the help from the official website examples and Preact documentation to kick-start your application development.
  • Along with all the inspiring features of React, the Preact library also consists of some special features like the LinkedState.

Preact Cons

You do not get the context support.

  • For the stateful functionalities of your application, the createClass function is missing. Preact only allows you to use ES6 class and stateless components.
  • Preact doesn’t care about the React propTypes.
  • The community size is yet to reach the competition with React.
  • Preact lacks innovation and mostly mimics React.

Preact Vs. React

  • API: Not all the React features are present in Preact; it contains only a small part of the React Application Interface functionality.
  • Size: As I mentioned in the beginning, Preact is much lighter than React. React is 5.3 KB, whereas Preact is only 3 KB.
  • Performance: Because of being lightweight, Preact is faster as compared to React applications.

Svelte

React alternatives: Svelte is a free and open-source front-end compiler created by Rich Harris and maintained by the Svelte core team members. Svelte applications do not include framework references.

Svelte Pros

  • The building time is blazing fast when compared to React or even other frameworks. Usage of the rollup plugin as the bundler might be the secret here.
  • Bundle size is smaller and tiny when gzipped when compared to React, and this is a huge plus point. Even with the shopping cart application I built, the initial load time and the duration to render the UI is extremely low, only the chunky images I have added takes some time :).
  • Binding classes and variables are relatively easy, and custom logic is not needed when binding classes.
  • Scoping CSS <style> within the component itself allows flexible styling.
  • Easier to understand and get started when compared to other frameworks as the significant portion of Svelte is plain JavaScript, HTML, and CSS.
  • More straightforward store implementation when compared to React’s context API, granted context API provides more features, and Svelte might be simple enough for common scenarios.

Svelte Cons

  • Svelte won’t listen for reference updates and array mutations, which is a bummer, and developers need to actively lookout for this and make sure arrays are reassigned so the UI will be updated.
  • Usage style for DOM events can also be annoying, as we need to follow Svelte’s specific syntax instead of using the predefined JS syntax. Cannot directly use onClick like in React, but instead, have to use special syntax such as on:click.
  • Svelte is a new and young framework with minimal community support, thereby doesn’t have support for a wide range of plugins and integrations that might be required by a heavy production application. React is a powerful contender here.
  • No additional improvements. Ex- React suspense actively controls your code and how it runs and tries to optimize when the DOM is updated and sometimes even provides automatic loading spinners when waiting for data. These extra features and continued improvements are relatively low in Svelte.
  • Some developers might not prefer using special syntaxes such as #if and #each within their templates and instead would want to use plain JavaScript, which React allows. This might come down to personal preferences.

Svelte Vs. React

Svelte does provide noticeable improvements in certain features when compared to React. But it may not still be significant or large enough to replace React completely. React is still robust and broadly adopted. Svelte has quite some catching up to do. But concept-wise, the compiling approach taken by Svelte has proven that virtual DOM diffing isn’t the only approach to build fast reactive applications, and a good enough compiler can get the same job done as well as it gets.

Vanilla JS

Vanilla JS is nothing but plain JS without any external libraries or frameworks. Using this we can build powerful and cross-platform applications.

The major differences

Since there are so many ways to write vanilla JS, it can be difficult to pin down a list of differences that applies to 100% of apps. But here we’ll define some key differences that apply to many plain JS apps that are written without a framework.

Those differences are:

  • How the user interface is first created
  • How functionality is split up across the app
  • How data is stored on the browser
  • How the UI is updated

Is Vanilla JS worth over React

Vanilla JS is awesome but it’s not a great alternative when it comes to building huge applications with complex dynamic functionalities. Besides, it cannot create complex and efficient UIs. So if you have an app that changes frequently and drastically with thousands of pages, it is better to use a modern Javascript framework.

On the other hand, React which allows us to use reusable components and is capable of keeping the UI in sync with the state can definitely solve this problem.