Explore the Latest Front-End Technology List for 2023 and Enhance Your Development Skills

Building front-end applications require developers to combine HTML that sets the basic layout of a webpage with CSS to manage visual formatting and JavaScript to add interactivity to the page. While it is possible to develop front-end projects from scratch, writing each functionality and setting the whole layout line by line is not efficient and, in 2022 it is not required. 

Frameworks and libraries are software packages that are prewritten/reusable code modules which can be imported into a project. These standardized front-end technologies help front-end developers accelerate the development process without spending copious time coding every object or function from scratch.

 This article lists some front-end frameworks and libraries that every developer must be familiar with.

CSS pre/post-processing

Basic CSS is limited to just styling the elements that we develop in HTML, but modern applications are more complex. The pre and post-processing capability of CSS allows front-end developers to dynamically execute the code like other programming languages.

Sass and LESS are two pre-processing extensions of CSS that allow front-end developers to use loops, variables, and functions within CSS. This extended functionality helps to use logic within styling to visualize content differently as per the requirement. 

Post-processing is used when you’ve already coded in plain CSS and want to extend its functionality afterward through automation. Some common post-processing activities include extending class selectors and auto-appending prefixes. PostCSS is a framework that can be used for post-processing CSS.

JavaScript is the web language that is estimated to be used by over 90% of websites. Therefore, front-end developers can greatly benefit from knowing JavaScript frameworks.

React.js

React.js or React is an open-source JavaScript front-end framework that was created at Facebook to support its exponential growth. It is widely used for applications and websites that handle high traffic without compromising user experience. React has selective rendering, due to which there is a significant performance boost. Once you master React.js, you no longer have to waste time recalculating page layout to fix performance issues. With lifecycle methods like componentDidMount, React can execute code at specific points during an entity’s lifetime, saving resources and boosting performance.

jQuery

A classic JavaScript library, jQuery is still one of the essential front-end libraries to master. It is lightweight, fast, and feature-rich. This makes it easier to carry out HTML document manipulation, traversal, and assists with animation, event handling, and Ajax.

As of 2021, around 77.6% of all websites use jQuery, so it is a sound front-end library for developers to learn. One of the reasons why developers prefer jQuery is its small size. The library is just 30 kb to gzip or minify.

After these two JavaScript frameworks, there are several other JavaScript frameworks you can explore, like Node.js, Angular, and D3.js.

Component libraries 

A component library is a tool that allows front-end developers to scale their projects fast. From Netflix to Uber, many companies leverage these front-end libraries to design speedy systems and show impressive growth.

Unless you are working on an enterprise project with specific needs, you seldom have to look over component libraries to build applications and websites faster. For instance, when you are working on a webpage, you do not have to set the columns and rows to adjust the position of elements one at a time. 

You can use Bootstrap, which uses built-in components to position elements on a web page. For almost any functionality, there are component libraries available to use out of the box. However, you must ensure that you are not simply importing the component libraries and using them with the same look and feel. This will make your website look too similar to other websites using the same component libraries. Instead, use these front-end libraries to maintain features. 

Some important component libraries for front-end developers are: 

Bootstrap

MUI

Chakra UI

Single-page application (SPA) frameworks and libraries

When working on single-page applications, you might not need all the functionalities of a framework but limited components from it. You can count on SPA front-end libraries and frameworks for such development requirements. 

Some important examples of SPA JavaScript frameworks to understand are Vue, Next, and Svelte.

SPA routing libraries are also important. These front-end libraries include the page routing functionality to the project when it is missing in a SPA framework. Svelte SPA Router, React Router and React Navigation are some notable routing libraries.

Finally, if you are building an application that requires scalability beyond the scope of conventional front-end frameworks, third-party SPA state management libraries can help. Redux, Hookstate, and NgRx are some important state management libraries.

Conclusion 

Innovation in software development results from combining technical skills with productivity tools to deliver results faster, by automating much of the time-consuming tasks. The front-end libraries and frameworks listed here can help developers accelerate project development and scale at speed. This should serve as a great reference guide to get you started.

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