Top 5 Front End Technologies in 2019

What is front end development?

Front end development is a convergence of programming and design that powers the visuals and interactions of the web. This is the method of managing everything that users visually see first in their browser or application i.e. user interface and user experience.

Front end developers are responsible for altering  the look and feel of a site. It is also known as client side web development.

The challenge with front end development is that the tools and techniques used to create a visual experience (front end) of the website change frequently so the developers need to be always aware of such new developments.

So, what enables a front developer to create a seamless user interface and user experience?

A front end developer develops websites using web technologies such as HTML, CSS, JavaScript, ReactJS and so on.

Let's see the top 5 front end technologies used in 2019;

HTML5

It is a revision of HTML, the new standard. HTML4 being introduced back in 1997 had a lot of limitations and needed additional plugins such as flash to provide more than simple text and images.

Finally, HTML5 was introduced and adopted by World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) in 2007. HTML5 is the backbone of all websites. It is the only Markup Language used to construct webpages.

CSS3

CSS3 is the latest release of Cascading Style Sheet. It is the third level in the CSS’s progression. It has added various new features to help developers solve problems which arose when using previous CSS version.

Top new features of CSS3:
- selectors
- rounded corners
- border image
- box/text shadow
- Image Values and Replaced Content
- Multiple Column Layout

JavaScript

JavaScript is the only language supported by web browsers. Due to this reason alone JavaScript has gained much popularity.

JavaScript is a dynamic, weakly typed client-side scripting language. We don't have to declare what types of variables we create, and the structure of the language lets you manipulate it to act like a procedural or class-based language.

Also, JavaScript is based on ECMAScript. ECMAScript is standardized JavaScript. A standard guarantee that your code will run fine on all platforms that implement the same standard.

When JavaScript was created implementation was distinct in different browsers, which led to the problem of cross browser compatibility.

To overcome this problem, ECMA International was provided with the task of standardizing JavaScript. Hence the name ECMAScript.

ReactJS

ReactJS is a front-end, JavaScript library developed by Facebook.

According to ReactJS documentation, “React is a JavaScript library for building user interfaces”. And it is exactly what it says it is. React makes it painless to create interactive UIs.

React is used for handling the view layer for web and mobile applications.

It allows users to create reusable UI components. It is currently one of the most popular JavaScript libraries because  it is fast, scalable, and simple.

Using React users can effeciently update and render just the right components when the data changes.

React allows front end developers to create large web applications which can change data, without reloading the page. It works only on user interfaces in application. This corresponds to view in the MVC template. It can be used with a combination of other JavaScript libraries or frameworks, such as Angular JS in MVC.

AngularJS

AngularJS is a front-end, JavaScript framework developed by Google.

Angular is a platform for building mobile and desktop web applications. Unlike ReactJS, AngularJS is a framework, meaning everything you need to develop, and application is packed and shipped with Angular JS. This is both beneficial and disadvantageous for developers because on the one hand it establishes a standard to follow for developers and on the other hand it is restrictive.

Another of its restrictions is the use of Typescript. Angular is written in Typescript.

What is Typescript? You ask. TypeScript is a superset of JavaScript which primarily provides optional static typing, classes and interfaces.

One of the big benefits is to enable IDEs to provide a richer environment for spotting common errors as you type the code.

TypeScript is a strongly typed, object oriented, compiled language. It was designed by Anders Hejlsberg (designer of C#) at Microsoft. TypeScript is both a language and a set of tools. TypeScript is a typed superset of JavaScript compiled to JavaScript. In other words, TypeScript is JavaScript plus some additional features.

In conclusion the front-end development world, presently, hinges on JavaScript libraries/frameworks. These libraries/frameworks leverage existing technologies such as JavaScript, HTML and CSS and allow development of better UI and UX.