11 Best Front-End JavaScript Frameworks For Developers

JavaScript, or JS, along with HTML and CSS, form the basis of almost all web platforms. While developers use HTML templates to structure a web page and CSS for design and layout, it is JavaScript that adds interactive elements to web apps or web pages. Interactive elements are those web components that users can interact with, such as buttons, animations, visualizations, and videos. However, creating different web elements can be time-consuming. As a result, most developers these days use front-end JavaScript frameworks to speed up the web development process.

A JavaScript framework for front-end development provides pre-written JavaScript code libraries for common tasks involved in web app development. It is essentially a collection of tried and tested programming tools for building interactive and scalable web apps.

Today, a wide range of JS frameworks are available, such as Vue, Angular, and React, and deciding which one you should choose can be challenging. We’ve curated a list of the 11 best JS frameworks that you can use for your next project.

What Are Some Of The Best Front-End JavaScript Frameworks?

Sencha

First, Sencha is one of the best front-end JavaScript frameworks for developing enterprise-level apps. It makes creating complex client-side apps quick and easy by providing high-performance pre-built components.

Features

Grid

Sencha offers a high-performance grid that can process large data sets quickly and efficiently. The grid comes with built-in functionalities like grouping, filtering, sorting, infinite scrolling, and more. Moreover, it’s packed with several other useful row and column operations, such as drag-and-drop, expand, reorder, copy-paster, and more.

Try Ext JS grid today and see for yourself all the impressive features that it offers.

BRG

BRG is a high-performance grid for React apps. The powerful grid is powered by Sencha and offers over 100 data grid features that are pre-tested on various platforms and browsers.

Pre-Built Components

Ext JS has 140+ pre-built components, including buttons, menus, carousels, forms, calendars, progress bars, sliders, and more. All of these components are fully tested and work together flawlessly, eliminating the need to write and debug code. Moreover, you can customize the components as per your enterprise’s requirements.

If you want to learn about the JS test framework, check out this article.

Cross-Platform Development

Ext JS enables cross-browser and cross-platform development, allowing you to build highly-functional apps for various platforms using a single codebase. All of its components are tested for cross-browser and cross-platform compatibility.

Highly Secure

While there is a high risk of security breaches with open-source frameworks, Ext JS is highly secure. In fact, many enterprises use Ext JS due to its impressive security.

Read how Kaseware, an investigative platform to combat security threats, utilized Ext JS to achieve maximum security in its application development.

Exporter

Sencha Exporter lets you export all your data from pivot grid or standard grid to different file formats.

D3 Adapter

Ext JS allows you to add data-driven document package (D3) visualizations, such as heatmaps and treemaps, to your web apps. It also offers a wide variety of charts to visualize your data.

Layout System

Sencha Ext JS powerful layout system ensures the proper sizing and positioning of all your components, allowing you to create stunning and functional apps easily.

Detailed Documentation

Ext JS comes with extensive documentation where you can find all the details about its components and features. It also includes helpful coding examples and is a great resource for developers to learn about Ext JS features.

Free Community Edition

With Ext JS Community Edition (completely free to use,) you can try and test the key features of the framework before your purchase license. Ext JS also has a free tool called Stencils, which is a UI asset kit for Adobe Illustrator, Sketch, and Balsamiq.

Sencha Tools

When you purchase Ext JS, you get access to several other helpful Sencha tools, such as:

• Cmd: a command line tool that comes with lifecycle management features, such as code modification, scaffolding, production build generation, etc.
• Sencha Architect: A drag-and-drop builder to create stunning UIs faster.
• Themer: With Themer, Sencha users can create customized web applications using graphical tools without writing any code.
• Sencha Test: An efficient tool for testing your Ext JS apps.

Start using Ext JS and Sencha tools today to build stunning and functional apps quickly!

Angular

Angular is one of the most popular JavaScript frameworks for creating scalable web apps using the component based architecture. Created by Google, this TypeScript-based framework is perfect for creating single page applications.

Angular is a free, open-source JavaScript library that supports two-way data binding. This allows the components of your apps to share data.

Features

• Progressive Web Apps: Angular offers modern web development features that allow you to build native-like Angular apps that work on multiple devices (desktop, mobile phones, etc.) and all modern web browsers.
• Code Splitting: Angular supports route-level code splitting. This means the functionality of each route of your angular app is split into several separate chunks to reduce your app’s load time.
• Smart Code Generation: With Angular, you get efficient code for your templates that is highly optimized for modern JS virtual machines. As a result, you can enjoy the benefits of a JS framework and hand-written code simultaneously.
• Powerful Template Syntax: Angular provides efficient template syntax, allowing you to create beautiful UIs quickly.
• Angular CLI (Command Line Interface Tool): With efficient command line tools, you can create apps quickly and easily.
• Desktop-Installed Apps: You can create desktop apps for Windows, Mac, and Linux using the Angular methods as the web.

React JavaScript Framework

React is another open source framework for creating powerful JavsScript web apps using reusable components. Built by Facebook, React has gained immense popularity since its release.

React is essentially a component-based JS library that allows you to create dynamic UIs. React basically makes use of a virtual DOM, allowing easy integration with any app.

Features

• Declarative Style: Creating server side apps with interactive UIs is super easy with React. The declarative style of React also makes debugging simple and easy.
• Virtual DOM: React apps create a virtual DOM for every DOM object, which is much easier to manipulate. It keeps the virtual copy of a user interface in memory.
• Efficient Event Handling: React has an efficient W3C object model event system, and it offers cross-browser compatibility.
• Flux Controls: React uses Flux, an application architecture that supports one-way data binding. This helps reduce state management complexity.
• JSX: JSX, also called JavaScript XML, is a markup syntax similar to HTML. It helps write React apps quickly and easily by providing HTML-like syntax.

React Native

React Native is a JavaScript-based framework for developing mobile applications. It allows you to build cost-effective, cross-platform mobile applications using reusable code components. It is also the custom renderer for React.

You can learn about the best JavaScript frameworks for mobile apps here.

Vue.js

Vue is also among the most used front-end frameworks for creating cross-platform single page applications (SPA). Released in 2014, this powerful framework allows you to create beautiful and interactive UIs for client side web applications.

Features

• Fast Rendering: Vue uses virtual DOM, a clone of the principal DOM element, thus speeing up rendering.
• Data Binding: This is an important feature for software development. With this feature, the assignment of values to HTML attributes is easier.
• Easy to Use: Vue is simple and easy to use, and has a short learning curve.
• CSS Transitions and Animations: Vue offers various methods for applying a transition to HTML elements.
• Templates: With HTML-based templates, Vue binds the DOM with the vue.js instance data.

Ember.js

Following on the list of best front-end JavaScript frameworks is Ember, a component-based framework for building modern SPA web apps.

With its two-way data binding, Ember also makes it easy to handle complicated user interfaces.

Features

• Ease of Use: Ember enables developers to create modern web apps that are also easy to maintain.
• URL Management: With a built-in router, Ember allows you to manage the URL efficiently. It supports nested URLs and incremental data fetching.
• Debugging: Debugging Ember apps is quick and easy with the Ember inspector tool.
• Initializers: Ember provides initializers, allowing you to configure your apps while it boots.
• Templating: With this feature, the pages based on a specific template change automatically.

Meteor

Meteor is an open-source platform for creating full-stack JS apps. Besides rending the front-end, Meteor also has several other use cases, such as database management, back-end development, and business logic.

Features

• Full-Stack Development: Meteor is the perfect full-stack solution for creating and deploying web apps. It offers impressive features, such as JS manifestation on the production server, automatic CSS, and reactive templates.
• Isomorphic JavaScript Code: Meteor allows you to use the same code for the back-end, front-end, web, and mobile apps. As a result, developers don’t have to install and configure various libraries, APIs, etc.
• Front-end: Meteor offers one of the best front-end frameworks called Blaze.js, which provides impressive features.
• Database Integration: Meteor supports almost all databases with a Node.js driver.
• Real-Time Web Apps: Meteor offers all the front-end and also back-end components you need to create real-time web apps.

Mithril

Mithril is a popular client-side JS framework for creating single page apps. The implementation of the framework is straightforward, as there aren’t any derived functions from a base class.

Features

• Code Size: Mithril is just around 7.8 kB gzipped and has zero dependencies on other libraries.
• Impressive API: Mithril offers an efficient API, so you don’t have to build functionality for every scenario from scratch.
• Reduced Code Complexity: Mithril is declarative, and it reduces code complexity.

Node.js

Node.js is another popular JS runtime environment for server side rendering. It supports cross-platform development, which also means you can use Node.js to create web, desktop, and mobile apps.

Features

• Fast Code Execution: The Node.js library is built on Google Chrome’s V8 JS engine and thus allows fast code execution.
• Asynchronous and Event-Drive I/O: Node.js follows an event mechanism and allows you to develop scalable network apps. The asynchronous APIs also mean its server doesn’t wait for the API to come back with data.
• Open-Source: Node.js also has great community support. The community has built several impressive models that you can easily use to add incredible capabilities to your Node.js apps.
• No Buffering: Node.js doesn’t buffer any data and minimizes processing time when it comes to uploading audio and video files.

Polymer

Next on the list of best front-end JavaScript frameworks is polymer, a JS library for creating custom elements.

Features

• Custom Elements: Polymer comes with polyfills that allow you to create custom and reusable elements.
• Reusability: Polymer enables the creation of reusable widgets for web apps.
• Mobile App Development: Polymer also uses Google material design to allow you to create fast mobile applications.

Aurelia

Aurelia is a simple yet powerful JS framework for creating robust mobile, desktop, and web apps. Additionally, it is capable of extending HTML for various purposes, including data binding.

Features

• Efficient Components: The components in Aurelia are composed of JS view-model pairs and HTML views.
• Extensible: The Aurelia framework provides an easy way to integrate with other helpful tools.
• Commercial Support: Aurelia also offers enterprise and commercial support.

Backbone.js

Finally, Backbone is an easy-to-use JS library with a RESTful JSON interface. Thus, it’s one of the best JS libraries for creating SPA.

Features

• Ease of Use: Assembling web apps is super easy with backbone.js as it provides helpful building blocks, such as models and views.
• Various Extensions: Backbone is free and open-source and has more than 100 extensions.
• Organized Development: Backbone also allows you to create apps in an organized format.

Ready to create modern JS web apps?

Then try one of the best JavaScript frameworks today!