If you are looking to build a new dynamic and modern website for your business, using React is definitely something to consider.
React was created in 2011 as a result of some Facebook developers having issues with code maintenance. They found it difficult to handle the flood of updates and realized that they need to create a solution to make the process easier and more efficient. This was when React was born – a prototype language created by Jordan Walke.
React is a JavaScript library that is created specifically for building interactive elements for websites. It is a collection of code that has been pre-written and can be used to complete common tasks. When you use a library such as React, you can avoid having to reinvent the wheel and allow to code faster with better efficiency and success. These libraries have been vetted already, so you know for sure they will work.
Before the creation of React, developers had to build by hand user interfaces with JavaScript or to use a language that was not focused on the user interface elements – an inefficient and unreliable method.
Read on to find out everything else you should know about React before using it for your business.
The main thing you need to know about React is that it uses Virtual DOM. A DOM treats an HTML or XML document as a tree structure. In this tree structure, each node is an object which represents a part of the document.
If you are not using React, your website will use HTML to update its DOM. This can work just fine for simple websites with smaller and static pages. But when you have a larger, dynamic, and more complex website, it is becoming problematic to use HTML to update a DOM. Because in this case, the DOM has to be reloaded each time when a user clicks on an element that requires the website to be reloaded – which is the worst scenario because it leads to slow page loads.
Using a virtual DOM means that there is a copy of the original DOM of the website. React uses this copy and compares it to the original DOM so that it can see what needs to be changed when a user clicks on an element. Doing so, React is capable of updating only the part of the DOM that is changed.
This method is extremely efficient compared to when you work with a website’s DOM in a traditional way. A virtual DOM uses a lot less computing power, which means better speed and load times – very useful, especially when you have many users on the website.
If you have decided to use React for your website, you need to make sure that your developers have a certain skill set. To successfully integrate React into your existing development pipeline, they need to be proficient in CSC and HTML, JavaScript and ES6, Babel and JSX, NPM and Node, and Git and command-line interface.
Having expertise in these means that your developers will be able to handle React and everything that is needed for the successful integration. As a result, you can have a powerful, efficient website and a user interface that adheres to modern demands.