Almost every other week, a new JavaScript library takes the web community by storm! The Web community is increasingly vibrant, diverse, and growing rapidly in multiple areas. Trying to study every important JavaScript framework and library is an impossible task. Next, I’ll share some of the most famous and influential frameworks and libraries for front-end development. Let’s take a look at some of the top JavaScript Web front-end frameworks, libraries, and tools and their use.

Please note:

  • Forgive me if I don’t include your favorite JavaScript frameworks and libraries.
  • Keep your frameworks and libraries up to date, as the latest versions tend to have better cross-browser and cross-device support. You can use the same tools that inspect devices to help determine if an older version is compatible with the best-configured device.

Next, let’s look at the list below!

AngularJS

AngularJS is a popular enterprise framework that many developers use to build and maintain complex Web applications. AngularJS is hugely popular and used by companies like Domino’s Pizza, Ryanair, iTunes Connect, PayPal payments, Google, and more. AngularJS is an open source framework supported by Google. AngularJS describes itself as an HTML extension that can be used to build complex Web applications. In addition, if you are familiar with TypeScript, you already know how AngularJS is written.

AngularJS is an MVC-type framework that provides bidirectional binding between data models and views. This data binding allows automatic updates when only one data change occurs on both sides. It allows you to build reusable View components. It also provides a service framework for easy communication between front-end and back-end services. In the end, it’s just plain JavaScript.

When to use AngularJS? When you’re building a complex Web front-end application and need a modular framework to handle everything.

React

React is this year’s favorite JavaScript project! Everyone seems to be talking about ReactJS. At every meeting, last year’s meeting, at least two people were talking about React. React is open source, largely developed by Facebook with the help of other companies’ main technology. React describes itself as a JavaScript library for building user interfaces.

React in MVC, mainly views. It focuses entirely on the MVC part, ignoring the rest of the application. It provides a layer that makes it easier to use UI elements and group them together. It abstracts DOM, making it good at optimizing rendering, and allows React to be expressed using Node.js; It implements a one-way flexible data flow, making it easier to understand and use other frameworks.

As V in MVC, many projects use React in conjunction with AngularJS or Ember.

When do I use React? When you want a strong View layer, but the rest of your application doesn’t need a detailed framework, or when you want a View layer in your application that incorporates Angular, Backbone, or Ember, or when you want to create a homogeneous Web framework.

Wijmo

Wijmo Enterprise is a set of development controls for Enterprise application development that include HTML5 and JavaScript. Includes advanced JavaScript controls, classic jQuery widgets, financial ICONS, and FlexSheet and OLAP for mobile, PC, and IE6-enabled applications. Wijmo also supports other popular frameworks such as Angular, Angular2, KnockOut, Vue, React, etc.

When to use Wijmo? When you want to build a user interface with a good user experience for your application.

Backbone

Backbone is a well-known simple framework that incorporates a single JavaScript file. Backbone has been popular for a while. Developed by Jeremy Ashkenas from the CoffeeScript and Underscore frameworks. Backbone is especially popular with teams looking for small architectures. Because their small Web applications don’t need to use large frameworks like AngularJS and Ember.

Backbone provides a complete MVC framework and routing. This model allows key-value binding and events that handle data changes. Models (and Collections) can be connected to RESTful apis. Views can declare event handling, and routers handle URL and state management very well. It provides all the functionality you need while building a single page application that doesn’t offer too many features or unnecessarily complex functionality.

When to use Backbone? Backbone is a GOTO framework suitable for simple Web applications.

Ember

Ember is a standalone Web application framework that focuses on coding efficiency. Ember is popular, and the core team includes Yehuda Katz, one of the core teams behind Ruby on Rails and jQuery. Ember describes itself as a framework for creating great Web applications that doesn’t waste your time. That’s very opinionated, and it gives you a lot of options.

Ember is also an MVC framework. It includes a template and view engine that automatically updates data as it changes, just like AngularJS, Backbone and React. It includes conceptual Web components that let you extend HTML with your own tags (just like AngularJS). It also has a routing and modeling engine that works with RESTful apis.

When do YOU use Ember? Use Ember if you just want a framework that works, or your budget is tight, or a deadline is near and you’re not looking for too much flexibility.

JQuery

JQuery is a framework that needs no introduction. It single-handedly made cross-browser sites a reality and helped make the Web what it is today. JQuery is one of the reasons Web standards have been adopted with real respect by most major browser vendors. The mission of the jQuery Foundation is to “enhance the open Web by developing and supporting open source software, making it available to all, and working with the development community.”

JQuery is the most commonly used JavaScript library in the world, and there is no application that doesn’t use it unless it doesn’t care about coding efficiency. It makes DOM traversal, event handling, animation, AJAX so simple and easy in all browsers.

When to use jQuery? You can use jQuery unless you want to use a lighter version like Zepto.



Underscore＆lodash

Some JavaScript built in is not efficient enough for developers. There are always functions that lack utility or simplify code. Underscore (and Lodash) is a JavaScript library that provides utility functionality without requiring monkey patches built into JavaScript objects. These two libraries offer over 100 helper functions and other particularly handy features; Includes features like maps, filters, calls, reduction, templates, adjustments, bindings, extensions, pickings, cloning and more.

When do YOU use Underscore? When you need a single JavaScript file to improve your coding efficiency.

When to use LoDash? When you need a module and a lightweight and efficient version of Underscore that is easily supported by AMD and community plug-ins.

D3.js

Data visualization and charting are common requirements for Web applications. D3.js is the de facto standard when it comes to any data manipulation and visualization. It is one of the most popular projects on GitHub and is used by hundreds of organizations. A large number of graphics, charts and visual libraries are built on D3.

D3 allows manipulation of files from any data source and can be converted to DOM, SVG, or CSS. D3 focuses on modern web standards and ensures that proprietary formats like Flash or Silverlight are free.

When to use D3.js? When you need any kind of visualization.

Babylon.js

Want to create a video game that runs completely on modern Web standards and across browsers? Consider Babylon. Js, a 3D game engine built on WebGL and JavaScript. You can create an incredibly high quality game engine that includes physics, audio and particle systems.

When to use Babylu.js? When you’re building a video game that includes any kind of complex 3D scene.

three.js

Want to create a 3D visualization that doesn’t need a full game engine? Three.js provides a lightweight 3D library to render 3D into an HTML5 Canvas, SVG and WebGL. This is really an explicit library, and there are hundreds of examples that work well in the three.js use case presentation.

When to use three.js? Whenever you need a simple 3D visualization that can be exported to a canvas.

Mocha & Chai

For a long time, JavaScript testing was incredibly annoying. Testing any code from scratch is often seen as a pain in the neck, but it’s something every developer should do. Meanwhile, testing their code, every developer always seems to disdain it and choose to ignore it. One way to improve this is to use the form of Mocha & Chai. Although these two libraries get their names from delicious hot drinks, they can both test your code in different ways.

Mocha is a JavaScript testing framework that makes it easy to test asynchronous code in node models and browser applications. Mocha tests can run in tandem and have high-quality trace exceptions for the right test cases.

Chai is a behavior-driven development/test-driven development assertion library that can be used with Mocha. It makes it easy to express your test content in a readable way.

When to use Mocha and Chai? Always! Please test your code and make the world a better place.

Karma

This list includes Mocha and Chai, and it would be incomplete without including the runners who run these tests and set up continuous integration tests. Karma is a tool designed to help automate running tests for different browsers. This will help you run Mocha and Chai in all browsers.

Not every browser will work on every platform, and fortunately, there are free tools you can use to test other browsers, such as browser screenshots. If you’re running on OS X and want to test Edge or Internet Explorer, you can use this free tool.

When to use Karma? When your application has a complete test suite and you want to make sure it passes on all browsers.

PhantomJS

Run a full-featured browser to test your code memory and CPU intensive. PhantomJS allows you to run headless WebKit’s rendering engine on Safari and Chrome. This way you can run your tests, capture screen shots, monitor the network, and browse pages automatically using JavaScript apis.

When to use PhantomJS? When you need to do more testing, manipulate pages, and monitor network requests.

Grunt & Gulp

Production web site construction usually involves performance enhancing tasks such as miniatering JavaScript and CSS, CoffeeScript/TypeScript compilation, unit testing, and performance lintin. You may already have a toolchain for your product site, but if not, you can use tools like Grunt and Gulp. Both tools have many plug-ins to help you improve your product site.

When to use Grunt? If you like writing configuration files and don’t mind creating intermediate files during a task run.

When to use Gulp? If you prefer writing code to writing configuration files, and want to use Node.js’s streaming capabilities to perform tasks faster.

Babel

JavaScript is evolving rapidly as a language. ECMAScript in the summer of 2015 released many of its new features implemented in the latest browsers. If you want to see ECMAScript compatibility in 2015, you can check out the list from the original @Kangax. You’ll find that the latest versions of Edge, Firefox and Chrome are nearly fully compatible.

We don’t live in a perfect world. As developers, we need to continue supporting older browsers that don’t have the latest JavaScript features. We need to push the network and improve our code base. Babel is a JavaScript compiler that compiles the latest JavaScript standards into ES5-compatible JavaScript, which allows it to run on older browsers like IE9. It has plugins that make it easy to develop with React, even with features that aren’t in the spec.

When to use Babel? When you want to use new JavaScript language features while continuing to support older browsers.

More Web development practices

This article is part of a series of articles from Microsoft technology evangelists and engineers in JavaScript Learning Articles, and the best articles include Microsoft’s Edge browser and new EdgeHTML rendering engine.

Source: By Rami Sayar

The original link: http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/1066408/Top-JavaScript-Frameworks-Libraries-Tools-and-Wh