What are the best open source JavaScript GUI/widget frameworks?

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score 53 · Accepted Answer

React with pre-made components

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Top Pro

Easy to reuse components

Since every single UI component is created independently in JavaScript, it becomes very easy to reuse them throughout your app without having to re-write them. See More

Top Con

Large file size

React's react.min.js is 145.5KB in size. It's much larger than some other libraries that offer roughly the same features and it's almost the same size as some MV* frameworks such as Angular or Ember that offer more features out of the box. Although, it should be mentioned that sometimes having a smaller library may force developers to reinvent the wheel and write inefficient implementations on features that React already has. Ending up with a larger application that's harder to maintain and/or that has bad performance. See More

Top Pro

Virtual DOM support

Instead of relying on the DOM, React implements a virtual DOM from scratch, allowing it to calculate precisely what needs to be patched during the next screen refresh. This is orders of magnitude faster than fiddling with the DOM itself. See More

Top Con

You have to learn a new syntax

Requires to learn a custom syntax, JSX that has some gotchas and introduce complexity, a steeper learning curve, and incompatibility with other tools. Though you can opt out from JSX and use vanilla JS instead. But that is not recommended since it adds a lot of unneeded complexity which JSX tries to avoid. See More

Top Pro

Supported by Facebook and Instagram

React is built by Facebook engineers initially to be used only for their inner projects especially to solve the problem of building large complex applications with constantly changing data. See More

Top Con

Dependency hell

With all the third party components available for React, which when used smart is a good thing, can result in huge code bloat when used dumb. Javascript sizes can go from KB to MB without doing too much though. See More

Top Pro

Easy to write tests

Since React's virtual DOM system is implemented completely in JavaScript, it's very easy to write UI test cases. See More

Top Con

No support for legacy browsers

React has recently dropped support for Internet Explorer 8. While the library may still work on IE8, issues that affect only IE8 will not be prioritized and/or solved. See More

Top Pro

Tested on Facebook itself

React is used on one of the most visited websites on the planet, Facebook. With stellar results and with million of people experiencing it every day. See More

Top Con

Slow VirtualDOM

React's VirtualDOM is relatively slow compared to other libraries that implement a VDOM. See More

Top Pro

Can be used with different libraries

ReactJS can be used independently as the only library for building the front-end, or it can be used alongside JavaScript libraries such as jQuery, or even Angular. See More

Top Con

Verbose

React gets a little verbose as applications get more complicated with more components. It's simply not as straightforward as simply writing HTML and JavaScript would be. See More

Top Pro

One-way data flow

React's one-way data binding (or one-way data flow) means that it's easy to see where and how your UI is updated and where you need to make changes. It's also very easy to keep everything modular, fast and well-organized. See More

Top Pro

Extensive SVG support

Since React v0.15, SVG is fully supported. React supports all SVG attributes that are recognized by today's browsers. See More

Top Pro

Template engine independent

React provides a template engine (JSX) which is easy to use. But it's not mandatory. See More

Top Pro

Flux architecture pattern

Flux is a platform agnostic pattern which can technically be used with any application or programming language. One of Flux' main features is that it enforces uni-directional data flow which means that views do not change the data directly. With React this is useful because this way it's easier to understand an application as it starts getting more complicated. By having two-way data binding, lead to unpredictable changes, where changing one model's data would end up updating another model. By using the Flux architecture, this can be avoided. See More

Top Pro

Good debugging tools

React has an official Chrome Extension which is used as a developing and debugging tool. It can be used to quickly and painlessly debug your application or view the whole application structure as it's rendered. See More

Top Pro

Server side rendering

React can render it's components and data server side, then it sends those components as HTML to the browser. This ensures faster initial loading time and SEO friendliness out of the box, since it's indexed as any other static website by search engines. See More

See All

The Best 1 of 11 OptionsWhy?

My Recommendation for React with pre-made components

My Recommendation for React with pre-made components

Easy to reuse components

Large file size

Virtual DOM support

You have to learn a new syntax

Supported by Facebook and Instagram

Dependency hell

Easy to write tests

No support for legacy browsers

Tested on Facebook itself

Slow VirtualDOM

Can be used with different libraries

Verbose

One-way data flow

Extensive SVG support

Template engine independent

Flux architecture pattern

Good debugging tools

Server side rendering

10 Other Options Considered

My Recommendation for Dojo Toolkit

My Recommendation for Dojo Toolkit

Not able to keep up with the future of the web

Highly modular

Integrated first-party loader makes interoperability extremely difficult

Consistent and complete

No startup-function

Not only web apps

My Recommendation for Materialize

My Recommendation for Materialize

Opinionated

Customizable

Device agnostic

Mobile navigation

Large selection of components

Meteor.js integration by developers

12-column grid system

Responsive

My Recommendation for Bootstrap

My Recommendation for Bootstrap

Well documented

Can be difficult to change the UI opinions it comes with

Massive userbase

Limited features as a widget framework

Custom builds

Depends on jQuery

My Recommendation for Quasar Framework

My Recommendation for Quasar Framework

CSS Framework with themes

Almost a "one-man project"

Hot reload for web & mobile development

Modern ecosystem with Vue & ES2015+

All platforms in one go

My Recommendation for Material Components

My Recommendation for Material Components

Also useful w/o JavaScript

My Recommendation for Inferno

My Recommendation for Inferno

Pretty light-weight

Some React components may not work with Inferno

Fast performance

Not very popular

Modular

React compatability

My Recommendation for Discover AngularJS

My Recommendation for Discover AngularJS

My Recommendation for Polymer

My Recommendation for Polymer

Excellent documentation

No server-side rendering

CSS is easy to apply

Lack of browser support

HTML markup is not string

Built at Google

Flex layout components

Based on web components

My Recommendation for jQuery UI

My Recommendation for jQuery UI