What is the frontend of a web application?

The frontend of a web application can best be described as what you can see visually. At its core are the fundamental web languages; HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Over the past decade, hundreds of successful libraries and frameworks have been developed to speed up development of those core languages.

Let’s dive into the most “popular” before we get into the most “modern”. Bootstrap is an HTML / CSS / JavaScript framework whose goal is to templatize typography, forms, grids, etc. According to a survey done by w3techs, Bootstrap is used by 19.7% of the internet making it the most popular frontend framework. jQuery is a JavaScript library whose goal is development efficiency. According to a survey done by w3techs, jQuery is used by 77.4% of the internet making it the most popular JavaScript library on the internet.

Most people would make the assumption that because they are the most popular then they are the right choice for the job. No. There are several variables involved with making that kind of decision. You could either be overkilling your web project or not providing it the modern technology it requires. Developing using either of those frameworks also introduces issues such as development speed and confusing code.

Let’s go over the most modern frontend frameworks in today’s world.

• React.js is a JavaScript library led by a team at Meta (formerly Facebook) that is used to effectively build UI components. It was created in 2013. According to a survey by statista in 2021, React.js is used by 40.1% of web developers. w3techs says that it is only used by 2.9% of the internet.
• Vue.js is a JavaScript framework led by its original core team for building user interfaces and single-page web applications. It was also created in 2013. According to the same statista survey, Vue.js is used by 18.97% of web developers. w3techs says that it is only used by 0.7% of the internet.
• Angular is a web application framework led by a team at Google that is used for building mobile and desktop web applications using JavaScript and other languages. It was founded in 2010. According to the same statista survey, Angular is used by 22.96% of web developers. w3techs says that it is only used by 0.4% of the internet.

Whew. There’s the numbers. These are only a few of the most active discussions on the internet. There are several factors that make these the most modern frontend frameworks out there right now. Code maintainability, app performance, and development efficiency. The developer pool should also be a major consideration.

As of writing this blog, Vue.js has 332+ contributors with version 2 having 198,000 and version 3 having 31,000 stars on GitHub.

React has 2,000+ contributors with 191,000 stars and React Native has 2,000+ contributors with 104,000 stars on GitHub.

Angular has 2,000+ contributors with version 1 having 59,000 stars and the most recent version having 2,000+ contributors with 83,000 stars on GitHub.