Bootstrap vs React – Which is Best for Frontend Development?

Bootstrap often is referred to as an open-source front-end toolkit. React, on the other hand, is a JavaScript library used to build a User Interface or UI. With the growing popularity and emerging market of Bootstrap, it has proven to be a good competition against React.

With distinct characteristics, features, and qualities of each, the question is: “which one is better for frontend development?” Let’s find out.

React vs Bootstrap – What You Need to Know for Frontend Development

ReactJS:

An open-source library of JavaScript, React is great for making web apps with rich UIs. Furthermore, it offers the flexibility to make reusable tailored components, which encourages fast development. React also enables the fast rendering of a web page, making it more search-engine friendly.

In all, it’s a great library that promotes the development of complex and lightweight business apps.

Pros of React in Frontend

Check out the key benefits of React to understand why it stands out when it comes to frontend development.

1. Flexibility

The React code, in comparison to other frontend frameworks, is easier to maintain and flexible because of its modular structure. In turn, the flexibility saves a great amount of time and cost.

2. Speed

Basically, the framework enables developers to use individual application parts on both the server-side and client-side. Ultimately, this boosts the speed of development. Put simply, this means that different developers could write individual parts and the changes that will be made will not affect the logic of the app.

3. Performance

The framework was designed keeping in mind high performance. The framework’s core has a virtual DOM program and server-side rendering as well, which makes for running complex apps really fast.

4. Reusable components

One of the main benefits of React is the potential to use components again and again. Because developers do not have to write various codes for the same features, it is a great time-saver. Moreover, any change or changes made in a specific part would not impact other parts of the app.

5. Mobile application development

React is not just for web development. Already, Facebook has upgraded it for developing mobile native apps for iOS and Android platforms. One must all follow the best practices of mobile app development in order to fully optimize the app.

6. Usability

React deployment is fairly easy to accomplish as long as you have a few basic JavaScript knowledge. A JavaScript developer, as a matter of fact, could learn the ins and outs of React easily within a day or two.

7. Unique abstraction layer

The framework provides a unique abstraction layer, which is its less-known business-related benefit. Meaning, that end-users could not access the complex internals. All it needs is for the developer to know some basics, and better off not knowing the internal functions.

8. Well-established

React has a vibrant ecosystem of developer tools and is well-established. Developers could find dozens of ready-made and customizable graphics, documentation tools, charts, and other components, enabling them to create a web app in less time with no need to reinvent the wheel. The awesome collection of tutorials and development tools help build awesome things.

How to Increase Travel Business with travel agency software?

Cons of React

1. Increased code Complexity

JSX is an extension of the syntax that React uses, which combines HTML and JavaScript. Being a bit old school, it has an intricate pattern for developers. Furthermore, it’s a bit more difficult to learn than learning plain JavaScript.

2. Updates continuously

Often, React is associated with the latest version updates and contributions all over the world. Thus, the JavaScript library is more evolving and less conventional when it comes to coding practices.

3. Focuses on View alone

Building an app with React focuses solely on the view layer from the MVC or the Model View Controller architecture. Thus, you will have to use an additional platform for other parts of the app. This means more tool integration, like APIs or routing.

Why use React for Frontend?

In frontend development, React is a more robust framework due to its ability to break down the complex interface and letting users work on individual components. It comes with the main objective to deliver nothing but the best rendering performance possible. The strength of the framework stems from the focus and emphasis on individual parts.

Popular Applications Created with React

There are many global companies using React as their front end. Please find some of them below:

The BBC – The renowned British public service broadcaster news channel. It used React to make its website more navigational toward a mobile-first page, providing an ultra-fast user experience, and making its website super accessible across different devices.

Facebook. – The biggest social media network website all over the world. It currently uses React in its FB Ads Manager.

PayPal – The popular finance organization worldwide. React boosts the navigational bookmarks, workflows, and initial rendering of the payment gateway app.

Twitter – The largest microblogging and social networking service in America uses React for updating content, boosting the user experience, and creating a browser-based user interface. Using React, they renovated their website and came up with the progressive web application version.

Netflix – The famous video streaming site used React to fix issues in performance and minimize processing times for a seamless user experience and blazing startup speed.

Hire Flutter Developer for your Mobile App Project – Complete Guide

Bootstrap

Bootstrap, otherwise known as Twitter Bootstrap, is a front-end open-source CSS framework to build responsive mobile-first websites. Its frontend template basically is CSS-based.

Bootstrap has become a popular User Interface development framework because of its responsive grids, design templates, and most of all, its multi-site compatibility.

Pros of Bootstrap in Frontend

The following are some of the major benefits of using Bootstrap when it comes to frontend development.

1. Time-Saving

Bootstrap provides excellent documentation on every component. Furthermore, the readily available resources could help omit writing codes and debugging sites fast. The LESS, CSS preprocessor could be used to save time on custom development.

It lets designers create new web pages or websites faster with pre-existing code blocks.

2. Styling Components

Provides different themes, user templates, and plugins as well as a grid system, which are free and could be customized based on the project requirements.

3. Responsive Design

React has the necessary features to create a UI that’s responsive when it comes to structures and styles. Furthermore, it is also compatible with different platforms.

4. Consistent Designs

Bootstrap was developed keeping in mind consistency because of a group of employees of Twitter. They wanted to build a framework that will foster consistency across internal apps and web pages.

5. Support Accessibility

The open-source community helps troubleshot bugs and issues. Bootstrap is updated and maintained continuously on GitHub. It has over 5,000 expert contributors.

6. Loaded JS Components

Bootstrap comes loaded with JavaScript components, making it easy to trigger alerts, open modal windows, and so on. Moreover, the components could either be used or discarded.

7. Customizable Expansion

The framework could be tailored in a lot of ways to create websites with various specifications than the original. Not needed code could be discarded easily. Bootstrap could be customized to meet the needs of each and every project.

8. Responsive Business Actions

Bootstrap is preloaded with a 12-column grid system, which makes designing different sizes of screens easy. Furthermore, developers could choose to either show or hide every grid section for a specific operating system. The responsiveness speeds up the development of screen displays.

Cons of Bootstrap in Frontend

1. Learning curve

Developers may have to invest some time because of the sort of steep learning curve. However, this depends on their prior knowledge of frontend technologies to learn more about combinations and class components.

2. Similar Web templates

Bootstrap is usually criticized for its limited templates, which make apps and websites made with it look the same. It may require comprehensive manual customization to avoid the similarity, which could take so much time and beats the purpose of using Bootstrap.

3. Overriding and Rewriting

It needs a significant amount of customization, which could lead to deviation from the custom designs of the framework, creating issues in consistency and compatibility.

8 Website Development Consultant Tips – 100% Helpful For You

Why Use Bootstrap for Frontend?

A powerful and flexible frontend framework, Bootstrap provides a free collection of tools to create web apps and websites. With CSS, JavaScript, and HTML components, it makes for faster frontend web development as well as makes it easier for mobile-first, responsive projects. Open-source and free, it’s developed, hosted, and maintained on GitHub.

Now, Bootstrap is one of the most widely fronted frameworks across the globe. Modular, its source code consists of a series of LESS files, which implement the various toolkit components. The framework offers many reusable components, and scales websites efficiently and easily with a single code base.

Popular Applications Created with Bootstrap

Apple Maps Connect – Used by Apple to create its interactive maps for different platforms. Map Kit JS employs Bootstrap to create UI designs.

Vogue – The fashion magazine uses Bootstrap for flat responsive web templates, making websites compatible with all devices.

PayPal – Online payment processing website makes use of the Pricing Sliders of Bootstrap to create payment forms while adding cards, checking out, or paying bills via the website.

WhatsApp – WhatsApp’s UI has been created using Bootstrap for better facilities and interactive features over a desktop app.

Lyft – The ride-sharing company uses the grid features of Bootstrap together with drop-down plugins. Also, the framework helped in the development of the website in a short amount of time.

Conclusion

React and Bootstrap are both close competitors in terms of designing and customizing the best User Interface for web apps. While Bootstrap is a front-end framework that’s template-based, providing ready-made templates to develop apps, React, on the other hand, is a component-based framework.

Taking into account the unique facilities and features of both, the best decision to use lies in the business opportunities and the ability to make the best output.