xenmaster's front end web development tools
This list is inspired by the Kamran Ahmed's "2019 Developer Roadmap." https://github.com/kamranahmedse/developer-roadmap
Without further ado, my take on the most important technologies to learn for front-end web development in 2019!
**edit: Added nuxtjs vuepress and prettier now that they are available on AlternativeTo!
Languages
HTML, CSS, and JavaScript forms the backbone of the front-end web development experience. Other than that, the following languages are useful as well:
- Typescript is a superset of Javascript which includes type-checking. Adding types to your JavaScript code is cool.
**edit: removed ELM and added Reason ML, which works well with React.
HTML is the standard markup language used to create web pages and its elements form the building blocks of all websites.
Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a simple mechanism for adding style (e.g., fonts, colors, spacing) to web documents.
JavaScript (sometimes shortened to JS) is a lightweight, interpreted, object-oriented language with first-class functions, most known as the scripting language for Web pages, but also used in many non-browser environments. JavaScript was formalized in the ECMAScript language standard.
TypeScript is a language for application-scale JavaScript development. It is a typed superset of JavaScript that compiles to plain JavaScript in any browser, any host, any OS and it is Open Source.
Starts and ends with JavaScript
TypeScript starts from the same syntax and semantics that millions of JavaScript developers know today. Use existing JavaScript code, incorporate popular JavaScript libraries, and call TypeScript code from JavaScript. TypeScript compiles to clean, simple JavaScript code which runs on any browser, in Node.js, or in any JavaScript engine that supports ECMAScript 3 (or newer).
Strong tools for large apps
Types enable JavaScript developers to use highly-productive development tools and practices like static checking and code refactoring when developing JavaScript applications. Types are optional, and type inference allows a few type annotations to make a big difference to the static verification of your code. Types let you define interfaces between software components and gain insights into the behavior of existing JavaScript libraries.
State of the art JavaScript
TypeScript offers support for the latest and evolving JavaScript features, including those from ECMAScript 2015 and future proposals, like async functions and decorators, to help build robust components. These features are available at development time for high-confidence app development, but are compiled into simple JavaScript that targets ECMAScript 3 (or newer) environments.
Reason lets you write simple, fast and quality type safe code while leveraging both the JavaScript & OCaml ecosystems. Its powerful, safe type inference means you rarely have to annotate types, but everything gets checked for you. Use packages from NPM/Yarn with minimum hassle, or even drop in a snippet of raw JavaScript while you're learning! Make websites, animations, games, servers, cli tools, and more!
Dart (originally called Dash) is a Web programming language developed by Google. It was unveiled at the GOTO conference in Aarhus, 2011 October 10-12. The goal of Dart is "ultimately to replace JavaScript as the lingua franca of web development on the open web platform."
Motivation: Dart is intended to solve JavaScript's problems (which, according to a leaked memo, cannot be solved by evolving the language) while offering better performance, the ability "to be more easily tooled for large-scale projects" and better security features. Google offers a cross compiler that compiles Dart to ECMAScript 5, for compatibility with non-Dart browsers. Google also plans to integrate a native VM into Chrome (there is now a Chromium branch available) and encourage competitors to do the same with their browsers.
Compilers: dartc compiles Dart to plain JavaScript. Frog is a new Dart compiler written in Dart; while it does not yet have all the capabilities of dartc, it generates much more optimized code. On November 18, 2011, Google released Dart Editor, an open-source Dart editor based on Eclipse components, for Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux.
Package Managers
If you learn one of these package managers, you will learn enough to use the other fairly well.
npm is a package manager for Node.js that is run through the command line and manages dependencies for an application. It is the predominant package manager for Node.js.
Yarn is a package manager for your code. It allows you to use and share code with other developers from around the world. Yarn does this quickly, securely, and reliably so you don’t ever have to worry.
Yarn allows you to use other developers’ solutions to different problems, making it easier for you to develop your software. If you have problems, you can report issues or contribute back, and when the problem is fixed, you can use Yarn to keep it all up to date.
Code is shared through something called a package (sometimes referred to as a module). A package contains all the code being shared as well as a package.json file which describes the package.
CSS Frameworks + Preprocessors
Sass is a preprocessor and Bootstrap is the framework for prototyping sites fast using pre-arranged style sets. Material UI and Vue Material are framework specific CSS frameworks (see react & vue below)
Sass is a stylesheet language initially designed by Hampton Catlin and developed by Nathan Weizenbaum. After its initial versions, Nathan Weizenbaum and Chris Eppstein have continued to extend Sass with SassScript, a simple scripting language used in Sass files.Sass is a Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) metalanguage. It is a scripting language that is interpreted into CSS. SassScript is the scripting language itself. Sass consists of two syntaxes. The original syntax, called "the indented syntax" uses a syntax similar to Haml. It uses indentation to separate code blocks and newline characters to separate rules. The newer syntax, "SCSS" uses block formatting like that of CSS. It uses braces to denote code blocks and semicolons to separate lines within a block. The indented syntax and SCSS files are traditionally given the extensions.sass and.scss respectively.CSS3 consists of a series of selectors and pseudo-selectors that group rules that apply to them. Sass (in the larger context of both syntaxes) extends CSS by providing several mechanisms available in more traditional programming languages, particularly object-oriented languages, but that are not available to CSS3 itself. When SassScript is interpreted, it creates blocks of CSS rules for various selectors as defined by the Sass file. The Sass interpreter translates SassScript into CSS. Alternately, Sass can monitor the.sass or.scss file and translate it to an output.css file whenever the.sass or.scss file is saved. Sass is simply syntactic sugar for CSS.
Bootstrap is a open-source collection of tools for creating browser sites and applications. It contains HTML and CSS-based design templates for typography, forms, buttons, charts, navigation and other interface components, as well as optional JavaScript extensions.
Our vision is to provide an elegant React implementation of the Material Design guidelines that can be customized to fully match your brand.
The Material Design guidelines are an incredible starting point, but they do not provide guidance on all aspects or needs of an application. In addition to the guidelines-specific implementation, we want Material-UI to become whatever is generally useful for application development, all in the spirit of the Material Design guidelines.
Therefore, Material-UI will be not only be an implementation of the Material Design guidelines, but a general use UI library of components that are needed by many. This generalized use doesn't imply any other design methodology. It also means we will have components or combinations that are simply not addressed in the design guidelines.
We will focus on providing all the low-level tools needed to build a rich user-interface with React. Once we implement the Material design specification (which is a bar set quite high), you should be able to take advantage of it for you own business with any style customization needed. We want to see companies succeeding using Material-UI in a way that matches their brand, close to the material philosophy or not. We don't want them to feel that their UI simply looks like another Google product.
From a developer's point of view, we want Material-UI to:
- Deliver on fully encapsulated / composable React components.
- Be themeable / customizable.
- Be cross browser compatible and accessible.
- Promote developer joy, a sense of community, and an environment where new and experienced developers can learn from each other.
Vue Material is a UI framework that's simple, lightweight and built exactly according to the Google Material Design specs.
Utility Libraries
JQuery adoption isn't what it used to be, but a lot of old sites use it. Most new sites are commonly using Lo-Dash in place of JQuery, if they choose to use a utility library at all.
jQuery is a cross-browser JavaScript library designed to simplify the client-side scripting of HTML. jQuery simplifies HTML document traversing, event handling, animating, and Ajax interactions for rapid web development.
Lo-Dash is a drop-in replacement for Underscore.js that delivers performance improvements, bug fixes, and additional features.
Lo-Dash’s performance is gained by avoiding slower native methods, instead opting for simplified non-ES5 compliant methods optimized for common usage, and by leveraging function compilation to reduce the number of overall function calls.
Build Tools
Learn each of these tools. Rollup and Webpack are alternatives for each other, learn which one works best for what you need!
Babel is a generic multi-purpose compiler for JavaScript. Using Babel you can use (and create) the next generation of JavaScript, as well as the next generation of JavaScript tooling.
JavaScript as a language is constantly evolving, with new specs and proposals coming out with new features all the time. Using Babel will allow you to use many of these features years before they are available everywhere.
Babel does this by compiling down JavaScript code written with the latest standards into a version that will work everywhere today. This process is known as source-to-source compiling, also known as transpiling.
ESLint is an open source JavaScript linting utility originally created by Nicholas C. Zakas in June 2013. Code linting is a type of static analysis that is frequently used to find problematic patterns or code that doesn’t adhere to certain style guidelines. There are code linters for most programming languages, and compilers sometimes incorporate linting into the compilation process.
JavaScript, being a dynamic and loosely-typed language, is especially prone to developer error. Without the benefit of a compilation process, JavaScript code is typically executed in order to find syntax or other errors. Linting tools like ESLint allow developers to discover problems with their JavaScript code without executing it.
The primary reason ESLint was created was to allow developers to create their own linting rules. ESLint is designed to have all rules completely pluggable. The default rules are written just like any plugin rules would be. They can all follow the same pattern, both for the rules themselves as well as tests. While ESLint will ship with some built-in rules to make it useful from the start, you’ll be able to dynamically load rules at any point in time.
ESLint is written using Node.js to provide a fast runtime environment and easy installation via npm.
Rollup is a module bundler for JavaScript which compiles small pieces of code into something larger and more complex, such as a library or application. It uses the new standardized format for code modules included in the ES6 revision of JavaScript, instead of previous idiosyncratic solutions such as CommonJS and AMD. ES modules let you freely and seamlessly combine the most useful individual functions from your favorite libraries. This will eventually be possible natively everywhere, but Rollup lets you do it today.
webpack is a module bundler for modern JavaScript applications. When webpack processes your application, it recursively builds a dependency graph that includes every module your application needs, then packages all of those modules into a small number of bundles - often only one - to be loaded by the browser.
Automate and enhance your workflow A streaming build system
gulp's use of streams and code-over-configuration makes for a simpler and more intuitive build.
Easy to use
By preferring code over configuration, gulp keeps simple things simple and makes complex tasks manageable.
Efficient
By harnessing the power of node's streams you get fast builds that don't write intermediary files to disk.
High Quality
gulp's strict plugin guidelines assure plugins stay simple and work the way you expect.
Easy to Learn
With a minimal API surface, you can pick up gulp in no time. Your build works just like you envision it: a series of streaming pipes.
Prettier is an opinionated code formatter with support for:
JavaScript, including ES2017, JSX, Angular, Vue, Flow, TypeScript, CSS, Less, and SCSS, HTML, JSON, GraphQL, Markdown, including GFM and MDX, YAML
It removes all original styling* and ensures that all outputted code conforms to a consistent style. (See this blog post)
Prettier takes your code and reprints it from scratch by taking the line length into account.
Testing Tools
Each tool has its own use and purpose, best to learn what you can from each one and pick one based on your needs. For React fans, Jest, Enzyme, and Cypress are a good combination.
A simple tool that allows you to execute JavaScript code in multiple real browsers. Karma is not a testing framework, neither an assertion library. Karma just launches a HTTP server, and generates the test runner HTML file you probably already know from your favourite testing framework. So for testing purposes you can use pretty much anything you like. There are already plugins for most of the common testing frameworks: Jasmine, QUnit and many others
Mocha is a feature-rich JavaScript test framework running on node.js and the browser, making asynchronous testing simple and fun. Mocha tests run serially, allowing for flexible and accurate reporting, while mapping uncaught exceptions to the correct test cases.
Jasmine is an open source testing framework for JavaScript. It aims to run on any JavaScript-enabled platform, to not intrude on the application nor the IDE, and to have easy-to-read syntax.
Cypress is a front end automated testing tool created for the modern web. Cypress is built on a new architecture and runs in the same run-loop as the application being tested. As a result Cypress provides better, faster, and more reliable testing for anything that runs in a browser. Cypress works on any front-end framework or website. The open source Cypress Test Runner is architected to handle modern JavaScript frameworks especially well. The Cypress Dashboard Service is an optional web-based companion to the Test Runner. The Dashboard records tests run in Continuous Integration so developer can understand failures and share results with their team. The Dashboard is sold as a SaaS service.
Jest is a unit testing framework for JavaScript used by Facebook to test React apps.
FEATURES
Adaptable Sandboxed and Fast Snapshot Testing
Enzyme is a JavaScript Testing utility for React that makes it easier to test your React Components' output. You can also manipulate, traverse, and in some ways simulate runtime given the output.
Enzyme's API is meant to be intuitive and flexible by mimicking jQuery's API for DOM manipulation and traversal.
JS Frameworks
React and Vue are the two largest frameworks:
- React components include Redux and/or MobX for state management and NextJS for server-side rendering. Vue also has a corresponding components Vuex and NuxtJS.
A JavaScript library for building user interfaces by Facebook.
Declarative
React makes it painless to create interactive UIs. Design simple views for each state in your application, and React will efficiently update and render just the right components when your data changes. Declarative views make your code more predictable and easier to debug.
Component-Based
Build encapsulated components that manage their own state, then compose them to make complex UIs. Since component logic is written in JavaScript instead of templates, you can easily pass rich data through your app and keep state out of the DOM.
Learn Once, Write Anywhere
We don’t make assumptions about the rest of your technology stack, so you can develop new features in React without rewriting existing code. React can also render on the server using Node and power mobile apps using React Native.
Redux is a predictable state container for JavaScript apps that helps write apps with consistent behavior in different environments and that are easy to test. It provides a live-coding developer experience with a time traveling debugger.
MobX is a battle tested library that makes state management simple and scalable by transparently applying functional reactive programming (TFRP). The philosophy behind MobX is very simple:
Anything that can be derived from the application state, should be derived. Automatically.
which includes the UI, data serialization, server communication, etc.
React and MobX together are a powerful combination. React renders the application state by providing mechanisms to translate it into a tree of renderable components. MobX provides the mechanism to store and update the application state that React then uses.
Both React and MobX provide very optimal and unique solutions to common problems in application development. React provides mechanisms to optimally render UI by using a virtual DOM that reduces the number of costly DOM mutations. MobX provides mechanisms to optimally synchronize application state with your React components by using a reactive virtual dependency state graph that is only updated when strictly needed and is never stale.
Next.js gives you the best developer experience with all the features you need for production: hybrid static & server rendering, TypeScript support, smart bundling, route pre-fetching, and more. No config needed.
Image Optimization
<Image> and Automatic Image Optimization with instant builds.
Internationalization
Built-in Domain & Subdomain Routing and Automatic Language detection.
Next.js Analytics
A true lighthouse score based on real visitor data & page-by-page insights
Zero Config
Automatic compilation and bundling. Optimized for production from the start.
Hybrid: SSG and SSR
Pre-render pages at build time (SSG) or request time (SSR) in a single project.
Incremental Static Regeneration
Add and update statically pre-rendered pages incrementally after build time.
TypeScript Support
Automatic TypeScript configuration and compilation.
Fast Refresh
Fast, reliable live-editing experience, as proven at Facebook scale.
File-system Routing
Every component in the pages directory becomes a route.
API Routes
Optionally create API endpoints to provide backend functionality.
Built-in CSS Support
Create component-level styles with CSS modules. Built-in Sass support.
Code-splitting and Bundling
Optimized bundle splitting algorithm created by the Google Chrome team.
Vue (pronounced /vju?/, like view) is a JavaScript framework for building user interfaces. It builds on top of standard HTML, CSS and JavaScript, and provides a declarative and component-based programming model that helps you efficiently develop user interfaces, be it simple or complex.
- Approachable: Builds on top of standard HTML, CSS and JavaScript with intuitive API and world-class documentation.
- Performant: Truly reactive, compiler-optimized rendering system that rarely requires manual optimization.
- Versatile: A rich, incrementally adoptable ecosystem that scales between a library and a full-featured framework.
Vuex is a state management pattern + library for Vue.js applications. It serves as a centralized store for all the components in an application, with rules ensuring that the state can only be mutated in a predictable fashion. It also integrates with Vue's official devtools extension to provide advanced features such as zero-config time-travel debugging and state snapshot export / import.
What is Nuxt.js?: Its main scope is UI rendering while abstracting away the client/server distribution. Our goal is to create a framework flexible enough that you can use it as a main project base or in addition to your current project based on Node.js. Nuxt.js presets all the configuration needed to make your development of a server-rendered Vue.js Application more enjoyable. In addition, we also provide another deployment option called: nuxt generate. It will build a statically generated Vue.js Application. We believe that option could be the next big step in the development of Web Applications with microservices. Furthermore, you can also use Nuxt.js to create single page applications (spa mode) quickly, useful to keep Nuxt features while working on backoffice applications. As a framework, Nuxt.js comes with a lot of features to help you in your development between the client side and the server side such as Asynchronous Data, Middleware, Layouts, etc.
Source code can be found from https://github.com/nuxt/nuxt.js
Static Site Generators
Gatsby provides development teams an open source frontend framework for creating dynamic, optimized websites and a cloud platform for delivering them on a blazing fast edge network.
Build anything you can imagine
Gatsby gives frontend teams the tools and technology they need to build world-class web experiences. From marketing sites, to eCommerce stores, to documentation. Gatsby can help you build it.
The hardest parts of the web, made simple.
Performance. SEO. Security. Integrations. Accessibility. We’ve got it covered for you. Gatsby makes the hardest parts of building an amazing digital experience simple, leaving you more time focusing on your business.
• Performance that's off the charts Gatsby automates code splitting, image optimization, inlining critical styles, lazy-loading, prefetching resources, and more to ensure your site is fully optimized. No manual tuning required.
• Scalability you can count on Gatsby sites don’t require complex scaling operations or expensive hosting. They scale when needed, but when traffic drops so does your usage — and your costs. Host at scale for pennies.
• Security out of the box Gatsby’s serverless rendering generates static HTML at build time. No server and no reachable database equals no malicious requests, DDOS attacks, or accidental exposure. A Gatsby site’s attack surface is nonexistent.
• Accessibility for everyone Recognized by WebAIM as the most accessible web framework, we build in best practices like accessible routing, progressive page enhancement and a built-in linting tool to find accessibility errors. Help make the web work for everyone.
Build, Preview, Deploy. All in just minutes with Gatsby Cloud.
Go from idea to production in less time with Starters, Themes, and over 2500 plugins that can help connect nearly any CMS, eCommerce platform, analytics tool, or other web service and get your website up and running in just minutes.
Simplicity First Minimal setup with markdown-centered project structure helps you focus on writing.
Vue-Powered Enjoy the dev experience of Vue + webpack, use Vue components in markdown, and develop custom themes with Vue.
Performant VuePress generates pre-rendered static HTML for each page, and runs as an SPA once a page is loaded.
Mobile + Desktop Frameworks
Electron is used for composing desktop applications using NodeJS as the backend and Chromium as the front end while NativeScript and ReactNative are options for those choosing to go with the Vue/Angular environment or React, respectively.
**Edit: Added Flutter, a Dart SDK for developing mobile interfaces.
If you can build a website, you can build a desktop app. Electron is a framework for creating native applications with web technologies like JavaScript, HTML, and CSS. It takes care of the hard parts so you can focus on the core of your application.
With Electron, creating a desktop application for your company or idea is easy. Initially developed for GitHub's Atom editor, Electron has since been used to create applications by companies like Microsoft, Facebook, Slack, and Docker.
- Electron uses Chromium and Node.js so you can build your app with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
- Electron is an open source project maintained by GitHub and an active community of contributors.
- Compatible with Mac, Windows, and Linux, Electron apps build and run on three platforms.
NativeScript lets you develop truly native apps for iOS and Android from a single code base of JavaScript or TypeScript, XML and CSS. NativeScript takes your cross-platform code and translates it into the language that your target platform speaks.
React Native enables you to build world-class application experiences on native platforms using a consistent developer experience based on JavaScript and React. The focus of React Native is on developer efficiency across all the platforms you care about — learn once, write anywhere. Facebook uses React Native in multiple production apps and will continue investing in React Native.
Flutter is an open-source UI software development kit created by Google. It is used to develop cross platform applications for Android, iOS, Linux, macOS, Windows, Google Fuchsia,[3] and the web from a single codebase.
Flutter apps are written in the Dart language and make use of many of the language's more advanced features.
While writing and debugging an application, Flutter runs in the Dart virtual machine, which features a just-in-time execution engine. This allows for fast compilation times as well as "hot reload", with which modifications to source files can be injected into a running application. Flutter extends this further with support for stateful hot reload, where in most cases changes to source code are reflected immediately in the running app without requiring a restart or any loss of state.
For better performance, release versions of Flutter apps on all platforms use ahead-of-time (AOT) compilation.
