Best Frontend Frameworks in 2021 for Web Development

With each passing day, the web development sphere is revolutionizing the way people see and use applications, websites, products, and much more. Thanks to an array of the best front-end frameworks offering unforgettable user experiences and satisfying business requirements with next-gen web development imperatives.

However, choosing the right framework for your software development is not an easy job. You need to have clear market research and an understanding of the pros and cons. But not to worry, we are here to save your time and energy with our crystal clear recommendation.

This blog shall help you walk through the list of the top frontend frameworks of 2021 and choose what best suits your next web development project.

Most Popular Frontend Frameworks

A ‘Framework’ is an ambit of programs you can use to develop applications. To be precise, if you consider a book as a ‘Programming Language’ then the framework symbolizes a ‘Library’. And you need an all-inclusive vetted library to satisfy all your readers.

So, let’s move forward and take a deeper dive into the universe of the most popular frontend frameworks, their pros, cons, and use cases.

1. React: React is an actively used frontend open-source JavaScript Library that helps in developing highly responsive web apps. Its key objective is to create interactive User Interfaces (UI) that enhance your app’s speed.

Pros

• Easy to learn, understand, use, and execute
• Dynamic web application development is easier
• Its reusable components make apps easier to maintain and develop

Cons

• Constant technology updates lead to poor documentation
• It just covers UI layers of your app
• Beginners have to come across the complexity of JavaScript XML

Use Cases

• React enabled high-end modulation and lesser time for updating Yahoo Mail’s user interface
• Most of the components of the Airbnb application are made with React

2. Angular : Angular is another open-source frontend framework that is a part of the JavaScript ecosystem used for building impressive UI. The framework includes versions from 2 to the recently introduced in 2020 i.e., Angular 9.

Pros

• Two-way data binding enables you to reduce the development time
• Directives feature helps to create rich and dynamic content
• Makes components more reusable, easy to test, and manage with dependency injection

Cons

• Single-page applications (SPAs) and dynamic applications shall present an inconvenience
• More time is required to migrate legacy systems from AngularJS to Angular
• Angular is complex and displays verbosity

Use Cases

• YouTube’s version on PlayStation 3 is the best example of the best frontend frameworks
• Angular helped The Guardian to develop the unlimited scrolling of search results

3. Vue.js: Vue.js is used to create single-page apps and progressive web interfaces for both mobile as well as desktop. In 2019, it became the 2nd most loved frontend framework to curate user interfaces.

Pros

• You can download and install the library very quickly
• It works well for unit-testing and is easy to read and understand
• It has a robust tool system and includes an array of new functions

Cons

• English-speaking-only shall have problems understanding the Chinese instructions
• Reactivity system makes mistakes while reading the data
• It doesn’t have that good support to handle large-scale projects

Use Cases

• Its component-based structure made it the perfect fit for IBM Hybrid Cloud Design
• Alibaba made use of Vue,js as its go-to frontend platform

4. jQuery: jQuery is one of the best frontend frameworks with its unique qualities of animations, query selection, and strong API selection. It avoids the complexities of writing Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and JavaScript.

Pros

• Delivers faster results and is competitive
• Being one of the best UI frameworks gives it good compatibility with cross-platforms
• You can download and learn it easily

Cons

• It’s highly vulnerable to alterations
• It can lead to massive errors in the future if not used with a proper JS foundation
• jQuery is slower as compared to CSS

Use Cases

• Quora made use of jQuery to enhance its graphical interface
• Uber has it in its technology stack

5. Emberjs: It’s a worth-mentioning frontend development framework that allows developing dynamic SPAs. Emberjs is a Model-View-ViewModel (MVVM) architectural pattern-based full-featured open-source framework.

Pros

• The size of its package ecosystem is very well-developed
• Easy generation of an entire app by using only one command in a short time
• It’s backwards-compatible and avoids spoiling applications

Cons

• Quite challenging to learn and proves heavy for small-scale applications
• It’s sluggish and your project may suffer stagnation
• Offers very little flexibility and configuration

Use Cases

• LinkedIn made use of Emberjs to enhance their UX/UI
• The framework helped Netflix to be more scalable and modern

6. Backbonejs: It’s one of the best frontend frameworks that allows you to orchestrate your JS code in a Model View Controller (MVC) pattern. Its collection and redrawing capabilities of the Document Object Model (DOM) are great.

Pros

• It’s easy to learn, understand and is lightweight
• The framework offers good control over performance
• You can store your data in models rather than DOM

Cons

• The architecture is not clear with the provision of some elemental tools
• You cannot be more productive with Backbonejs
• It lacks two-way data binding support making it complex

Use Cases

• Trello made use Backbonejs to handle dynamic re-syncs and updates
• Hulu made use of this framework to generate fast user experiences for movie lovers

7. Semantic-UI: It is a UI development framework for CSS that became the one of the top-notch JavaScript projects on GitHub. Its community has successfully created 3K+ themes for the framework alongside adding 50+ components.

Pros

• Semantic UI is very easy to use and is intuitive
• Designs a page or develops a project rapidly
• There is a good range of themes available on the framework

Cons

• Its browser compatibility is weak
• Less responsive to cover all mobile devices
• Has a smaller community on GitHub

Use Cases

• Snapchat keeps Semantic UI in its tech stack to offer an impressive user experience
• Accenture made use of this frontend framework to make its website more intuitive

8. Foundation: Foundation is one of the best front-end frameworks 2021 outlining JS, HTML, and CSS collection. It’s one of the top existing frameworks used by developers to build custom sites and apps.

Pros

• Allows designing for multiple screen sizes at ease
• Block grid feature converting unarranged list into a proper grid format
• Easily customizable and extensible while choosing add-ons

Cons

• Learning Foundation would be hard if you are a beginner
• It has a limited number of components
• The framework might create problem for large-scale projects

Use Cases

• Adobe uses Foundation UI to boost speed and utility
• Foundation UI is helping Cisco to be responsive and handy

9. Svelte: It’s the first and foremost compile-time framework that offers less coding. Its ability to convert an app into ideal JS at build times rather than rendering your app code at runtime makes it one of the best frontend frameworks.

Pros

• It has a pretty strong Server-Side Rendering (SSR) implementation called Sapper
• Proposes fast development capabilities with a great learning curve
• The framework offers easy mobile implementation

Cons

• It has a very low number of packages in comparison to its competitors
• It creates confusion related to syntax and variable names
• Many difficulties arise due to its compiler-like pattern

Use Cases

• Spotify uses Svelte for its landing page
• The framework is helping Noppo to offer a slick interactive UX/UI