Javascript Frameworks

After discovering yet another interesting Javascript framework recently for web application development (Vue.js), I decided to put together this short list of some the emerging and more popular frameworks out there today for building user interfaces.

Emerging

Mithril is a light-weight robust MVC framework with no dependencies, a small API and small learning curve. Mithril implements a virtual DOM tree similar to React.js, however Mithril’s uncompiled templates run natively in the browser and compile into static Javascript data structures. Mithril.js was initially released in March, 2014 by Leo Horie. Source available at https://github.com/lhorie/mithril.

Vue.js is a library for building interactive web interfaces and its focus is on the view layer only. Vue.js extensions such as vue-router and vue-resource are available for inclusion into the application as needed. The Vue.js API is simple and easy to adapt compared to other frameworks. Vue.js was initially released in July, 2014 by Evan You. Source available at https://github.com/vuejs/vue.

Riot.js - A React-like component based user interface micro-library. Source available at https://github.com/riot/riot.

Polymer is a framework for creating and rendering custom web components. Web Components are the future of the web and Google has created the Polymer library set of polyfills for developers to dive into. Source available at https://github.com/Polymer/polymer.

Popular

AngularJS a framework by Google that binds HTML (views) to Javascript objects (models). AngularJS usage rivals that of BackboneJS, according to JavaScript analytics service Libscore, AngularJS is used on over 10,000 websites including The Weather Channel, Lego, Intel, Sprint and ABC News. AngularJS was initially released in September 2009 by Misko Hevery. Source available at https://github.com/angular/angular.js.

Ember.js is a framework based on the model-view-controller (MVC) pattern and follows Convention over Configuration (CoC). Ember has a large API that covers traditional MVC patterns and a broad range of helper utilities. Ember 2.0 has a brand new high performance rendering engine named Glimmer, and server-side rendering is provided with FastBoot. After Handlebars in 2010, on December 8, 2011, Yehuda Katz released Ember.js. Source available at https://github.com/emberjs/ember.js.

React.js is the framework that powers Facebook and Instagram’s user interface and is one of the fastest growing JavaScript frameworks today. Features include one-way data flow and a virtual-DOM using an in-memory data structure cache process so only applicable nodes on the client browser’s DOM are updated for high performance complex user interfaces. React.js was created by Jordan Walke, a ‎Software Engineer at Facebook and was initially released in May, 2013 by Facebook and Instagram. Source available at https://github.com/facebook/react.

Backbone.js is a light weight framework that provides a RESTful JSON interface for data models, views, collections, and events. Backbone.js is used on over 12,000 websites according to Libscore including Linkedin, Pinterest, ESPN, Walmart, Target and Best Buy. Backbone.js was initially released on October 13, 2010 by Jeremy Ashkenas. Source available at https://github.com/jashkenas/backbone/.

• From the Backbone.js website: Backbone’s only hard dependency is Underscore.js ( >= 1.7.0) also created by Jeremy Ashkenas. For RESTful persistence and DOM manipulation with Backbone.View, include jQuery ( >= 1.11.0).
• Libraries such as Lo-Dash instead of Underscore.js and Zepto instead of jQuery work with varying degrees of compatibility.
• Another resource for non jQuery implementations: https://github.com/jashkenas/backbone/wiki/Using-Backbone-without-jQuery.