A brief history of React.js
The inception of React.js began in 2011 when Facebook engineers noticed some performance issues caused by a sharp rise in the number of users. They embarked on a fresh news feed or exclusively a dynamic news feed, leading the way to the creation of React.js.
In 2013, Facebook open-sourced it; since then has come a long way from where it all started. To gain a deeper understanding of their remarkable achievements, we would explore some intriguing popularity statistics.
As per a report by Statista, It was the second most used front-end development technology in 2022, overtaking jQuery, with 42% of developers reported to be using it.
It has over 204k stars on GitHub and over 1500 contributors.
Over 10 million companies across the globe are using React.JS. This number also includes some of the biggest and most influential tech giants that we will delve into throughout the course of this article.
ReactJS development allows developers to build interactive, responsive web applications with reusable components. This is why it is hailed as one of the most powerful JavaScript libraries in the current era for developing modern web applications. And there are several factors that made it a popular JavaScript library. Below are a few of them:
Declarative: Since it is declarative, that provides a very simple way to develop interactive user interfaces.
Reusable components: The component we code using React.js can be reused, thus breaking complex logic into multiple smaller parts.
Virtual DOM: With react, we usually communicate with the virtual DOM (a copy of DOM saved in memory), which improves the application’s performance as it works by activating the individual component on the virtual DOM instead of reloading the whole page.
React.js is easy to grasp: Nowadays, simplicity and the learning curve are significant factors behind programming language growth.
A great number of pre-built libraries: It has so many pre-built libraries that can speed up development time.
Strong community support: React has a huge community of developers, so you can collaborate and get help from supporters around the world.
React.js – A Powerful JavaScript Library to Build Interactive UI
In simple terms, React.js is one of the most popular JavaScript libraries that is used to build dynamic interfaces and interactive elements on web pages. It boasts features that help in developing the UI where only necessary web components load or render when a user interacts, bypassing the full page loading, thus enhancing the overall performance and speed of the website.
It has got some blazing-fast rendering capabilities that make it one of the most-preferred Javascript libraries among developers and tech-giant. This is why it has been adopted by many biggies mentioned in the list below.
Facebook is the world’s biggest social platform, with over 2.9 billion users. It partially uses ReactJS blended with other technologies on its web application. Interestingly, ReactJS was created by a Software engineer – Jordan Walke– a software engineer at Facebook, and later implemented on the Facebook web application.
By injecting ReactJS, enhancing user experience, and bringing more interactive features onboard, they eliminated the traditional news feed, which used to force the page to reload every time users interacted with in-page elements.
Instagram is one of the most popular social media platforms that allow you to share photos and videos and connect with millions of users across the globe.
This is another app that deployed ReactJS in its front-end development. Instagram’s web page is developed using React and Backbone.Router. Features like geolocations, Google Map APIs, and accurate search results are some examples that show the significant amount of usage of ReactJS by Instagram.
- Netflix
Netflix is a subscription-based streaming service that lets users watch TV shows and movies. It features a clean and uncluttered homepage and a well-designed UI.
Netflix Likes React!, This blog gives detail on why the world’s leading streaming entertainment service provider adopted ReactJS.
As stated in the blog post by Netflix:
We were able to leverage the following features to improve our application’s initial load times, runtime performance, and overall scalability – Netflix development team.
The world’s leading streaming service provider significantly improved the application startup load time, runtime performance, and modularity by using ReactJS on its client and server-side development.
- Asana
Asana is one of the popular project management tools with a variety of features, such as lists, files, and calendar views. You can track and manage projects and individual tasks with ease by using Asana.
The motive behind using ReactJS by Asana was to improve the first-time experience. The FX team (Asana’s engineers with a mission to make first-time visitors’ experience flawless) realized first-time users’ few seconds are very crucial that can make or break things.
In the blog published by Asana in 2018, they described how the company leveraged ReactJS development in building a high-performance web application in order to enhance the first-time visitor experience.
- Salesforce
Salesforce is the world’s leading customer relationship management (CRM) platform that offers cloud-based solutions to millions of businesses across the globe. It helps marketing, sales, commerce, service, and IT teams to connect, create and manage sales and marketing campaigns.
Visualforce is a framework, developed by Salesforce, that allows developers to build custom user interfaces. With the goal of enhancing user experience, Salesforce used ReactJs to speed up rendering for Visualforce pages and greatly benefited from the use of the React.JS library with its incorporation into this platform.
- Scribd
Scribd is a digital platform with a vast library of books, audiobooks, magazines, podcasts, sheet music, and various kinds of documents. Though, you need to subscribe to the plan in order to gain access to all kinds of content.
In its blog, the company outlines some major factors that made them switch from a ten-year-old legacy code solution – written in Fortitude and Coffeescript – to a React.JS and fully modern framework without starting from scratch.
- Dropbox (HelloSign)
Dropbox is a popular file hosting service that lets you store and share files online. Along with this, it features some amazing in-built features such as a HelloSign. An innovative solution that lets you sign documents within the app.
With the existing tech stack, the Dropbox team came across a problem where the files that were supported for the signing were not opening in many browsers. Also, the team realized that it was time to adopt new technology that could help in making improving fidelity between the editor, and increase the application performance and the editor’s usability.
Subsequently, the team decided to overhaul the signer with the aid of React. The decision to shift from Jquery to ReactJs first appeared to be quite daunting; nevertheless, it turned out to be a fruitful one as it led to a substantial enhancement in the functionality and performance of HelloSign, taking it to the next level.
- Yahoo Mail
Yahoo mail has been around us for the past two decades. In early 2017, Yahoo mail got a new rich interface made upon switching their old tech stack that included libraries such as KnockOut, Durandal, and Rivets and embracing React.JS + Flux to improve the old bland user interface for developing a next-gen user-friendly and dynamic interface.
- Instacart
Instacart is another popular platform built using React.JS. It is a popular website that allows customers to order from a particular store through a website and app and get the goods delivered online. With time when its customer base and partners grew many times, that made the company switched from Backbone, jQuery, Underscore, and Haml to ReactJS in order to improve its performance.
Reddit is hailed as the “front page of the internet” that allows users from all over the world to connect with each other, engage in discussions or ask for help with a specific problem. According to a report by Reddit’s former senior software team lead – the platform started using React back in 2014. Also, a significant amount of front-end elements on the website are designed using React.JS.
Conclusion
We hope you find this article helpful and are now very well aware of the role of React.JS in the current time. With a growing number of users turning online for all kinds of needs, it has now become essential for businesses to adopt modern technology such as React.JS in order to provide customers with robust web applications.
At Brilworks, we focus on delivering professionally crafted applications for you by employing expert developers and providing technical solutions. To find out more, you can hire react developers to help you find the right technology solution for you.
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Top comments (2)
Thank you so much for the amazing information. I learned a lot from it. Can you please guide me which language is being used the Scribd Downloader Website? I want to learn and create similar website. Thanks in advance for helping me.
It was developed using Wordpress.