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December 2, 2021
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minimal reading
React is a JavaScript library for building user interfaces. It provides an easy way to create components and manage the flow of data through your application. It focuses on performance and efficiency with fast component rendering and lower memory usage. Versions prior to React18 focused on the imperative approach, where you would mutate the data directly. This led to common issues like slow browser updates.
React18 is the latest iteration of the framework and is designed to reduce the amount of code you need to write. In this release, you're moving toward a functional paradigm where the data is immutable. This requires some changes for developers, but should improve the performance and functionality of your apps. It's meant to be incremental and backward compatible, so it should be easy to adopt.
What's new in React18?
Image optimization and support for image elements
Since images make up the majority of downloaded content on the Internet, they play a major role in webpage loading speed. React17.5 introduced an API that allows you to create dynamic image sizes on the fly. React18 goes one step further by allowing you to create multiple sizes based on where the image is displayed for optimal loading time.
Developers can now use the image or source elements when defining srcset. This allows you to specify images that are more suitable for different screen resolutions.
Cache prevention with file revision ID
Developers can easily reference any cached file by specifying the file's revision ID, preventing unnecessary downloads of old assets even if they have been modified remotely. Changes are also detected more quickly, so you don't have to wait for your browser to start downloading to see the latest updates made to Content Delivery Networks (CDNs).
Server-side rendering for Google Chrome
With server-side rendering, you can render initial state on the server and then propagate that state to the client. This means that the initial state is available immediately and you don't have to wait for all components to be rendered before viewing the data.
sticky headings
React18 allows us to easily set the header position to fixed, allowing for maximum performance when using scroll regions as fixed footers or infinite scrolling. Sticky headers leverage the width of the document viewport and can even be used on touch devices, which has been quite difficult to achieve correctly with React so far.
component selection
A new component launcher has been added in React17, which has been made more flexible and functional in React18 with several new features. These features include custom tag names, drag-and-drop sorting, newly added component highlighting, custom styles for the selector, etc.
Phases
A new virtual DOM implementation called Fiber has been introduced that can reduce the amount of work required to produce predictable changes in application state. Fiber also enables server-side rendering with minimal overhead, even in highly dynamic UIs, as it tracks mutate operations that result in elements being re-rendered so they can be moved from a previous location if necessary. The result is the ability to quickly generate large amounts of data without sacrificing responsiveness. This mechanism comes in handy when you need multiple templates or snippets on a single page with hundreds or thousands of items.
Neue Hooks-API
There are recently introduced hooks, namely useLayoutEffect, useCallback, useMemo and useImperativeHandle. The former allows developers to manage the logic required to design each component. Instead, the last four are combined into a named hook effect intended to replace the life cycle's imperative methods.
Use LayoutEffect
The new API allows us to abstract all rendering logic related to re-rendering whenever there is a UI change. Such changes can occur by responding to scrolling events or animations, window resizing, or any other type of state change. With this API you can pass an object whose current state contains everything needed to make it work.
use callback
UseCallback differs from useEffect in that it can be implemented without a class. All you have to do is call setState, which renders the logic again. UseImperativeHandle - The new API returns a component instead of an obscure and difficult-to-test function because it allows us to see what's been happening in your UI, allowing you to debug issues more efficiently and tune performance if necessary.
Learn by heart
You no longer need to implement memorization. You'll need to add the saved keyword if needed, and then wrap your functions with AutoSuspense (more on that in a later section). To help with the implementation, Hooks also provides us with two methods called useMemo and memoized.
Using createRef()
createRef is another component you can use to keep track of elements in the DOM. By using createRef, you can easily transfer data between components and avoid problems that could arise from component re-rendering.
react.createClass()
The createClass function has been removed in favor of the streamlined Hooks API. This was because it is not required for any imperative class methods, thus creating unnecessary barriers to entry.
Reagieren.Selfsuspense
React now supports asynchronous rendering by default, which is great for performance. However, the problem is that the effects are not visible to anyone working in the application as they are difficult to debug. Fortunately, it's now possible to use the AutoSuspense component that shows the effects while debugging, making it easy to tweak performance.
How will React18 benefit developers?
In addition to all of the new features mentioned above, there are features here (some of which we've already discussed above) that make the development process much more manageable.
Use LayoutEffect
This feature significantly improves performance when using large, dynamic datasets, and you can use it in components with multiple children to optimize render times. This is also beneficial in cases where you need to implement dynamic behavior that requires external data or a callback to a server.
use callback
It's useful when you need to perform imperative operations on your UI as it eliminates the need for a class component to add a callback to it. In practice, React uses useCallback in its codebase and recommends that all other callbacks it passes wrap with the same method to avoid unnecessary repetition.
Effect
The effect hook is an alternative to implementing stateful logic using lifecycle methods designed to be used directly without a class or higher order (HOC) components. It supports error bounds, but these are provided by React instead of the effect.
Learn by heart
Rather than implementing Recall itself, it makes this function available to us, but with the stipulation that the function is only safe to use in effects and must not refer to anything outside of its scope (outside the component itself). This feature is useful for developers when using hooks as it can speed up performance without drastic changes.
Using createRef()
createRef is one of the most convenient and flexible approaches because you can pass any value you want. You can even enhance your app's design by passing data from one component to another, and you don't have to worry about how the data is used because props can be anything.
Replay of open source sessions
open repetitionis an open source session playback suite that lets you see what users are doing in your web application and helps you troubleshoot errors faster. OpenReplay is self-hosted to give you full control over your data.
Start enjoying your debugging experience:Get started with OpenReplay for free.
What's next?
The development team behind React has also announced Hooks as an alpha release. It is likely that some changes can still be expected before a stable state is reached. While you can test the new features now, you should not push the old features into production until React18 reaches a stable state.
While upgrading from React17.5 to React18 is a straightforward and backwards compatible process, React18 is not backwards compatible with React16. To upgrade from 16 to 18 you need to make some changes such as: B. Updating your build tools, adding new Babel plugins, and updating the way you work with hooks.
Upgrading to React18 isn't too complicated as you can remove hooks from your production packages or leave them as is. In this case, all you have to do is replace your imports from React.AutoSuspense to Suspense and change your autorun bindings to runInBatchMode.
Diploma
React18 promises higher performance while improving development workflow. One of the most outstanding features that React18 offers is the ability to render server-side with minimal effort, even on highly dynamic UIs. This means your pages can load and refresh faster, which can significantly reduce your bounce rate. It also comes with the new Hooks API that allows us to work more efficiently with asynchronous operations as it handles all the necessary DOM manipulations.
While React18 looks promising, I strongly recommend not using it in production until it reaches a stable state, but feel free to play around with it and prepare your tools to support it.
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FAQs
What is the advantage of React 18? ›
It offers a quick way to create elements and control how data flows through your application. Fast component rendering and less memory usage emphasize performance and efficiency. Before React 18, the imperative approach was the focus.
Does React 18 improve performance? ›Then, React 18 will batch these updates into a single update and rerender the app only once instead of calling the render method multiple times. This will considerably improve the app's overall performance.
Why should I upgrade to React 18? ›Automatic Batching
The createRoot() API in React 18 enables batching all state updates, regardless of where they happen in the application. React then re-renders the page after all state-updates. Since this is a breaking change, you can stop automatic batching using the flushSync() API.
Apart from the above trends, many reasons imply that ReactJS is potentially the future of web development. For example; ReactJS has overtaken jQuery and become the most used web framework by software developers worldwide as of 2021. ReactJS is the most popular front-end framework/library of 2021.
What is the difference between React 18 and 17? ›In React 17, if you change the state of the component two times, the component will re-render two times. Now, in React 18, the two updates will be batched, and the component will render only once. And that's only if you're using createRoot instead of render .
What is deprecated in React 18? ›Updates to Server Rendering APIs
In this release, we're revamping our react-dom/server APIs to fully support Suspense on the server and Streaming SSR. As part of these changes, we're deprecating the old Node streaming API, which does not support incremental Suspense streaming on the server.
- Concurrent React. ...
- Improvement in Automatic Batching. ...
- New Start Transition API to Keep Your App Responsive. ...
- New Suspense SSR, Architectural Improvements. ...
- New APIs/Hooks startTransition(), useTransition(), useDeferredValue() ...
- IE11 No Longer Supported.
Lazy loading can occur on different moments in the application, but it typically happens on some user interactions such as scrolling and navigation. So basically, it's a practice of delaying load or initialization of resources or objects until they're ready to be load or until users need them.
Is suspense stable in React 18? ›Suspense in React 18 works best when combined with the transition API. If you suspend during a transition, React will prevent already-visible content from being replaced by a fallback. Instead, React will delay the render until enough data has loaded to prevent a bad loading state.
How do you use React 17 instead of React 18? ›- Create React App. create a folder and name it react-downgrade-2022 or whatever you want. ...
- Uninstall react and react-dom. ...
- 3 Install react 17 and react-dom 17. ...
- 4 Change index. ...
- 5 finish.
Does Redux work with React 18? ›
React-Redux v8 is still compatible with all versions of React that have hooks (16.8+, 17. x, and 18. x; React Native 0.59+), and should just work out of the box. In most cases, it's very likely that the only change you will need to make is bumping the package version to "react-redux": "^8.0" .
Is React going to obsolete? ›There is no plans to remove class components. Library developers recommend use functional components in new code. You can write functional or class components if you can keep code clean and easy to understand for any develop.
Is it worth learning ReactJS in 2022? ›The short answer is YES! As we can see from the benefits listed in this article, it is easy to see why React is still enjoying its popularity in 2022. It was voted the 2nd most popular web framework for developers, only falling behind Node. js (see above) 2022 in the reliable StackOverflow Developer Survey 2022.
Should you learn React in 2023? ›React is an excellent framework for web development in 2023.
It's easy to learn, and it offers a lot of benefits over other JavaScript libraries, including those that are more popular.
There are lots of React jobs
This is higher than the average salary for a developer with experience in other frontend technologies, such as Angular or Vue. Overall, learning React is likely to be a valuable investment for frontend developers in 2023 and beyond.
You no longer need to import React from "react" .
Is React 18 backwards compatible? ›React 18 is also backward compatible, but with a caveat: If your app uses the old ReactDOM. render API to render your component tree into DOM, React will use a compatibility mode, and the new features won't be enabled.
Does Nextjs 12 support React 18? ›Concurrent features in React 18 include built-in support for server-side Suspense and SSR streaming support. This allows you to server-render pages using HTTP streaming. This is an experimental feature in Next. js 12, but once enabled, SSR will use the same strict runtime as Middleware.
Is no longer supported in React 18 use createRoot instead? ›The render() method of the react-dom package is considered legacy starting react-dom version 18. The method is replaced with the createRoot() method that is exported from react-dom/client . The createRoot() method takes the root element as a parameter and creates a React root.
Is material UI compatible with React 18? ›1. React 18 support Material UI v5 is the only version that fully supports React 18, so you'll need to update if you want to take advantage of the latest and greatest React features.
Which browser support React 18? ›
React 18 supports all modern browsers (Edge, Firefox, Chrome, Safari, etc). If you support older browsers and devices such as Internet Explorer which do not provide modern browser features natively or have non-compliant implementations, consider including a global polyfill in your bundled application.
Can I use React 18 in react native? ›React 18 enabled by default
Starting in React Native 0.69, React 18 is enabled by default when you enable the New Architecture. The means you're able to use the new features in React 18 as soon as you migrate.
Babel is a toolchain that is mainly used to convert ECMAScript 2015+ code into a backwards compatible version of JavaScript in current and older browsers or environments.
What is lazy loading in React? ›Lazy loading is one of the most common design patterns used in web and mobile development. It is widely used with frameworks like Angular and React to increase an application's performance by reducing initial loading time. In the earlier versions of React, lazy loading was implemented using third-party libraries.
What is webpack in React? ›Webpack is a popular module bundling system built on top of Node. js. It can handle not only combination and minification of JavaScript and CSS files, but also other assets such as image files (spriting) through the use of plugins.
Can I use suspense without lazy? ›React lazy loading can not do without the Suspense component, which also can not work with a fallback prop because we will still get the same error even if we don't specify a Suspense component. However, there's no problem in programming that does not have a solution.
What is suspense in React? ›Suspense is the first feature released by the Facebook React team that takes advantage of the new concurrent rendering engine built into React 18. It allows you to build apps with more responsive UIs that use less browser resources. It also gives developers and designers a more intuitive API to work with.
What are the biggest limitations of React? ›- It's a Library, Not a Framework. Like other Javascript libraries, React contains pre-written code. ...
- It Uses JSX. React uses JSX, a syntax extension to JavaScript. ...
- Does Not Support SEO. React, by design, was not built with SEO in mind. ...
- Lack of Updated Documentation. ...
- Fast Development Speed.
React 18 is the latest major React version released. It introduces many foundational concepts and yet does not require any major code changes.
What is the difference between React lazy and suspense? ›lazy() is only loaded when it is required to be displayed. While the lazy component is loading, you should probably show some form of placeholder content, such as a loading indication. React. Suspense is a component used to surround lazy components.
Why should I use React instead of JavaScript? ›
React components feature reusable code, making them easy to use and understand. The JSX (JavaScript XML) syntax in the React package is an HTML-like syntax that is processed into JavaScript calls. React components are reusable and have their own logic and controls, which is useful when working on larger projects.
When should I use Nextjs over React? ›Next JS is used to create web applications and performs server-side rendering, whereas React JS focuses on rendering towards the DOM. Next JS offers server-side rendering (SSR), whereas Create React App offers client-side rendering, improving the application performance.
Is there anything better than React? ›Preact is one of the best alternatives to React, as it is significantly faster, smaller (10kB minified), and offers React compatibility.
Is Redux overkill? ›But in some apps, Redux is just plain overkill where Context API is more suited. And in some cases, you don't need either, using local state is perfectly fine. Examples of using Context API in smaller applications would be to update the selected language or colour theme.
Is Redux obsolete? ›The redux core package still works, but today we consider it to be obsolete. All of its APIs are also re-exported from @reduxjs/toolkit , and configureStore does everything createStore does but with better default behavior and configurability.
When should I not use Redux? ›I would like to amend this: don't use Redux until you have problems with vanilla React. Redux is most useful in cases when: You have large amounts of application state that are needed in many places in the app. The app state is updated frequently.
Is Netflix built using React? ›Netflix uses ModeJs with the assistance of React for image synthesis. In this article, we have also incorporated a React Netflix clone project with source code which is also available on Netflix clone react js Github. This article will also help you in checking out the Netflix clone project report.
What is replacing React? ›"Web Components" represent a set of browser technologies and could pave the way for alternatives to UI libraries like React.
Is Netflix made using React? ›Netflix also uses React, notably on their Gibbon platform, which is utilized for low-performance TV devices rather than the DOM used in web browsers. Significant reasons like notably start-up speed, runtime performance, and modularity made them choose React.
How many days does it take to master React? ›For a programmer who is already familiar with HTML and at least one other programming language, learning React will take no more than a single day. React may be learned by a novice programmer in a matter of days. There are more libraries and technologies that may be used with React, such as Redux or Relay.
What should I learn after reacting in 2022? ›
After learning React, there are numerous other tools you can learn to take your skills to the next level. In particular, taking the time to learn how to use Node. js, Express. js, and MongoDB can round out your JavaScript toolbelt.
Can I learn React in 3 months? ›In short, becoming proficient with the basics of React will take you between one and six months. The exact time to master React depends on your prior software development experience and the time you are willing to dedicate toward learning.
Should I learn React or Nextjs? ›js before React? Many developers find that learning React first is a good place to start before diving into learning next. js. React is a JavaScript library for building user interfaces, and it lets you create reusable components so that your code is easy to read and maintain.
Should I learn Vue or React 2023? ›Overall, Vue enables faster project growth and performance, but React. js has a more robust ecosystem, more templates, and more functionality. This is why teams on smaller projects where performance is crucial choose Vue, whereas React is better suited to complex web platforms.
Why is Nextjs better than React? ›Next. js is a great tool for JAMstack because it uses server-side rendering to automatically generate HTML pages from your React components. On the other hand, React is a front-end JavaScript library that helps developers create user interfaces and reusable UI components.
Why learning React is so hard? ›React is difficult to learn for beginners. This is due to its modular nature. Most React modules are interrelated and require you to use other software to build a complex application. You'll also need knowledge of functional programming.
How do you use React 17 instead of 18? ›- Create React App. create a folder and name it react-downgrade-2022 or whatever you want. ...
- Uninstall react and react-dom. ...
- 3 Install react 17 and react-dom 17. ...
- 4 Change index. ...
- 5 finish.
- Speed. ...
- Flexibility. ...
- Performance. ...
- Usability. ...
- Reusable Components. ...
- It's easy to learn. ...
- It helps to build rich user interfaces. ...
- It allows writing custom components.
React 17 is still the current stable version, but we now know a lot more about React 18. We can analyze changes to React components, user interfaces libraries, and many other aspects talked about by the React community. Let's take a closer look at what it brings to the table in this update.
What is the main benefit of using React? ›Faster Development
Developers can quickly build fast, lightweight, and maintainable user interfaces using ReactJS. You can write less code and concentrate on developing the main functionality rather than thinking about how to implement it. The result: fewer bugs and more time spent creating features than fixing bugs!
Is React 18 stable version? ›
React just received a stable version of its version 18 release; There are many changes that will improve the lives of React developers, including Server Components, Suspense improvements or Concurrent Rendering; As with any tool, this one also has its use case.
What are the best features of React? ›- JSX.
- Components.
- One-way Data Binding.
- Virtual DOM.
- Simplicity.
- Performance.
Accordingly, React's advantage over other frameworks is that it creates Virtual DOM as a copy of the Real DOM, and whenever the state change in a React component happens, it re-renders the Virtual DOM first, compares the old version to the new one, and eventually only the required minimum is changed in the Real DOM ...
What are the major features of React? ›Easy creation of dynamic applications: React makes it easier to create dynamic web applications because it requires less coding and offers more functionality, as opposed to JavaScript, where coding often gets complex very quickly. Improved performance: React uses Virtual DOM, thereby creating web applications faster.
Which backend is best for React? ›js is the best backend with React, as you can use it to create microservices and query builders to solve all database queries. The combination of React for the front end and Node for the back end is perfect for developing a web application that will handle multiple simultaneous requests.
What UI is best for React? ›CoreUI for React is a popular open-source UI library for building modern and responsive React-based applications. It offers a comprehensive set of UI components, ranging from basic elements like buttons, forms, and icons, to more complex components like data tables, charts, and modals.
Why is React the best framework? ›ReactJS is a web development tool that is preferred due to React components. A web app developer uses flexibility and code reusability to his advantage. React provides high performance, cost-efficient development, modularity, reusable wrapper components, and other benefits for rapid development.
Why do we use React instead of JavaScript? ›React components feature reusable code, making them easy to use and understand. The JSX (JavaScript XML) syntax in the React package is an HTML-like syntax that is processed into JavaScript calls. React components are reusable and have their own logic and controls, which is useful when working on larger projects.
Why use React instead of HTML? ›React is a powerful tool for any developer who knows HTML and wants to build more organized and dynamic websites, faster.