So Vue.js is the new JS framework in town. The framework promises to rock our world with its smart ways getting things done. Vue.js isn’t all about creating Single Page Apps or Server Side Rendered ones with the development in Node.js as the backend.
ReactJS does exactly the same so why we need another tool to achieve something exactly the same?
Indeed, ReactJS and Vue.js are quite similar. For example, they both employ a virtual DOM, make available responsive and composable view components, and focus on the main library with concerns: global-state supervision taken care by companion libraries and routing.
The best of both worlds: AngularJS and ReactJS
To many, however, Vue.js is the best of the both world. From React, it got component-based approach, props, one-way data flow for components hierarchy, performance, virtual rendering ability, and understanding of importance of proper state management of apps.
From Angular, it got similar templates with good syntax, and two-way binding when you need it (inside single component).
AngularJS is the inspiration
Evan You during his tenure at Google worked in a number AngularJS projects. He realized if he could extract the best parts of AngularJS, he would build something really lightweight without all the extra concepts involves. He came up with Vue.js, a perfect frontend development framework.
Vue.js’s syntaxs are quite similar to that of AngularJS (e.g. v-if vs ng-if) because AngularJS got most things right that not only inspired Vue.js but also a lot of JS frameworks in their early stages of development.
Vue.js essentially attempts to offer improvements over the shortcoming of Angular.
Read more: How AngularJS extends HTML?
AngularJS without extra concepts involves
Like I said, Vue.js is a legacy of AngularJS. It like the best of AngularJS without the extras. Vue.js is simple, flexible and offer greater modularity and runtime performance.
Complexity
Vue.js is simpler in terms of both API and design. A web developer can build simple applications in a day. This isn’t the case with AngularJS
Flexibility and Modularity
AngularJS is a highly opiniated when it comes to how applications should be structured. On the other hand, Vue.js is a flexible, modular replacement to it. For those who don’t like to code every part of the app’s interface, Vue.js offers a web-pack template while not restricting access to advanced feature sets: hot module reloading, CSS extraction, linting, etc.
Runtime Performance
When it comes to runtime performance, Vue.js has the definite edge as it abstains from e dirty checking. AngularJS becomes annoyingly slow under a lot of watchers—a single change in scope forces all watchers to re-evaluate.
Vue.js’s clear dependency-tracking observation system with asynchronized queueing ensures changes trigger individualistically.
Directives vs Components
Vue.js has profound distinction between the roles of directives and components: Directives encapsulate DOM manipulations, Components are self-sufficient elements with their own view and data logic. In AngularJS, components are a subset of directives
ReactJS and Vue.js are too much similar in scope
Optimization
Vue.js tracks a component’s dependencies during render. As a result, the system knows exactly which components need re-render when the state changes, which doesn’t. Each component can call shouldComponentUpdate to avoid nested component forewarnings.
JSX vs Templates
In React, all components use JSX within render functions to express their UI, a XML-like syntax that encompasses itself to JavaScript.
Read more: Cross platform application frameworks
In Vue.js, the default user experience is offered by means of templates, which is a simpler alternative to JSX. As a result, every valid HTML is a valid Vue.js template. Moreover, Vue.js also supports render functions and JSX although Vue.js developer prefer template approach.
Component-scoped CSS
The default method of styling in Vue.js are the very friendly style tags in single-file components, which provides complete access to CSS in the file as the remaining of your component code.
In React, this is done via CSS-in-JS solutions, which presents a fresh component-oriented styling paradigm that is dissimilar from the usual CSS authoring process.
A sensation among international development community: Vue.js
Vue.js is an open source progressive JavaScript framework used to develop interactive web interfaces. Vue.js focusses on the view layer, offers a lot of functionality for the view layer and can be used for build powerful single-page web apps. Vue.js uses JavaScript ES5 or ES6 while Laravel provides core library for Vue.js.
Virtual DOM
Vue.js employs virtual DOM. Virtual DOM is, essentially, a replica of the principal DOM element, absorbs every change intended for the DOM and is present in the form of JavaScript data structures. The changes made to the JavaScript data structures is compared with the original data structure.
And only the final changes reflect in the real DOM, which will be visible to the users. This is an ingenious of a method, less expensive and the changes can be made at a faster rate.
Data Binding
The data binding feature helps manipulate or assign values to HTML attributes, change the style, assign classes with the help of binding directive called v-bind available with VueJS.
CSS Transitions and Animations
Vue.js provides several methods to apply transition to HTML elements when they are added, updated or removed from the DOM. Vue.js has a built-in transition component that wraps the element responsible for returning transition effect. Developers can with no trouble add 3rd party animation libraries and make the user experience more interactive.
Template
As I mentioned above, Vue.js offers HTML-based templates that bind the DOM with the Vue.js instance data. Vue.js compiles the templates into virtual DOM Render functions. A web developer can use template of the render functions and can replace the template with the render function.
Computed Properties
This is one of the important features of Vue.js. It helps to listen to the changes made to the UI elements and performs the necessary calculations. There is no need of additional coding for this.
Watchers
Watchers are applied to data that changes. For example, form input elements. Here, a developer doesn’t need to add any additional events. Watcher takes care of handling any data changes making the code simple and fast.
Read more: LAMP stack vs MEAN stack
There are three main ways to have components make use of Vue.js’s reactive nature. These are Methods, Computed Properties, and Watchers.
Methods
Methods are used when we want to alter a component’s state or when an event has occurred that isn’t necessarily related to the instance data being mutated. Methods can take arguments but do not keep track of any dependencies.
A method usually creates some side effect within the component. Methods will be triggered each time the component is reloaded.
Computed Properties
Use a computed property when we want to mutate a property that is dependent upon another property being changed. Computed properties are typically dependent on other data properties.
Any change to the dependent properties will trigger the logic for the computed property. Computed properties are cached based on their dependencies so they will only rerun if a dependency changes.
Watchers
Use watchers when we need to be perform some logic as a result of a change that took place on a specific data property. Watched properties only act on one property. This is most useful when you want to perform asynchronous or expensive operations in response to changing data.
The sad story
Regardless of the so many advantages Vue.js has over other JS frameworks, it’s not growing fast enough.
Source: Stack Overflow Insights
To showcase, how effective is Vue.js over other JS frameworks. JavaScript developers created application with following features:
- Authentication & Token support for Restful API
- Customer CRUD functions
- Order CRUD functions
- Dashboard including two charts (Bar/Line/Doughnut)
- Integrate with Material Design (Angular project includes bootstrap)
Apparently, in all departments Vue.js shined over AngularJS and ReactJS.
A major reason is this that Vue.js hasn’t gained a lot of attention or traction in the West. In the international development community, it might be a growing sensation, with developers praising its obvious advantages over other JS frameworks. The problem, however, is that it’s not a household name, certainly not like AngularJS or have the backing of technology giants like Facebook and Google.
