Not sure about React? This article to answer your questions

3 min readDec 28, 2020

Article Link:https://clipversity.com/article/Not-sure-about-React--This-article-to-answer-your-questions-MP3_GTUeDgZZeRvuQ9H/en

What is React

React, also known as React.js or ReactJS, is a Javascript front-end library developed by Facebook. Currently, Facebook, Netflix, Imgur, Airbnb and other large technology companies use ReactJS to develop their websites. The Hong Kong forum — Lihkg is developed by React.

To run ReactJS on your computer, the first step is to install nodejs on your computer. Nodejs is a cross-platform JavaScript execution environment developed by Google. Before Nodejs appeared, Javascript was only used as a small programing language in the front end of the web page for the form or data verification. But Nodejs can now install modules written by different developers through NPM (Node Package Manager), and Javascript not only runs on the web, but also we can execute Nodejs applications on the server or Windows/Mac Program directly.

Why use React

The biggest feature of React is “fast”, because React is all Javascript, and Javascript is better than traditional in rendering pages. React uses Virtual Dom. In the past, whenever a web page was updated, the entire web page needed to be refreshed to display new content, while Virtual Dom would only update the part that needed to be updated, compared to re-rendering. Time and resources are much less.

But when both are rendered from scratch, Virtual Dom will not have a special advantage.

Rendering method

And PHP uses the browser to render the content after returning the entire webpage from the server. This method is also called “Server-Side Rendering” SSR

And React has two methods (SSR and CSR) [introduce in detail in React SEO later], the CSR (Client Side Rendering) is to render locally.

Although some React application use SSRs, React SSRs all operate in Virtual Dom mode.

The programming language in React

Javascript and JSX, We can write both Javascript and “HTML” together React. In React, there is no HTML, only JSX which is very similar to HTML.

We will teach you how to make React App from scratch later.

React vs React Native vs Next.js vs React Ionic

We can use React to write web pages, mobile apps or computer programs.

For example, React native is used to write mobile applications. It is also developed by Facebook. The syntax of the program is very similar to React used on web pages.

Create-React-App

This is where React officially recommends beginners to start. Create-React-App is a nodejs instruction, which requires nodejs to download and install a React Hello World project, it will install some commonly used node packages for you, so you can start making React App immediately.

Of course, you can also install React yourself, but you need some knowledge

Next.js

Next.js is another package based on React. It can be said to be an evolution of React. It improves the SEO problems of traditional React CSR.

If you want to know more you can refer to this article:

Understanding how imgur overcome the SEO problem from SPA | Clipversity

Brief description of SEO in create-react-appcreate-react-app

React Ionic

Ionic framework is a packaging system used to replace WebApp written in PWA technology to become a mobile app format that allowed us to upload to the Google Play and Apple App Store. Ionic framework also supports other Javascript Frameworks (Angular and Vue).

And React Ionic uses React to make PWA applications.

We will have more articles about PWA later.