Developers have built numerous commonly used and famous mobile applications and sites using these two technologies called React and React Native.
Facebook introduced new features in 2011 and was expanding its ads. Their developers noticed that the constant upgrading of features was taking a toll on their work’s speed.
In 2015, Facebook introduced the option of content cascading to help businesses share their main page’s content on all their local pages in one click. Their engineering team had to realign the application to update it with these features.
Finally, Facebook created Reactjs and developed it for their timeline in 2011 which was a revolutionary step.
Mark Zuckerberg famously said in 2012: “The biggest mistake we made as a company was being too much on HTML as opposed to native.”
Soon after he made the statement, The app development industry was gifted with two highly robust technologies.
What is React?
React is an open-source Javascript library to build trustworthy and speedy user interfaces for web applications.
React works on Document Object Model (DOM). It is an interface that works in the form of a document tree where each node represents a document or object.
What is React Native?
React Native is a cross-platform JavaScript framework to build the front and back ends of mobile apps. It has a 21.4k Fork and 98.9k Stars.
Facebook developed it to help its mobile app developers. It is open source, which means other developers can create mobile apps on it with a single codebase.
How Does React Native Work?
You can develop native apps on React native framework that will run smoothly on Android and iOS. It uses the React framework as a base abstraction. It doesn’t interact with the javascript DOM API to create, change or delete elements.
Comparison Between Reactjs and React Native
You should compare React js and React Native to identify which framework is suitable for your project. This head-to-head comparison will tell you the perks and downsides of both, which advantages you need, and which downsides you can compromise on.
Let's start with React:
Advantages of Reactjs for Businesses
1- DOM enables lightning bolt speed
DOM is the reason why apps and websites created on Reactjs run with super fast speed.
Your business’s app will offer a great user experience if it functions with speed. A skilled react developer develops solutions bound to succeed since speed is vital to a successful app product.
2- Reactjs saves time
Developers know how time-consuming it is to write code for each app from scratch. React allows you to render the components of a page’s view layer, saving a massive amount of time.
React divides a user interface into components and is the pioneer of component-driven architecture.
If an app’s component needs updating, you only need to reuse and redefine that particular component, not the full user interface.
3- Reactjs helps in SEO
Pages created on React drive more traffic because they can convert HTML documents on the back end into a completely rendered HTML page for the front end.
Search engines pick this ability of a page/app and thus rank it higher. Google Crawler quickly indexes and caches a page’s content if it is already rendered.
Plus, your app loads fast as the crawler can index its data and images straight from the back end. This way, you earn good SEO and a nice user experience.
4- Numerous third-party tools available
Are you a javascript developer? Then you can learn to use this framework in a short time. Furthermore, being a popular technology has its advantages, and React benefits from it.
React developers can connect with millions of other react developers and benefit from the developer tools they have created.
The tools include IDEs (Integrated development environments), web browsers, component libraries, plugins for code editors, and more.
If you want to develop a creative application incorporating new technologies and experiments, React is one of the best options for you.
Your company would not need to buy expensive software as a large number of free tools and plugins are available designed for React app development.
5- Reusable components
You can reuse different components while developing an application. Every component is rendered separately with its unique logic, so you can reuse this logic where required.
6- Virtual DOM
Reactjs features a virtual DOM that enables superior performance. A virtual DOM allows for the update of a less heavy copy of the original DOM, improving usability and functionality.
Advantages of React Native for Businesses
1- Allows for cross-platform development
React native diminishes code density by enabling developers to reuse code in their projects. If your organization wants to save the costs and time it takes to develop separate apps for Android, iOS, and Windows, go for React Native.
You can create a hybrid mobile app on React Native by employing one codebase to deploy on all platforms.
2- Easy learning curve
You can reap the benefits of this framework if your app development team is familiar with Javascript or React.
3- A huge community of professionals
Mobile application developers work on React Native regularly around the world, which has earned the framework a helpful community that provides education to beginners for free.
For example, the community’s Facebook group helps you connect with 45k+ people. Novices can go through thousands of queries related to react native tagged on stack overflow.
4- Hot Reloading
It is an astounding feature that saves developers from having to update a page every time they make changes to code just to view the result.
By hot reloading, developers can see the modifications made in the code in real time.
5- Responsive UI
Facebook developed React Native to develop responsive UIs of mobile apps. It works better as a javascript library which helps developers to build a highly responsive UI on it. It makes the mobile app runs faster and more seamlessly, which is more important for smaller devices.
6- Native APIs
React Native exploits Java APIs for writing android components and objective-C APIs for rendering iOS components. And it then uses the javascript programming language to compile the rest of the code.
React Native also uses javascript to customize the app for every OS to guarantee supreme shareability of codes and reutilizing of the components.
It does not benefit from HTML and CSS in contrast with React. Developers use Javascript to create stylesheets so they can style react native modules, which may look identical to CSS but dissimilar in all ways.
Similarly, React employs ‘p’ against ‘text’ and replace ‘view’ with ‘div’ in React Native.
7- A complete framework
React doesn't give you a complete kit of things you need to build a website. You need to pick a bundler and look for the bundling modules to complete your product.
React native, on the flip side, is a complete framework that can be set up easily and you can get going quickly by employing a few functions of ES7, ES6, and some polyfills.
You need to give it a one-line command, and it will start running with speed. Developers only need to download Android Studio on their computers to run android apps and require Xcode for iOS apps.
Also, they might choose to run their product on their gadgets or on a simulator/emulator of the OS they wish to use.
FAQs
1- Are React Native developers in demand?
Businesses are constantly on the lookout for world-class React Native developers for their mobile application projects.
2- How does React Native compiles?
React Native compile the page’s UI with the help of Javascript. It lets you use iOS-native languages like Swift and Objective-C for iOS apps and Android-native languages like Kotlin and Java for android apps.
3- Does React supports the web?
Developers can utilize React in their web components or employ those components in React or combined.
4- Can I connect a React application to Firebase?
Yes. You can connect your React-based app to Firebase by following these steps.
- Hit ‘Add Project’ to begin a new firebase project
- Name your project and choose your account from the menu
- Hit the button ‘create project’ > ‘continue.’
- Navigate to the top left of the next page and click the web icon. It will set up your Firebase account for the web.
Conclusion — React Vs React Native
React helps app development experts to create pages/apps using javascript. React native, on the other hand, is a full-fledged platform to help professionals develop native mobile apps with a code base that can be used across platforms.
You should choose React if your project requires a dynamic, responsive, and functional user interface. And go for React Native if you want your app product to feel, and look like a native app.
Mobile app developers at Maven Digital are well-versed in both React and React Native. They create next-generation mobile app solutions for businesses that want to stay ahead of the game. Get in touch to talk about your project!
