React is a free, open source, front-end library which is used to build user interfaces.

It keeps design views simple in your application, and it’s an extremely popular and simple tool to create interactive applications for mobile, websites, desktop apps and other platforms.

React uses JavaScript (instead of templates) to enable data to pass through the apps that use it easily – but this also makes it incredibly accessible for developers, as JavaScript accounts for around 90% of web development today. It makes coding more predictable and easier to debug.

Here are a few key facts and some background information about React:

Who built it?
It was developed by Jordan Walke in 2011, and quickly set a new precedent for developing fast and dynamic websites using JavaScript. JavaScript is the most popular and widespread language among developers today because of its versatility, and the wide variety of frameworks and libraries that can use it – one of which is React.

It was built and primarily maintained by Facebook – but it’s open source, meaning any developer can make changes and contributions to the library, constantly improving how it works.

What are some of the benefits of using it?
React reduces development time through its reusable UI components that can be easily integrated. Its responsive user interface also means that users can press buttons, menu tabs or search bars without any time delay. Plus, it has such a huge number of UI components that it gives developers like ours the opportunity to create a very personalised, bespoke and interactive experience.

React certainly isn’t just pre-written code snippets and functions either. It mainly focuses on the View Layer, which are the visible parts of the page for a user; through React Native and ReactJS, our developers can build an entire application for a web browser or smartphone.

Its web apps can also be developed where front-end views are directly associated with back-end data. Alternative approaches have ended up with confusing and difficult to maintain code, but React avoids this because the architecture is based on the components, which in turn creates a more orderly and structured flow to a website or app.

You’ll find references to React and React Native throughout these FAQs and this page.

But what is the main difference between them?

React is what you would largely use for websites, whereas React Native would be for mobile applications. They both use the same principles and logic, but there are differences in development.

React is one of the most popular libraries on the market to develop web applications. React Native is a framework based on ReactJS. It’s used to develop mobile apps with all the benefits that come through React.

Facebook developed React Native to meet the growing demands of catering to a mobile audience. Similar to React, it’s open source and based on JavaScript. One way to think about React Native is that it’s a secondary version of React that has been designed for an alternative purpose.

Facebook Ads was the first native app built on React Native for Android. By native, we mean a program that’s developed for use on a specific platform or device. Uber Eats also uses React Native for its mobile apps, as does Tesla, who uses it to support their Powerwall battery and smart car products.

The fact that React Native is effectively being used to power a driverless car shows exactly how much potential there is with this technology.

React is best for building web apps, mobile apps and desktop apps. For a one-page feel to an app, React gives your product a fast and snappy approach without the need to load pages.

Cross-platform mobile apps for Android and iOS can be created with one codebase from React Native, so it’s very cost effective. Plus, React is a very flexible, multi-purpose library with a wide variety of features – but we know that means it can be difficult to know which circumstances you should use React for.

We’ve come up with some examples of the perfect situations when React is the ideal library for you:

• SPAs – A Single Page Application doesn’t need to reload during use and works within a browser. Facebook, Google Maps, Twitter, Netflix – these are all examples of an SPA. React is the perfect library for an SPA, because sites of this nature update content based on data from web servers. The feature-rich library can handle constant updates to content, and the way data flows between the SPA and the user.
• High-traffic websites – With any solution that handles a lot of users and user requests at any one time, React is usually the best option. React web pages are very fast and responsive – no constant page refreshing required.
• Mobile apps – React Native is used to build mobile apps and even Smart TV apps. This gives you flexibility, so you can be creative while maintaining the same functionality in your mobile app that you would enjoy for a website.
• Dashboards and other data visualisation tools – Continuous updates are required in dashboards to give you a real-time view of what’s going on. Dashboards will compile your business analytics and act like an SPA from the client’s perspective, meaning that app loading time is an important factor. React uses JavaScript to implement code on the client and server side and rendering happens quicker, providing a high quality display of all your important information and data without delay.
• Customised solutions – 6B are familiar with HTML, CSS and JavaScript to provide a personalised app through React. With no jargon, we can develop a cost effective solution from scratch.

There are a lot of languages and libraries available on the market, but React more than stands its ground when it comes to creating something bespoke. Its innovative features and functions give flexibility, high quality and speed, ideal for a myriad of projects.

Building in React typically results in fast development speeds for your project, giving you a quicker timeframe to get your product to market. Other advantages for this include:

• The code is separated into components, which means it can be re-used and easily modified throughout the project, helping save time on the development and build
• If you want to transition to a native mobile app later on, React makes this an easier process
• Better performance and faster load times improve your SEO results

Another key reason to opt for React is that developers can build components that manage themselves, and create complex UIs. New features can be built in React without rewriting existing code, and you can use as little or as much of React as you want, from creating a simple HTML page to complex apps.

React is rich with features and its components and templates are perfect for creating flawless user experiences and maintaining traffic to your platform. Its performance has tempted some of the biggest companies in the world to use it.

Let’s explore a few other reasons why your organisation can benefit from React:

• Flexibility – React can be used in a variety of different platforms to build quality UIs. It’s a library, not a framework, so this approach has allowed React to evolve into the powerful tool it is today. React was originally built to create web components such as buttons, text, labels or grids. You can use React to create a static site, mobile apps and desktop apps, which can run on a Mac or Windows, virtual reality websites and 360 experiences. If you have an existing product, React can be used to alter small parts of your app; if that change works, you can convert your whole app through React. It lends itself to an agile approach, which is handy if you think you’ll want to make changes to an existing product in the future.
• Facebook support and resources – Facebook and Instagram heavily use React, with more than 50,000 React components within their production environment. Because of this, Facebook regularly provides Codemod to automate change – Codemod being the tool that automates changes to a codebase, which means newer specifications replace older components. What does this mean for you? It keeps your app up to date with the latest React releases, maximising how your product performs.
• Great performance: React has a simple programming model, which makes it ideal for apps. Mobile devices need to be efficient and act at speed, so saving power and battery life is very important. Data is changed in the memory quickly, making React ideal for use in apps. The library size is also tiny, giving it a competitive advantage over its rivals.
• Easy to test – All developers know that testing is the key to ensure that your app performs well and looks great. There are four key reasons why React is so much easier to test: 1) There’s little to no configuration required to test React unlike the traditional UI browser 2) React components can be tested quickly using the node command line as opposed to a traditional UI browser 3) Traditional UI browser testing is slow, but command-line testing with React is quicker. You can also run several tests at once 4) React tests can be quickly written using tools such as Jest and Enzyme, which works better than the traditional alternative that can be time consuming and difficult to maintain
• Broad community support – React has steadily grown since 2015 and is now one of the top five repositories on GitHub. It has a very active community and has over 182,000 stars. Over 10,000 companies have reported on Stackshare that they use React, including Netflix, Amazon, Uber and Pinterest. This broad support can save developers time because of the component libraries that have been created. It provides several examples of help and solutions to solve a range of scenarios. Examples of these are: Fluent UI (created by Microsoft), Material-UI (which implements Google’s UI guidelines), React-Bootstrap (a popular front-end UI framework that’s extremely compatible), Awesome React Components list (available on GitHub), React Router (ideal for using React in your routing), Jest (great for automated testing and it was created by Facebook), and GraphQL (perfect for RESTful API calls).

There’s an active community with millions of developers that all contribute to furthering developer knowledge and improving how React works, giving tips on the best ways to use React.

There are a lot of online forums that are a great place to discuss best practice and application architecture, as well as considering the future of React and the best situations it can be used for.

These communities include:

• one from DEV. the site where coders can share information and make contacts with other developers to grow their careers
• Hashnode, the developer blogging site
• Reactiflux, an online chat on the instant messaging platform Discord
• the Reddit React community

Topics range from beginner’s guides to advice on which framework to use React on, how to use tools to build React apps for free, and hundreds of other chats.

The Stack Overflow is another popular forum that you can ask code-level questions on if there’s a specific error that you’re stuck with. You may be struggling with a problem that an existing developer has asked on the forum before, in which case a developer or anybody interested in learning more about React can look through previous questions and answers. Alternatively, you can ask your own question – but for information specific to React, use the reactjs tag.

In terms of more traditional media, you can follow @reactjs on Twitter or read the official React blog on their own website, which contains information on conferences and new features that are being released. There are also a number of free courses that you can register for that will help you learn how to understand the benefits of React for your product.
The free courses include:

• Glitch: This is a React Starter Kit that comes with a free, five-video course that includes interactive code examples to help you learn React
• Codecademy: This is an introductory course that’s perfect for beginners, who can use it to learn concepts such as JSX, class and function components, lifecycle methods and hooks that can be combined with the modules of React
• Egghead.io: The Start Learning React course explores the very basics of React so that you can begin down the right path
• Egghead.io: Another excellent course from the community of web developers is The Beginner’s Guide to ReactJS, which is brilliant at giving techies new to this technology the basics of what to understand
• YouTube: The React Crash Course is a tutorial that lasts nearly two and a half hours and goes through the most important React topics
• Frontend Armory: This website gives you all the fundamental knowledge you need without the jargon and buzzwords
• React Bootcamp: There are lots of recordings from three days of the free online bootcamp from ui.dev that will help you learn more about using this technology
• Scrimba: There are 48 hands-on video tutorials that show how React apps are built
• University of Helsinki: This Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) helps developers to learn how to build web applications using React.