There are many ways to speed up your development time when building a web application. For example, if you're creating a web app from scratch, you may want to use a framework to make your development faster.
However, it’s not always easy to find the right framework for your web application, so you'll probably be tempted to try a lot of different options. Still, just because there are multiple frameworks doesn't mean they're all equal.
In this article, we'll explore 5 React UI frameworks that I think are worth looking into.
Here are the 5 frameworks that we’ll cover in this post:
A simple, modular, and accessible component library
Chakra UI is a rising open-source library made by Segun Adebayo that empowers developers with the building blocks they need to create robust React apps. It is currently my go-to choice when developing new web applications for its simplicity and design. It provides a wide variety of components, it is easily extensible, and it is packaged with some very useful custom hooks. The beauty of Chakra UI is its simplicity, and I would recommend it to anyone looking to bootstrap a new web application using React.
A robust, customizable, and accessible library of foundational and advanced components
Material UI is one of the most popular open-source component frameworks in the React ecosystem. It is maintained by a group of invaluable contributors, with the massive support and involvement of the community. It offers numerous quality components in its base package, which are free to use and MIT-licensed in its community edition. However, some components, such as the Data Grid and the Date Ranger Picker, have some features locked behind their MUI X Pro package, which gets you more components and professional support. Nevertheless, Material UI is still a great choice if you are looking for something powerful and flexible that most users are familiar with.
The most popular front-end framework, rebuilt for React
Originally named Twitter Blueprint, Bootstrap needs no introduction as it is one of the most popular front-end component libraries. It was made by @mdo and @fat as a framework to encourage consistency across internal projects at Twitter. React Bootstrap is a wrapper around the original Bootstrap framework, which provides most of the components built from scratch as a true React component.
A design system for enterprise-level products
Ant Design has a React UI library that contains a set of high-quality enterprise-class components for building rich, interactive user interfaces. It is written in TypeScript with predictable static types, internationalization support for dozens of languages, and offers powerful theme customization. XTech had two main goals for this project: build components with a superior design and make the process of developing for the web more accessible for the developers. It is a great choice if you need a complex set of components, and it has the support of big brands like Alibaba, Tencent, and Baidu.
A development framework that helps create beautiful responsive layouts
Semantic UI React is a jQuery-free integration of the original Semantic UI framework. It uses a unique design that has a declarative API adapted to React. It offers over 50 different components which are very easy to integrate into your project. The only negative aspect I noticed is that some components can be not so easily customizable. Anyway, it is still a solid choice with lots of options for most web applications.
UI frameworks allow to build web applications with less code and much faster. They are flexible and easy to use, so it doesn't matter whether you are a professional or beginner in the React world, these frameworks will defiantly help you get started with creating your web application.
Thanks for reading! Hopefully, you enjoyed the article and now have a better understanding of the React UI framework ecosystem.