What’s new in React 18?

Introduction:

What is React?

React is an independent and open-source front-end JavaScript library for building user interfaces.The current version of React 18 provides developers with improved features to create a Great User Experience. Some of the improvements are

  • Automatic Batching: Groups all state updates which in turn improves performance.
  • Transitions: Is now more sophisticated and differentiates between urgent and non-urgent user interactions.
  • React Suspense: Allows for better Server-side rendering and improves the User Experience. as well as Performance

Let’s look at these in a bit more detail

  1. Automatic Batching:

    Batching is one of the React features that combines all the updated states in a single update. Batched updates can be performed inside React event handlers, i.e., it only worked inside the synchronous React event handlers functions. These changes were made in React version 18 with automatic batching.In the example code below, it shows how the automatic batching helps to stop re-rendering the set Counter () function twice.

  2. Transitions:

    Transition is an advanced concept introduced in React 18 that helps to differentiate between urgent and non-urgent updates.

    • Urgent Update: It reflects direct interaction like typing, clicking, pressing etc. This visual feedback is high priority for users.
    • Non-urgent Update: Non-urgent updates are not vital to the user like searching, which can be marked as no-urgent updates.

    For such use cases, startTransitions and useTransitions methods are used.

    • useTransitions: useTransitions is a hook concept that begins transitions, in addition to a value to track the pending state.
    • startTransitions: startTransitions is a method to initialize start transition where hooks can’t be used. Below is the example for startTransition where you can put your code which is non-vital to the end user.

  3. Suspense:

    Suspense lets you declaratively specify the loading state for some of the component tree if it’s not prepared to be displayed. Suspense in React version 18 functions better when combined with transitions API. while you suspend the time of transition, React will halt already-visible content from being altered by a fallback. Rather, React will stop or delay the rendering until enough data has loaded to prevent an inferior loading state.
    Below is the example for Suspense that explains how to use a fallback property of it to show the loading state to the end-user.

    Concurrency

    Concurrency is the most important addition in React version 18. It is a confidential mechanism that makes it possible for React to prepare multiple versions of UI.

    For these, React uses a “dispatcher” internally which is responsible to compile and combine the callbacks.

    Before React 18, the user did not have any way to control the appeal order of these functions. Since the release of React version 18, React is providing some authority to this event loop to the user with a Transition API.

    How to upgrade to React version 18?

    You will need to install React 18 and DOM using npm/yarn.

    npm install react react-dom

    npm install [email protected] [email protected]

    After upgrading to version 18, the following changes need to be made in the Index.js file:

    Note: – There is an error in the console while upgrading to version 18.

    To fix this console issue, the index.js is converted to the latest React version 18, which recommends a new root API. This new root API provides a user-friendly system for executing roots. The new root API also enables the new concurrent re-renders which fastens the coexisting features.

    Our React developers have experience of building complex applications using React technology. They use the latest Dev tools such as React-Redux, React Hooks, React Router, React Bootstrap etc. If you would like to develop a mobile or web application using React technology, then please feel free to contact us.

Flutter vs React Native

Many new technologies have evolved because of the increasing demand for cross-platform products. Facebook’s React Native and Google’s Flutter have created a lot of buzz in the cross-platform app development market. These two trending technologies are both known for high performance, and many enterprises and big brands are embracing them to come out with value-driven web and mobile applications.

React Native and Flutter are currently competing with each other to become the leading product, and although both have their advantages, it is not yet clear which one will come out on top. This article compares the technologies by examining their features, and their respective advantages and disadvantages. We hope this can help you in choosing which technology to use for your application.

Before looking at the technical differences, let us briefly have a look at their positions in the market so far. In order to do this, we can use Google trends to look at the interest in the technologies since 2015, when React Native was launched.

Google Trends comparison 1

The trend shows that both technologies have been gaining popularity steadily, and that although React Native is much older, Flutter is catching up quickly.

About Flutter

  • Flutter is a free, open-source portable UI toolkit for creating web, desktop, and natively compiled mobile apps in a single codebase.
  • It was created by Google in 2017.
  • It uses a language named Dart.

 About React Native

  • React Native is also a free, open-source mobile application framework.
  • It enables the developers to use its parent framework React with the native platform.
  • React was created by Facebook in March 2015.
  • React Native is virtually identical to React.

Head to head comparison between Flutter and React Native

Flutter vs React Native comparison

Let’s list a few of the major advantages and disadvantages of each technology.

Flutter

Advantages:

  • Fast apps
  • User-friendly design
  • Perfect for MVC structure

Disadvantages:

  • Large Apps can be difficult to program
  • Limited libraries in comparison with React Native
  • Currently small developer community (though growing)

React Native

Advantages:

  • Active large community
  • Uses widely popular JavaScript language
  • Robust Performance
  • Easy to learn

Disadvantages:

  • Lots of abandoned libraries and packages
  • App size is bigger than Natively developed Apps
  • Fewer testing features compared to Flutter

Which technology should we choose in 2020?

React Native has a huge base of achievements to showcase its success in the market, compared to the new player. However, Flutter has a lot of potential and as of now there is a chance that it can become the leading technology for cross platform mobile app development and web applications. We hope that this article has highlighted some of the key differences and can help you choose the best technology for your app development.

Happy Coding…