What popular websites are built with React?
Among all the available frameworks, tools, and libraries, there is one that gained enormous popularity and a good reputation – React. Its story began in 2011 when it was first deployed on Facebook’s News Feed and later, in 2012, on Instagram. Over the years, React has built up incredible respect and is used on is now used on over 8 million live websites! See what popular websites are built with React.
What is ReactJS?
ReactJS is an open-source JavaScript library. Over the years, it has gained great and unflagging popularity. ReactJS is used to create graphical interfaces for web applications. It was developed by one of the Facebook developers and is still supported and maintained by the company to this day. It was created for the internal needs of the company, the company’s engineers were looking for a way to build dynamic but very efficient interfaces, which resulted in the creation of this universal library. The React developer, Jordan Walke, while creating it, was inspired by a library of HTML components for PHP, which is XHP. This library is most often used to create single-page applications, but it can also be the basis of mobile applications. Originally, React.js was intended only for internal projects, but in 2013 it was made available by Facebook on an open-source basis. Currently, React.js is one of the most popular JavaScript libraries for creating websites and web applications.
Why is ReactJS so popular?
React is a really powerful tool. It has many features that make developers often turn to this library. It is distinguished, for example, by the virtual DOM. React.js creates an in-memory data structure cache, computes the resulting differences, and then successfully updates the browser’s DOM display. This allows developers to write code as if the entire page was rendered with each change, while the React libraries only render the subcomponents that change. This significantly improves performance. What’s more, the React code is made up of components, i.e. fragments of reusable code. They are used for the same purpose as JavaScript functions, but operate in isolation and return HTML. This helps to write code faster and more transparently. It’s worth mentioning that ReactJS is relatively easy to learn. It has built-in formulas and functions that you can combine to create effective projects in less time than creating code line by line. Besides, you can start creating highly responsive applications with it right away. These and other advantages make developers very eager to use React.
10 famous ReactJS websites examples
Facebook
Undeniably the most famous and well-known social network in the world, Facebook, is opening our list. It could not be different as React was initially the company’s internal tool. The social platform at the beginning was meant to be used by Harvard students. As we all know, now it is the most popular social network, connecting people all around the world. Coming back to React, its creators obviously use its library in their products. They take advantage of React’s benefits to create a highly responsive, smoothly performing website, with a rich user interface. React helps in maintaining a large number of users’ visits every day, thanks to virtual DOM and other great features. This way, Facebook strives to deliver a wonderful user experience, with success.
Netflix
Do you like binge-watching the whole series at once or just a single episode at the time? Never mind the answer, there is a big chance you use Netflix or just recognize it. The number one, at least in case of popularity, streaming service makes huge efforts to provide its users with the best quality and experience possible. In 2015, Netflix decided to modernize its user interface. Willing to improve not only the UI but also the performance, the company bet on React. This strategy eventually helped them achieve great success and customers’ dedication. The website is convenient, the navigation is easy and intuitive, and the overall page loading time is short. Today, Netflix is a total leader in streaming services.
Buffer
Planning social media campaigns, content publishing and analyzing the results is quite hard when you have multiple accounts to maintain. Fortunately, there are a lot of tools that can help you with it. One of them is Buffer. This app is mainly a scheduling tool but it has many other features too. You can plan your Instagram Stories, create hashtags, build custom reports and share it with your team, and more. The same as with the rest platforms from our list, Buffer used ReactJS and developed pleasant UI and seamless operation.
Codecademy
This online platform makes learning programming more accessible to everyone. In 2014, Codecademy decided to incorporate React’s advantages into their platform. What they ended up with is a website full of beautiful graphics, animations and engaging content, seamlessly operating and user-oriented. The company members itself appreciate React and its possibilities that helped them build a valuable platform for billions of users. They call it a powerful, lightweight library that may change the way you approach front-end development.
PayPal
Another platform that is widely known and used, Paypal, is an online payment solutions provider. They have a wide range of services for companies and single users. Paypal needs to deliver flawless experience, high level of responsiveness and fast operation to assure customers’ transactions will be instantly, successfully completed. React was their choice in terms of front-end development. Looking at their website, service quality and popularity, React was a really good idea.
Reddit
The Facebook story is obvious and recognized but did you know that Reddit has quite similar origins? Everything began in 2005 when two college friends, Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian, founded the platform. Reddit is dedicated to discussions, content sharing, and ratings. Billions of users create a strong community that very often shows its power, just like it was with the GameStop stocks case. Reddit has a huge number of active users, and that is why the platform needs wonderful performance and the best user experience to keep them. So, Reddit founders used React as one of the tools to develop their website.
Salesforce
Over 150000 companies from every industry rely on Salesforce to manage their businesses. It means that the platform has a lot of clients to satisfy with their services but also, with their platform performance and features. Salesforce is a customer relationship management system (CRM). It unites commerce, marketing, sales, and more, and has an entire suite of connected apps. To speed up complex Visualforce page rendering, Salesforce uses React. Visualforce is a framework for UI development and it is used along with React to boost the performance of Salesforce.
Read also: Custom CRM Development – 5 Reasons to Build a Custom CRM
Skyscanner
Have you ever planned a trip on a budget using a cheap flight search engine? Then maybe you used Skyscanner. This is just such an internet search engine, full of up-to-date information about cheap flights, but also expensive ones, around the world. The company needed an appropriate technology stack to achieve the relevant reputation in the tourism industry, and meet all needs. In 2019, the Skyscanner website was rebuilt with React. The main goal of this process was to create a consistent, flawless user interface.
Grammarly
Grammarly is a tool to help you write correctly. It is based on artificial intelligence, natural language processing, machine learning, and deep learning algorithms. The Grammarly app offers grammar and spelling checking, plagiarism detection, and other suggestions for typing style and tone. Grammarly uses React, and this choice was dictated by the use of virtual DOM, and more.
Todoist
Todoist is a web-based task management application. The platform allows users to use it from mobile devices and computers as well. Todoist syncs across all your devices, helping you keep track of tasks and details in one place.
What are the benefits of ReactJS?
To name just a few essential advantages among their large number:
- Easy to learn – compared to other technologies of this type, learning ReactJS is considered easier. This is important for companies that want to develop their team, but also for novice programmers. Knowing the JavaScript syntax makes this process easier, and most JS programmers start with ReactJS, but it’s not necessary. With ReactJS, you can start building highly responsive applications in no time.
- Faster rendering and good performance – virtual DOM makes React JS one of the most effective technologies for application development. DOM (Document Object Model) has a large impact on the potential load of the application due to its structure. Using a virtual DOM that is smaller and can be quickly updated improves application performance. Only after the site interacts with the virtual DOM is the actual DOM updated. As a result, it provides a better user experience, higher efficiency, and excellent performance.
- Easy coding – among the useful ReactJS functions are also those that visualize what is happening in JavaScript code operating on graphical interfaces. JSX is used for this, i.e. an extension of the JavaScript syntax. It also helps React display more useful information about errors and warnings, makes it easier to render subcomponents, and accepts HTML quoting.
- Extensive SEO capabilities – due to the current trends, this is a very important feature. JavaScript frameworks are usually not very SEO friendly, and web applications lose the position in search engines with optimized pages. The ability to react to common problems with search engines is another advantage of using the React JS framework.
- Downstream data flow – there are many ways to reduce errors in your code, and the framework and library developers are aware of this. With ReactJS, one process that helps reduce errors in your code is one-way data flow, also known as downstream data flow. This means that data is only transferred between items in ReactJS in one way. This provides a more stable code and fewer bugs.
Check out 10 Benefits of Using ReactJS for more amazing perks of this library.
Conclusion
Many companies have implemented React in their projects, which allowed them to achieve incredible success. Its development efficiency, efficiency, and numerous benefits made market leaders, but also smaller businesses, build great products.