Are you worried about ReactJS and React Native? Which one is better between them? In this article, I prepared the answer to these questions. Take it easy. React Native is very similar to ReactJS in a way, but there are differences you need to understand before you begin your first native app. I will illustrate the difference between React Native and ReactJS.

Keep reading – I’ll shed some light on all your doubts.

Short history

First and foremost, let’s take a look at the short history of both of them. ReactJS and React Native are the new technologies for web and mobile development proposed by Facebook. The story of React Native is really interesting: what began as Facebook’s national hackathon project, in the summer of 2013, since that time it has become one of the most common frameworks. Research has found that in March of 2015, Facebook published at F8 that React Native is free and open on GitHub. As for the engineers at Facebook, Jordan Walke used XHP to build FaxJS, which was the model of ReactJS. Many facts have shown that in 2011, ReactJS was used for Facebook’s timeline, and this was a big leap. And soon, the developers’ world saw the development of two of the most important technologies. ReactJS and React Native. Here we can observe an interesting comparison which requires developers to create hard and put a ton of effort into their application’s usefulness for producing a truly decent web product.

ReactJS and React Native – Comparing the special features

Let’s start with the definition of ReactJS. ReactJS is a JavaScript library that holds both front-end and server. Moreover, it can be used to create user interfaces for mobile apps and websites.

Advantages of ReactJS

Blazing Speed with DOM

It is clear from the facts from a business view that one of the USPs of ReactJS is its capacity to take in blazing quick speed for the applications and websites produced, using the DOM or Document Object Model. According to experts, React builds an in-memory data structure cache that computes the resulting differences, and then updates the browser’s presented DOM seamlessly. This provides an advantage to ReactJS, compared to other programs for developing mobile apps since the activity is one of the important parts for making a successful mobile app.

ReactJS Gives Powerboost to SEO

You will notice, ReactJS is capable of server-side rendering, it provides a power boost to the SEO of a webpage. When a Google bot hits a server, which has already given the content and images, indexing and saving of the content become active. It provides large heads up to the overall SEO plan of the website.

Component-Based Architecture Saves Time

It goes without saying, ReactJS introduced the concept of component-based structure, which makes the reusability of elements, and so, saves an enormous amount of time. Needless to say, this component-based design uses different parts of a larger user-interface and turns them into an independent, self-sustaining micro-system.

Huge Ecosystem Of Developer Tools

It is often said that ReactJS is given to have a large association of developers, who have created a large ecosystem of tools and element libraries. As everyone knows, the availability of a wide variety of third-party tools and lengths unleashes a different dimension of innovation while keeping time and resources at the same time.

What specifically is React Native?

It’s no secret that React Native is a cross-platform mobile framework that uses ReactJS for developing apps and websites. React Native compiles to native app elements and allows the programmer to build mobile applications that can run on various platforms such as Windows, Android, iOS in JavaScript.

Advantages of React Native

Advantage Platform-specific Code

One of the most important USPs of creating apps and websites using React Native is the ability to create platform-specific code. It is very simple, when you use React Native to create an app, the framework automatically recognizes the platform it’s being run on. This way, it creates the correct code for the right platform.

Development Takes Less Time Due To Hot Reloading innovation 

Also, ReactJS holds the Hot Reloading feature, which provides developers with the opportunity to reload a mobile app automatically. From my point of view, this makes the process of developing faster what, in turn, saves time.

Ready-to-use UI libraries for smoother UI experience

You must remember that component UI libraries are in the React Native’s ecosystem. As for the developers, they can use it for a smooth UI experience. It is generally accepted that such sharing of UI libraries like Shoutem, Expo, native base, and others save the time needed to build them from scratch, and this means that more focus on innovation and ideas can be presented, rather than building something from scratch.

Differences between ReactJS and React Native

You can see, there are several similarities between ReactJS and React Native, however, there are some important differences as well. Now, let’s have a look:

1. One of the main things that ReactJS can be described as a base derivative of React DOM, for the web platform while React Native is a base derivative in itself, which suggests that the syntax and workflow remain the same, but elements change.
2. In ReactJS, practical DOM is used to provide browser code while in React Native, native APIs are used to provide elements in mobile.
3. CSS is used for producing styling in ReactJS while a stylesheet is used for styling in React Native.
4. The apps developed with ReactJS use HTML in UI while React Native uses JSX for performing UI, which is nothing but JavaScript.

Which is a more useful ReactJS or React Native?

Both ReactJS and React Native are a great support for app and web development. While ReactJS is basically a JavaScript library and React Native is the whole framework, the former is the heart of the latter, and much more stronger all in all.

In my opinion, all technologies or frameworks in the developers’ world have some limitations, and so do ReactJS and React Native. You need to put on the map the pros and cons of both of these technologies, and then make a notified choice based on the preferences and required outcome.

As for me, I enjoy using React Native. You can create complex UI as quick as you would do with ReactJS and it normally works pretty well for both iOS and Android. The community around React Native becomes very big and keeps growing.

Conclusion

Just to summarize the main points again. I tried to demonstrate the most important points, which can help you. Let us end this by concluding that ReactJS is perfect for effective web interfaces, high performing, and understanding. On the other hand, React Native provides a real native feeling to your mobile apps.

Thank you for reading! Have a nice day!