DEV Community

WordPress-React Breakup: Suggest A JavaScript Framework to WordPress & Tell Why? [POLL]"

Ahmad Awais ⚡️ on September 15, 2017

ReactJS and WordPress are breaking up. Matt Mullenweg (co-founder of WordPress) announced is it today. I was half asleep when I read the annou...
Collapse
 
ben profile image
Ben Halpern

Vue strikes me as the right choice. More mainstream than Preact, but I want some clarification: Where does Wordpress use these libs? Is it just on the admin side of things or do they ship as part of the front-end for end-users in any way? If it's strictly for the admin interface, I'd think the PreactJS build size wouldn't be as much of a benefit.

Collapse
 
ahmadawais profile image
Ahmad Awais ⚡️

WordPress will choose one lib and it will become the de-facto standard for everyone in the community to learn, support, and use both at the backend and frontend.

Right now, Gutenberg is in dev phase, it's the new Editor/Page builder for WordPress — the default one actually. It was using ReactJS and now we are looking at what's next?

I also think that VueJS is a good lib with a huge ecosystem. MarkoJS looks promising as well.

Collapse
 
ben profile image
Ben Halpern

Interesting. I'd definitely give a nod to Preact for the major emphasis on build size and close-to-the-metal performance, which I'd say is of huge importance for something as web-important as wordpress. The web really gets choked by too many basic content sites that force you to download a whole gigantic app on load.

I'll also note that Preact creator @_developit is Canadian🇨🇦 like me and has pretty great fashion sense if I do say so 😋

Thread Thread
 
ahmadawais profile image
Ahmad Awais ⚡️

You make some valid points there.

Esp about the fashion sense :P

Collapse
 
benediktg profile image
Benedikt Geißler

There is also Inferno – yet another React "remake". ;)
infernojs.org/

Collapse
 
ahmadawais profile image
Ahmad Awais ⚡️

Yes, I have been looking into it. Thanks!

Collapse
 
ben profile image
Ben Halpern

I agree, but it's a wholistic conversation. I don't think React's popularity is strictly on its technical merits either. In its case, I think the corporate backed was a huge part of its rise. So for better, or worse, I'm not sure it's ever much of a purely technical merit discussion.

Collapse
 
maxart2501 profile image
Massimo Artizzu

Why all those *JS? It's React, not ReactJS, just like it's Preact and Vue.

Anyway, I don't see Preact as ruled by one man (Jason Miller), as it has received important contributions from notable Googlers (Addy Osmani for Preact CLI, for example). Maybe it could be a key factor.

Collapse
 
ahmadawais profile image
Ahmad Awais ⚡️

By adding JS I only mean to call it a JS framework. I'd be more selective with that next time.

Yes, I have seen the CLI and Addy is also one of the backers there.

Collapse
 
patrickodacre profile image
Patrick O'Dacre

This is a good read and seems to take Preact out as an option: blog.cloudboost.io/3-points-to-con....

TLDR; Preact may actually be more of a problem than React. If I understand correctly, some of the protections afforded to React users aren't necessarily extended to Preact users.

Collapse
 
abauzac profile image
Amaury

List what you liked and disliked about react. Then choose your framework.
e.g, you liked the unopinionated philohophy of react, preact, polymer and vue might fit. At the contrary, if you'd prefer a more opinionated framework, angular, ember, aurelia would be better.
I would personally choose the later choices working in a OSS env. as there might be thousands of developer working on the project.