Commenting on my own post here, because I am anticipating people saying "Wait a sec mate, you've not included ____"
Unfortunately it wasn't really feasible to cover everything, and things which are either declining in usage, augment other frameworks, or take a completely different approach have been left off for brevity. Here's a summary, and my reasoning for this:
Older Frameworks
I do have to give a shoutout to these frameworks, which played their part in laying the groundwork for what we have now: Riot, Radi, Stimulus, Imba, AMP, Mithdrill, Hyperapp, Rax, dva, Omi, Neo.mjs, Crank.js, Polymer, Inferno, Ember, Hyperapp, Cycle.js, Stencil and Relay
This isn't to say that these project are dead, but more so that the features and notions have been further developed by the frameworks listed above.
Many of these I either used, or played around with (back in the day), and I see concepts that they've invented being refined and bought back by the modern frameworks we use and love today.
By it's very nature, frontend development changes rapidly, and as such so does the tooling that we use.
If you're concerned by the thought that something you learn today, may not be relevant tomorrow, here's my thoughts:
The skills and ways of thinking are easily transferable from one framework to another
Larger, and corporate-backed frameworks (e.g. React and Angular) will stick around
The rapidly changing landscape of frontend is likely to continue, if this really bothers you, there are other software engineering areas which remain much more consistent
Meta Frameworks
I've not mentioned meta-frameworks (except Astro), which provide an additional layer of abstraction, giving you certain essential features like file-based + API routes, SSR, + SSG. If you're interested, let me know below as I'm happy explain more, and share my experiences of using these.
But in short, if you're building a larger app then using a meta-framework can save you time, give you an improved developer experience, simplified setup for larger projects and out-of-the-box performance optimizations and integrated best practices.
Though the extra overhead usually isn't worth it for mini apps and small SPA projects (IMO).
Some popular examples you may have come across include: Astro, SvelteKit (for Svelte), Nuxt (for Vue), SolidStart (for Solid), Next.js, Remix, Gatsby (for React) Analog (for Angular), Qwik City (for Qwik).
Non-JavaScript Frameworks
Using a frontend JS-based framework is not the only way to build web apps in 2026!
I didn't have time to go into these here, but if you're interested let me know and I'll write another post.
But in short, here are the main alternatives:
HTMX - Access dynamic features directly in your HTML, with a server returning HTML fragments
Rust WebAssembly - Frameworks like Yew, Dioxus, Leptos, Sycamore are great for high-performance, cross-platforms, secure apps, which compile to a single light-weight binary
Flutter - Flutter for Web let's you write apps in Dart, and have a shared codebase for your mobile and web apps
Blazor - A C#-based Web Assembley framework. Great for leveraging existing .NET libraries and tools, and has a robust component model
Elm - Functional language that compiles down to JavaScript, with some great tooling
SSR Frameworks - Many backend frameworks like Django, Ruby on Rails, Laravel, etc also let you build simple frontends, with simple deployment and great SEO
Commenting on my own post here, because I am anticipating people saying "Wait a sec mate, you've not included ____"
Unfortunately it wasn't really feasible to cover everything, and things which are either declining in usage, augment other frameworks, or take a completely different approach have been left off for brevity. Here's a summary, and my reasoning for this:
Older Frameworks
I do have to give a shoutout to these frameworks, which played their part in laying the groundwork for what we have now: Riot, Radi, Stimulus, Imba, AMP, Mithdrill, Hyperapp, Rax, dva, Omi, Neo.mjs, Crank.js, Polymer, Inferno, Ember, Hyperapp, Cycle.js, Stencil and Relay
This isn't to say that these project are dead, but more so that the features and notions have been further developed by the frameworks listed above.
Many of these I either used, or played around with (back in the day), and I see concepts that they've invented being refined and bought back by the modern frameworks we use and love today.
By it's very nature, frontend development changes rapidly, and as such so does the tooling that we use.
If you're concerned by the thought that something you learn today, may not be relevant tomorrow, here's my thoughts:
Meta Frameworks
I've not mentioned meta-frameworks (except Astro), which provide an additional layer of abstraction, giving you certain essential features like file-based + API routes, SSR, + SSG. If you're interested, let me know below as I'm happy explain more, and share my experiences of using these.
But in short, if you're building a larger app then using a meta-framework can save you time, give you an improved developer experience, simplified setup for larger projects and out-of-the-box performance optimizations and integrated best practices.
Though the extra overhead usually isn't worth it for mini apps and small SPA projects (IMO).
Some popular examples you may have come across include: Astro, SvelteKit (for Svelte), Nuxt (for Vue), SolidStart (for Solid), Next.js, Remix, Gatsby (for React) Analog (for Angular), Qwik City (for Qwik).
Non-JavaScript Frameworks
Using a frontend JS-based framework is not the only way to build web apps in 2026!
I didn't have time to go into these here, but if you're interested let me know and I'll write another post.
But in short, here are the main alternatives:
Have you tried vike.dev ?