PIcking Your Javascript Mobile Framework: Part 22 - Conclusions and My Pick

This was a long journey, for sure. We went through 77 Javascript frameworks (including combinations) to find the ones most suitable for the development of a mobile single page application, to be used as the foundation of a cordova app.

We went on a tangent to see how there was a seminal year, 2012, where a great many frameworks suddenly sprung up. Before that, the selection was small. After that, things got quiet again.

PIcking Your Javascript Mobile Framework: Part 21 - Vue

Vue occupied a special place in my heart when I saw it required the least code to write. That’s a feat of its own, especially considering how lazy I am (despite being a terrific typist) and how error-prone (strike the part on being a terrific typist).

The vuejs.org web site has no clear tag line. This is what I liked best about their self-description: It is not a full-blown framework – it is designed to be a view layer that is simple and flexible.

PIcking Your Javascript Mobile Framework: Part 20 - Thorax

The tag line of the ThoraxJS.org (yes, .org) site reads, “An opinionated, battle-tested Backbone + Handlebars framework to build large scale web applications.“

I mentioned that our mobile needs don’t particularly require large scale web applications, but at the same time it’s hard to deny a candidate that has done well enough in the Todo challenge.

The fundamentals of Thorax, as the tag line states, are Backbone and Handlebars. Additionally, Thorax on its down did pretty terribly in the performance challenge, so we have to add one more dependency, Lumbar. Since Lumbar is “with” Thorax (as they both come from WalMart Labs) it’s not a stretch to think that most projects will use both.

PIcking Your Javascript Mobile Framework: Part 19 - Stapes

The alphabet has a way to balance the universe. While React was on the pointlessly complicated (not complex) side of the equation, Stapes is really minimalistic. Indeed, you wouldn’t know the index file belongs to a reactive app, or an app at all.

Our example has four Javascript files: a model, a controller, a view, and a store. That’s it. They each do what you’d expect them to do. There is an additional app.js, but all it does is start the controller and make it run.

PIcking Your Javascript Mobile Framework: Part 18 React

There really isn’t a whole lot making React stand out in a positive way in this comparison. Both performance and code length are towards the maximum acceptable, and the framework comes with its own language you have to learn, JSX.

I’ll spare you the internals of JSX. Let’s just say it’s Javascript made to use XML syntax. I guess you can get the hang of it, and maybe Mithril’s Hoarie should have a glance, but all in all you really have to be hardcore if you accept learning a new language (however little it is different from Javascript) just to code in a new framework.

PIcking Your Javascript Mobile Framework: Part 17 - Ractive

Ractive was developed by The Guardian, the UK newspaper. That makes it probably the only framework in this group not created by a technologist (if we don’t want to count out WalMart Labs).

If Mithril is the framework I wanted to love the most, Ractive is the one I wanted to love the least. The performance was not exciting, while the code length was at the far end of what we’d consider acceptable. I didn’t realize it was made by a news organization, but it seemed far removed from the needs of an app developer.

PIcking Your Javascript Mobile Framework: Part 16 - Mithril

Ah, I so want to love Mithril! The guy that created it, Leo Horie, is one geek I can understand. The way he presents Mithril on the home page of the project speaks to my heart.

Mithril is around 5kb gzipped thanks to its small, focused, API. It provides a templating engine with a virtual DOM diff implementation for performant rendering, utilities for high-level modelling via functional composition, as well as support for routing and componentization.

PIcking Your Javascript Mobile Framework: Part 15 - KnockoutJS

The main site for Knockout, knockoutjs.com, is a fantastic resource. Maybe it errs a teensy bit on the garish side, but it’s more informative (and exciting with that information) than any of the other sites on here.

I highlighted the outstandingly easy and comprehensive tutorials before. The structure is the same as that of other tutorials on jsFiddle, but it looks better and is more… structured.

Let’s look at the main claims on the home page. Knockout has:

PIcking Your Javascript Mobile Framework: Part 14 - jQUery

What can be said about jQuery that sounds even remotely interesting? The whole world is using this framework, by far the oldest in our list.

jQuery started small. The most famous “thing” about it is the dollar sign, $. It’s what popularized the framework, as it made selection of elements in an HTML page extremely easy.

It’s not that it was hard before, but the W3C spec for HTML and DOM is a terrifying mess of incoherence. Let’s just look at selectors.

PIcking Your Javascript Mobile Framework: Part 13 - Durandal

Durandal is very opinionated. It has a clear idea on how to structure your application, what best practices there are, and how you should go about your business. Instead of promising flexibility, speed, and safety, it tries to entice you with “Comfortable, Feature-rich, and Versatile!“

it’s comfortable because it follows the conventions of other frameworks (and makes them requirements) like jQuery or Knockout. It’s feature rich because it follows different conventions, so that you can go whichever way you like. And it’s versatile because you can write apps for phones, for desktop, for anything.