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  1. Stackups
  2. Business Tools
  3. UI Components
  4. Javascript UI Libraries
  5. React vs WebGL

React vs WebGL

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

React
React
Stacks182.6K
Followers147.0K
Votes4.1K
GitHub Stars240.3K
Forks49.7K
WebGL
WebGL
Stacks183
Followers200
Votes0

React vs WebGL: What are the differences?

Introduction: When comparing React and WebGL, it's important to understand their key differences, as they are both integral technologies in web development.

  1. Rendering Approach: React is a JavaScript library for building user interfaces in a declarative way, focusing on building reusable UI components. On the other hand, WebGL is a 3D graphics API that renders interactive 2D and 3D graphics within a web browser using OpenGL technology. The main difference lies in their rendering approach, with React being more focused on UI components while WebGL is tailored for high-performance 3D graphics rendering.

  2. Abstraction Level: React operates at a higher level of abstraction, providing developers with a simpler way to create interactive UIs using components and a virtual DOM. In contrast, WebGL operates at a lower level, requiring a more detailed understanding of graphics programming concepts for rendering complex 3D graphics efficiently. This difference in abstraction level makes React more accessible for web developers, while WebGL is typically used by developers with a background in graphics programming.

  3. Purpose: React is primarily used for building dynamic and interactive user interfaces for web applications, leveraging its component-based architecture for efficient UI development. On the other hand, WebGL is specifically designed for rendering complex 2D and 3D graphics in real-time, allowing developers to create immersive visual experiences within web browsers. The key difference lies in their purpose, with React focusing on user interface development and WebGL catering to advanced graphics rendering needs.

  4. Performance: React optimizes performance through its virtual DOM implementation, allowing efficient updates to the actual DOM by minimizing re-renders. While WebGL also prioritizes performance, it achieves this by leveraging the GPU for rendering complex graphics, resulting in high-speed and smooth visual experiences. The difference in performance optimization between React and WebGL lies in their respective approaches, with React focusing on minimizing DOM updates and WebGL utilizing GPU acceleration for graphics rendering.

  5. Technology Stack: React is typically used in conjunction with other frontend technologies like Redux for state management and React Router for routing within web applications. In contrast, WebGL is often integrated with libraries like Three.js or Babylon.js to simplify the process of creating and managing 3D scenes and animations. The difference in technology stack usage showcases how React is part of a broader frontend ecosystem, while WebGL is often combined with specialized libraries for enhanced 3D graphics functionality.

In Summary, React and WebGL differ in their rendering approach, abstraction level, purpose, performance optimization, and technology stack, catering to distinct needs in web development for UI components and advanced 3D graphics rendering.

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Advice on React, WebGL

Cyrus
Cyrus

Aug 15, 2019

Needs adviceonVue.jsVue.jsReactReact

I find using Vue.js to be easier (more concise / less boilerplate) and more intuitive than writing React. However, there are a lot more readily available React components that I can just plug into my projects. I'm debating whether to use Vue.js or React for an upcoming project that I'm going to use to help teach a friend how to build an interactive frontend. Which would you recommend I use?

884k views884k
Comments
Cyrus
Cyrus

Aug 15, 2019

Needs advice

Simple datepickers are cumbersome. For such a simple data input, I feel like it takes far too much effort. Ideally, the native input[type="date"] would just work like it does on FF and Chrome, but Safari and Edge don't handle it properly. So I'm left either having a diverging experience based on the browser or I need to choose a library to implement a datepicker since users aren't good at inputing formatted strings.

For React alone there are tons of examples to use https://reactjsexample.com/tag/date/. And then of course there's the bootstrap datepicker (https://bootstrap-datepicker.readthedocs.io/en/latest/), jQueryUI calendar picker, https://github.com/flatpickr/flatpickr, and many more.

How do you recommend going about handling date and time inputs? And then there's always moment.js, but I've observed some users getting stuck when presented with a blank text field. I'm curious to hear what's worked well for people...

401k views401k
Comments
Malek
Malek

Web developer at Quicktext

Mar 28, 2020

Decided

The project is a web gadget previously made using vanilla script and JQuery, It is a part of the "Quicktext" platform and offers an in-app live & customizable messaging widget. We made that remake with React eco-system and Typescript and we're so far happy with results. We gained tons of TS features, React scaling & re-usabilities capabilities and much more!

What do you think?

244k views244k
Comments

Detailed Comparison

React
React
WebGL
WebGL

Lots of people use React as the V in MVC. Since React makes no assumptions about the rest of your technology stack, it's easy to try it out on a small feature in an existing project.

It is integrated completely into all the web standards of the browser allowing GPU accelerated usage of physics and image processing and effects as part of the web page canvas. Its elements can be mixed with other HTML elements.

Declarative; Component-based; Learn once, write anywhere
-
Statistics
GitHub Stars
240.3K
GitHub Stars
-
GitHub Forks
49.7K
GitHub Forks
-
Stacks
182.6K
Stacks
183
Followers
147.0K
Followers
200
Votes
4.1K
Votes
0
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 837
    Components
  • 674
    Virtual dom
  • 579
    Performance
  • 509
    Simplicity
  • 442
    Composable
Cons
  • 41
    Requires discipline to keep architecture organized
  • 30
    No predefined way to structure your app
  • 29
    Need to be familiar with lots of third party packages
  • 13
    JSX
  • 10
    Not enterprise friendly
No community feedback yet

What are some alternatives to React, WebGL?

jQuery

jQuery

jQuery is a cross-platform JavaScript library designed to simplify the client-side scripting of HTML.

AngularJS

AngularJS

AngularJS lets you write client-side web applications as if you had a smarter browser. It lets you use good old HTML (or HAML, Jade and friends!) as your template language and lets you extend HTML’s syntax to express your application’s components clearly and succinctly. It automatically synchronizes data from your UI (view) with your JavaScript objects (model) through 2-way data binding.

Vue.js

Vue.js

It is a library for building interactive web interfaces. It provides data-reactive components with a simple and flexible API.

jQuery UI

jQuery UI

Whether you're building highly interactive web applications or you just need to add a date picker to a form control, jQuery UI is the perfect choice.

Svelte

Svelte

If you've ever built a JavaScript application, the chances are you've encountered – or at least heard of – frameworks like React, Angular, Vue and Ractive. Like Svelte, these tools all share a goal of making it easy to build slick interactive user interfaces. Rather than interpreting your application code at run time, your app is converted into ideal JavaScript at build time. That means you don't pay the performance cost of the framework's abstractions, or incur a penalty when your app first loads.

Flux

Flux

Flux is the application architecture that Facebook uses for building client-side web applications. It complements React's composable view components by utilizing a unidirectional data flow. It's more of a pattern rather than a formal framework, and you can start using Flux immediately without a lot of new code.

Famo.us

Famo.us

Famo.us is a free and open source JavaScript platform for building mobile apps and desktop experiences. What makes Famo.us unique is its JavaScript rendering engine and 3D physics engine that gives developers the power and tools to build native quality apps and animations using pure JavaScript.

Riot

Riot

Riot brings custom tags to all browsers. Think React + Polymer but with enjoyable syntax and a small learning curve.

Marko

Marko

Marko is a really fast and lightweight HTML-based templating engine that compiles templates to readable Node.js-compatible JavaScript modules, and it works on the server and in the browser. It supports streaming, async rendering and custom tags.

Kendo UI

Kendo UI

Fast, light, complete: 70+ jQuery-based UI widgets in one powerful toolset. AngularJS integration, Bootstrap support, mobile controls, offline data solution.

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