How Modern Web Applications Are Made Today

What frameworks and technologies go into building a modern-day web app

Web Development is a highly growing field with new technologies and improvements happening every day. Gone are the days where we used to make web applications to be viewed on a Desktop Computer. Today with devices of different screen sizes like Mobile, Tablets, Laptops, etc, We as a developer need to make our websites responsive for all devices.

Web Development today has become more complex than just HTML, CSS, and Vanilla JS. With Frameworks like React, Angular we can make highly scalable web apps and add more complexity to our front-end side.

In this article, I would be talking about how Web Development today has become a highly challenging job and how modern technologies have changed the way web applications are made today.

Flashback 5 years back, when there were just a client and a server. The client i.e the user’s browser sends a request to the server and the server responds with an HTML file with CSS and JS, which loads onto the browser. Each time the user clicks a button or makes a change the browser sends an HTTP request and the server processes the requests and sends the HTML response and reloads the page. This was the Client-Server Model where the frontend was just plain HTML, CSS, and JS and the backend server did the heavy work.

Many people use these two terms interchangeably. If 5 years ago people would say website and web app are the same it could have been accepted but now web apps have become more powerful.

As per the definition: A website is a group of interlinked web pages hosted on a web server having a single domain name.

A web application is a software or program which is either hosted in a single server or multiple servers and can be loaded onto the browser. Frameworks like React and Angular pre-load javascript and HTML files as a bundle in the client’s browser and perform tasks using API Requests.

Most of the websites you open every day are Single Page Applications like Facebook, Google Maps, Gmail, Github, Medium, etc.

The answer is No. A single-page application is an app that doesn’t need to reload the page during its use and works within a browser. The application is divided into different components which can be reused. When changes happen instead of reloading the whole page only the particular components rerenders. Also during navigation from one section to another instead of reloading the page and routing, the components get hidden and display another component.

The main advantage of single-page applications is their speed. The HTML, CSS, and Javascript files are pre-loaded as a bundle onto the browser, as a result, the application doesn’t need to reload and is very responsive for the user.

We have seen the Client-Server Model where the server does the heavy work. But with frameworks like React and Angular the frontend side also now can do the highly complex tasks which were not possible before.

So all that server has to do is provide data to these frontend apps and they handle the complex tasks now and the server can connect to the database and transfer the data. Most API’s today use JSON — JavaScript Object Notation lightweight data-interchange format to share data

The servers use endpoints that respond with JSON requests to the frontend.

70% of users today view websites with mobile browsers. So we must create web apps keeping the mobile experience in mind. In fact, many developers follow a mobile-first design pattern while designing websites. The responsive website is possible with the help of Media Queries and Frameworks like Bootstrap

A progressive web application combines the best of both worlds — web and mobile apps. A progressive web application is a type of application software delivered through the web, built using common web technologies including HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. It is intended to work on both web and mobile platforms including all the features of mobile devices which traditional web apps couldn’t do. You can create a Progressive Web App using frameworks like React, Angular, or Ionic.

Thank You for reading till the end and I hope this article was helpful. Do follow me for more such Articles !!!

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