Cool Web Development Technologies

James Christie

Oct 05, 2017 . 3 minutes read

Cool web dev tech

As the world of web development is constantly evolving I think it is vital to keep up to speed with the rest of the industry and embrace new technologies to make our work as web developers more efficient and maintainable. Here are some of the technologies I would like to learn over the next year or so and incorporate into the workplace. 

React JS/React Native

react logo

Official Site

React is a front-end library developed by Facebook. It is used for handling the view layer for web and mobile apps. ReactJS allows us to create reusable UI components. It is currently one of the most popular JavaScript libraries and has a strong foundation and large community behind it.

React Native lets you build mobile apps using only JavaScript. It uses the same design as React, letting you compose a rich mobile UI from declarative components. It lets you build Android and iOS apps all within the same project folder.

Greenock Animation Library

Official Site

I’ve always been instantly attracted to websites with cool animations. One framework I do like the look of is Greensock Animation. All of the sites built using this framework look amazing - on desktop at least!

Here are some of the sites which I like the look of…

- https://alfredservice.com/ - a Canadian laundry service.

- https://www.electricenjin.com/ - Enjin Marketing Company

- https://www.ellcreative.com/ - I love the menu animation on this site!

- https://studiokraftwerk.com/ - A Design Agency

- https://noni.cmiscm.com/ - A cool animated website which lets you sketch and tries to work out what shape you have drawn

There are plenty of other awesome looking websites built using Greensock Animation at https://greensock.com/examples-showcases

Laravel

laravel logo

Official Site

Laravel is a MVC framework with bundles, migrations, and Artisan CLI. Laravel offers a robust set of tools and an application architecture that incorporates many of the best features of frameworks like CodeIgniter, Yii, ASP.NET MVC, Ruby on Rails, Sinatra, and others.

Laravel is an Open Source framework. It has a very rich set of features which will boost the speed of Web Development. If you familiar with Core PHP and Advanced PHP, Laravel will make your task easier. It will save a lot time if you are planning to develop a website from scratch. Not only that, the website built in Laravel is also secure. It prevents the various attacks that can take place on websites.

Laravel offers the following key features -

- Testability

- Routing

- Configuration management

- Query builder and ORM (Object Relational Mapper)

- Schema builder, migrations, and seeding

- Template engine

- E-mailing

- Authentication

- Queues

- Event and command bus

JavaScript ES6

javascript es6

Official Site

This popular frontend programming language has had a major update which helps to simplify your code and work more efficiently. Many previous keywords are not required anymore and the language has taken on some of the benefits from other languages like PHP.

Some new features include -

- Support for constants

- Block Scope

- Arrow Functions

- Extended Parameter Handling

- Template Literals

- Extended Literals

- Enhanced Object Properties

- De-structuring Assignment

- Modules

- Classes

- Iterators

- Generators

- Collections

- New built in methods for various classes

- Promises

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