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  4. Javascript UI Libraries
  5. Draggable JS vs Preact

Draggable JS vs Preact

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Preact
Preact
Stacks1.1K
Followers292
Votes28
Draggable JS
Draggable JS
Stacks53
Followers72
Votes0
GitHub Stars18.4K
Forks1.1K

Draggable JS vs Preact: What are the differences?

Introduction: When it comes to building interactive web applications, developers often use libraries and tools like Draggable JS and Preact. Understanding the key differences between these two can help make informed decisions in choosing the right tool for a project.

1. Size and Complexity: Draggable JS is a lightweight library that focuses solely on drag-and-drop functionality, which makes it easier to integrate and use in projects with minimal overhead. On the other hand, Preact is a full-fledged UI library that offers a range of features beyond drag-and-drop, making it more suitable for complex web applications that require a variety of components.

2. Re-rendering Performance: Preact is known for its efficient virtual DOM implementation, which leads to better performance in re-rendering components when state changes occur. In contrast, Draggable JS may not offer the same level of optimization for re-rendering, especially in scenarios where multiple draggable elements need to be updated simultaneously.

3. Learning Curve: Draggable JS has a simpler API and documentation, making it easier for developers to quickly grasp the concept and start implementing drag-and-drop functionality. Preact, being a more comprehensive library, comes with a steeper learning curve due to its broader range of features and concepts that need to be understood for effective usage.

4. Customization Options: Draggable JS provides limited customization options out of the box, which can be sufficient for basic drag-and-drop requirements but may fall short in more advanced scenarios where specific behaviors or styles need to be implemented. Preact, with its extensive ecosystem of plugins and extensions, offers a higher degree of customization and flexibility to tailor components according to project needs.

5. Community Support: Preact has a larger and more active community compared to Draggable JS, which means developers can find more resources, tutorials, and community-driven plugins to enhance their development experience with Preact. Draggable JS, while still supported and maintained, may have a smaller community base, resulting in potentially fewer resources and community-driven solutions for troubleshooting and extending functionalities.

6. Integration with Frameworks: Preact is designed to work seamlessly with popular frameworks like React, allowing developers to leverage the benefits of both libraries in a single project. Draggable JS, being a standalone library, may require additional effort for integration with larger frameworks, potentially leading to compatibility issues or challenges in maintaining the codebase.

In Summary, understanding the differences in size, performance, learning curve, customization, community support, and integration capabilities can help developers choose between Draggable JS for lightweight drag-and-drop functionality and Preact for comprehensive UI development in web applications.

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Advice on Preact, Draggable JS

David
David

VP Product at loveholidays

Oct 10, 2020

Review

Generally I would advise you pick Node.js for your backend if you want to run a GraphQL service. The main reason for this is the tooling and support you get from the language around GraphQL and the native feel due to the spec being initially written in JavaScrip for JavaScript. However that isn't to say that you couldn't use Go for a service underneath your GrahpQL layer - but I would say that's probably complicating it too much to begin with.

Node.js has great support for reading from databases and using a server such as Koa will give you great performance (we operate several Node.js services in Koa with over 1000req/s). Additionally it keeps your initial simple stack in the same language so it will be easier for you to jump backwards and forwards.

If you were not to use GraphQL then I'd say it's really up to you whether you want Go in your ecosystem or not. It's a fantastic language and super performant, along with being more memory efficient than Node (if you are worried about costs at large scale).

If you're at infancy stages and haven't picked certain parts - and this is a customer facing application - then I would recommend you look at Preact instead of React and URQL (instead of Apollo Client). Both are great libraries that are very performant and don't need much advanced learning. Additional swap out MySQL for PostgresSQL (they are interop primarily, but offers you more features as you grow) for its ACID compliance, better performance at scale and support for NoSQL if you were to go that way.

3.57k views3.57k
Comments
Damiano
Damiano

Oct 27, 2019

Decided

Preact offers an API which is extremely similar to React's for less than 10% of its size (and createElement is renamed to h, which makes the overall bundle a lot smaller). Although it is less compatible with other libraries than the latter (and its ecosystem is nowhere as developed), this is generally not a problem as Preact exposes the preact/compat API, which can be used as an alias both for React and ReactDOM and allows for the use of libraries which would otherwise just be compatible with React.

25.6k views25.6k
Comments

Detailed Comparison

Preact
Preact
Draggable JS
Draggable JS

Preact is an attempt to recreate the core value proposition of React (or similar libraries like Mithril) using as little code as possible, with first-class support for ES2015. Currently the library is around 3kb (minified & gzipped).

Draggable is a modular drag & drop library, allowing you to start small and build up with the features you need. At its most basic, Draggable gives you drag & drop functionality, fast DOM reordering, accessible markup, and a bundle of events to grab on to.

-
Works with native drag, mouse, touch and force touch events;Can extend dragging behaviour by hooking into draggables event life cycle;Can extend drag detection by adding sensors to draggable;The library is targeted ES6 first
Statistics
GitHub Stars
-
GitHub Stars
18.4K
GitHub Forks
-
GitHub Forks
1.1K
Stacks
1.1K
Stacks
53
Followers
292
Followers
72
Votes
28
Votes
0
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 15
    Lightweight
  • 5
    Drop-in replacement for React
  • 4
    Performance
  • 3
    Props/state passed to render
  • 1
    ES6 class components
No community feedback yet
Integrations
React
React
ES6
ES6

What are some alternatives to Preact, Draggable JS?

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.

React

React

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.

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.

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