React 18: What Is New and How Will It Benefit Developers?
React 18 has been released with many new optimizations, less code writing, fixes, new features, and more. Indeed, React developers are getting a significant gift. So eventually, React Native and React JS development will bring more optimized and smoother.
A JavaScript library called React is used to build user interfaces. It offers a quick way to create elements and control how data flows through your application. Fast component rendering and less memory usage emphasize performance and efficiency. Before React 18, the imperative approach was the focus. It resulted in widespread problems, like sluggish browser updates.
React 18 is switching to a functional paradigm where data is immutable in this release. Although it will necessitate some adjustments on the part of React developers and React Native and React JS developers, this should enhance the functionality and performance of your applications. It should be simple to adopt because it is designed to be incremental and backward compatible.
So, let’s deep dive and see what the new React 18 has in detail!
What’s New In React 18, And How Will It Benefit Developers?
Image Enhancement and Support for Picture Elements
Images are a crucial part of the web page content and the most downloaded content on the internet. They play an essential role in how a web page loads. In previous versions, the API made dynamic image sizes on the go. So, in this newer React 18 version, you can create multiple image sizes depending on where images will be displayed.
React developers or React Native and React JS developers can use source elements when defining srcset.
Google Chrome Server-Side Rendering
Server-side rendering allows you to render the starting state and pass that stat to the client, so you don’t have to wait for all components to render to display data.
Cache Busting
React developers can now quickly delete/avoid cached files that are unnecessarily downloaded or of old assets. The changes can be detected faster now, so you don’t have to wait for the browser to start and see updates.
Fixed Headers
React18 makes it simple for React Native and React JS developers to set a header’s position as fixed. It allows for the fastest scrolling in applications that use sticky footers or infinite scroll. Fixed headers use the viewport width of the document. They can even be used on touch-screen devices, which was previously quite challenging to do correctly with React.
A New Component Picker
React 18 got new features in the older component picker released in React 17. New features are
- Custom tag names
- Ordering via drag and drop
- Highlighted newly components
- Customer styles for the selector
Fresh API Hooks
It’s another good news for React developers or Reacts native and React js developers. New hooks like useLayoutEffect, useCallback, useMemo, and useImperativeHandle.
UseLayoutEffect
With the new API, users can remove all the rendering logic involved in re-rendering whenever their UI changes. These modifications may occur in response to scrolling events or animations, window resizing, or any other state change. This API allows you to pass an object with all the components necessary to function.
createRef()
Another component you can use to keep track of DOM elements is createRef. Data can be quickly passed between components using createRef, eliminating any problems that might occur due to component re-rendering.
React.createClass()
The streamlined hooks API took the place of the createClass function. It is superfluous for all methods of imperative classes, which create pointless barriers to entry.
React.AutoSuspense
Async rendering is now supported by React by default, which is excellent for performance. The issue is that because the effects are challenging to debug, no one working on the application can see them. Thankfully, the AutoSuspense component can now be used, making it simpler to improve performance by displaying the effects while debugging.
Upgrading to React18?
Upgrading to React18 from React17.5 is a simple and quick process. Still, if you are upgrading from 16, you must make changes like adding new Babel plugins, updating your build tooling, and updating your work style and how you work with hooks.
Conclusion
No doubt React18 got wise updates that react developers will like. React18 offers a good performance boost over the old version, improving the development workflow. But it’s good not to use React18 in production until it reaches stable status, but it’s fun to test it and learn about it.
I hope you liked reading this post. Keep coming back for the latest updates.
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