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Hello and welcome to WD301!

This course is all about React.js, the most popular JavaScript library you can learn these days. You're really going to learn all about React in great detail, step-by-step. You don't need any prior React knowledge, all you need to know is just basic JavaScript.

So, without wasting any time, let's dive in.

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Hello and welcome!

In this course, you will learn about React.Js. React is the world’s most popular JavaScript library, created by Facebook. It helps us to build amazing user interfaces. It runs on the browser, and it makes a website more interactive and faster. You can use it to build single page applications, mobile apps, or to build complex apps if you utilise it with other libraries.

So, let's have a look at a website built using React.Js

Action: Open Netflix

As you can see, the application is highly interactive and runs pretty smoothly when we work with it. It's easy to use, and we don't have to wait for anything to load, we have nice transitions, when we visit different pages the transition happens pretty much instantly. We don't seem to wait for a new page to load here, and that's all pretty nice. Even though I'm using Netflix in browser, it might almost feel a bit like a mobile app. Because mobile apps give us this great, highly reactive user experience.

Traditionally, websites didn't always have this kind of user experience. For example, previously when we used to click a link or a button, our request was sent to a server and a new HTML page was sent back to the browser where it then could be displayed. And therefore, traditionally, websites could feel a bit sluggish, and we might have that delay in request and response cycle where we had to wait for this new HTML page to load.

Action> Show the traditional request-response cycle for browser (in presentation)

JavaScript comes to aid

Here, JavaScript comes to help to improve the latency in request-response cycle. As JavaScript is the brain of a website, it allows us to run logic in the browser. JavaScript is able to manipulate the so-called DOM, the HTML elements that are rendered onto the screen. And that allows us to change what the users see without fetching a new HTML page. We don't need to request a new HTML page just to present something different to the user.

So that's why JavaScript can help us. And since React is a JavaScript library, it looks like it can also help us with that.

So what is React.Js?

  • React.js is a client-side JavaScript library. It helps us with writing that client-side JavaScript code.
  • It's all about building modern, reactive user interfaces for websites.

And, who else is using React?

Apart from Facebook or Netflix, companies like Uber, Twitter, Amazon, Airbnb, Flipkart, Dropbox, they all rely on React for their frontend.

So, throughout this course you will learn about all the different features and tools React.Js has, and how easily we can make complex user interfaces. First, we will take you through the absolute basic concepts and then gradually we will build an amazing application together.

So, let's get started.

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One question still remains, why do we need React? Because at this point we know that JavaScript is helpful, and I hope I could explain why it is. But how can React specifically help us, why might we want React in addition to JavaScript? Let's find out in the next lesson.