How to Tell If Vue.js Is the Right Framework for Your Next Project

Vue.js grew from a one-man project to a JavaScript framework everyone’s talking about. You’ve heard about it from your front-end colleagues and during conferences. You’ve probably read multiple comparisons between Vue, React, and Angular. And you’ve probably also noticed that Vue outranks React in terms of GitHub stars.

All that’s made you wonder whether Vue.js is the right framework for your next project? Well, let’s explore the possibilities and limitations of Vue to give you a high-level look at the framework and make your decision a little easier.

Please note that this piece will draw strongly on Monterail’s experience with Vue and other JavaScript frameworks. As a software development company, we’ve delivered around thirty Vue-based projects, and we strongly evangelize it among developers and businesses with initiatives like State of Vue.js and Vue Newsletter.

Let’s dive in.

Vue.js Overview

Back in 2014, the first public version of Vue.js was released. Its template syntax — similar to AngularJS — and a component-based architecture — similar to what React offered — made it approachable to JS devs at the time. Vue.js really took off only a year later, when it was discovered by the Laravel (popular PHP framework) community.

A few years later, it now records the highest satisfaction rating among all JS frameworks (91.2%), according to State of JS data. More and more devs report having heard of it and the wish to use it in the future. Companies like IBM, GitLab, and Adobe have already adopted Vue for their products.

According to Evan You, the creator of Vue:

The original goal was to “scratch my own itch,” to create a frontend library that I would enjoy using myself.

And apparently he and the whole Community managed to accomplish this mission. But what is so special about Vue that makes programmers want to use it?

This is what the project’s official website says:

Vue (pronounced /vjuː/, like view) is a progressive framework for building user interfaces. Unlike other monolithic frameworks, Vue is designed from the ground up to be incrementally adoptable. The core library is focused on the view layer only, and is easy to pick up and integrate with other libraries or existing projects.

There it is! Progressive and easy to pick up and integrate. But is that enough to make it your primary choice?

The Business Perspective on Vue

At Monterail, we believe that it should not make a substantial difference to a JavaScript programmer which framework or library is chosen for an app’s front end. Building blazing fast, beautiful, and maintainable products is not trivial at all, but if something is feasible, it’s feasible with any modern JS framework.

Yet, we love Vue.js and recommend it to our clients in most cases. That’s because Vue is great for a number of reasons. Let’s explore them.

When Your App Is Full of Animations and Interactive Elements

Vue offers a truly elegant and flexible API — not just for composable architecture for the front end, but also for seamless transitions between views. Transitions and animations enhance user experience, smoothing changes between states. Human brains love movement, so it’s an important part of modern websites and apps. Animating is key when we need to grab user attention, when we want to keep the user on our website for a longer stretch, or simply to make our product more fun.

The release of Vue 2.0 has introduced a lot more flexibility with regard to transitions. We now have more granular access to the transition hooks — which, in turn, makes it possible to leverage third-party libraries and deliver on complex animations while still using Vue at the core. That means there are tons of different ways of doing animations in Vue. All you need to do is apply a custom attribute and add some CSS magic. Vue provides us with <transition> and <transition-group> components already built in and based on CSS animations, allowing for both CSS and JS hooks. It also integrates easily with non-HTML elements — like SVG, for example.

In our portfolio, we have this really great example of a project with many different transitions, where we used Vue.js in tandem with Nuxt. We managed to deliver a beautiful UI for Easyship that was 37% more performant than their AngularJS version. Vue’s incredible possibilities in terms of transitions also make it a good choice for marketing campaign websites. Airbnb’s “Until we all belong” is another great example — an award-winning campaign delivered in six weeks, written completely with Vue.js.

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