Generally, there is confusion about how React.js and React Native differ from each other, especially among novice developers. 

Even they come up with parents React.js and React Native and common technology backbone. But that doesn’t mean that there are no differences. However, to understand them, anyone first needs to have the basic knowledge about both the framework. 

In this blog, you will get a clear idea about how ReactJS and React Native differ from each other. 

What is React? 

Before developing ReactJS, Facebook was confronted with a major user experience task – building a dynamic UI with high performance. They have aimed to create an app that can simultaneously update news feed along with chats. 

They decide to do this on the JavaScript because they had to optimize the development process itself. They added HXP and the Facebook markup syntax into the JS coordinate system, but it seems impossible. In the end, they released ReactJS library based on JavaScript and XHP symbiosis in 2011. 

 
A JavaScript library which uses a new way of rendering webpages along with the speed of JavaScript. Thus, ReactJS is highly dynamic and responsive to user input. This gives a new way of approach for web application development. 

An open-source tool based on JavaScript is released in 2013. Due to its revolutionary approach to programming user interfaces setting it becomes wide popular. 

Advantage of ReactJS 

      * Easy to Learn and Use 

ReactJS is much easier to learn and use. Any developer who comes from a JavaScript background can easily understand and start creating web apps using React. 

      * Creating Dynamic Web Applications Becomes Easier 

To create a dynamic web application specifically with HTML was tricky, which requires complex coding, but React JS solved that issue and makes it easier. It provides less coding and gives more functionality. 

      * Reusable Components

A ReactJS web application is made up of multiple components, and each component has its logic and controls. These components can be reused wherever you need them. The reusable code helps to make your apps easier to develop and maintain. 

      * Performance Enrichment

The presence of virtual DOM makes it high performing library. It is due do whenever you write a react component it will be not directly written in DOM it will write into virtual DOM, leading to smoother and faster performance. 

      * The Support of Handy Tools 

ReactJS supports a handy set of tools that make the task of the developers understandable and easier. In this, you can select, examine, and edit their current Props and State. 

      * Known to be SEO Friendly

Traditional JavaScript frameworks have an issue in dealing with SEO. ReactJS overcomes this problem, which helps developers to be easily navigated on various search engines. It is because ReactJS applications can run on the server, and the virtual DOM will be rendering and returning to the browser as a regular web page. 

      * The Benefit of Having JavaScript Library 

Today, ReactJS gaining popularity among web developers. It is offering a very rich JavaScript library which provides more flexibility to the web developers to choose the way they want. 

      * Scope for Testing the Codes

ReactJS applications are easy to test. It offers a scope where the developer can test and debug their codes with the help of native to 

Disadvantage of ReactJS 

     * The high pace of development

As we know, the frameworks continually change so fast. The developers are not feeling comfortable to re-learn the new ways of doing things regularly. It may be hard for them to adopt all these changes with all the continuous updates. 

     * Poor Documentation

React technologies updating and accelerating so fast that there is no time to make proper documentation. To overcome this, developers write instructions on their own with the evolving of new releases and tools in their current projects. 

      * View Part

ReactJS covers only the UI Layers of the app and nothing else. So, you still need to choose some other technologies to get a complete tooling set for development in the project. 

ReactJS Application examples 

Ecommerce Starter 

Subscriptions for food, products or clothes have become very popular over the last few years.  With this open-source product you can create your own subscription service, and it's FULL-STACK. It gets a frontend created with React and a Node.js and GraphQL backend.  

This is a great example for starting your own company and is looking for good material to learn how to modularize your code or integrate front- and backend, then definitely have a look at this repository.  

They even use StoryBook so you can inspect all the components that are used in this project. 

Apple Music  

Do you ever listen to music on Apple Music, Spotify or Google? This project is a clone of the first one, and even comes with a backend that you can use. Want to build your backend?  

You can use the frontend React is used together with Redux and Redux Thunk, providing you with an extensive example to get started with Redux for state management.  

React Native 

React Native is launched in 2015 by Facebook with the main goal of developing a mobile app as an additional library. React Native is an open-source JavaScript framework used for developing a mobile application for iOS Android, and Windows. It uses only JavaScript to build a cross-platform mobile app. 

In React Native the mobile-related components are brought up in the packages of React. Components like Navigator, Text, TextInput, View, ScrollView, etc., as well as native iOS/Android UI components. 

You can make a native mobile app in JavaScript using the React Native framework. It relies on the React.Js library by leveraging its power. 

Advantages of React Native 

There are several advantages of React Native for building mobile applications. Some of them are given below: 

       * Cross-Platform Usage: It provides the facility of "Learn once write everywhere." It works for both platform Android as well as iOS devices. 

       * Class Performance: The code written in React Native are compiled into native code, which enables it for both operating systems as well as it functions in the same way on both the platforms. 

       * JavaScript: JavaScript knowledge is used to build native mobile apps. 

       * Community: The large community of ReactJS and React Native helps us to find any answer we require. 

       * Hot Reloading: Making a few changes in the code of your app will be immediately visible during development. If the business logic is changed, its reflection is live reloaded on screen. 

       * Improving with Time: Some features of iOS and Android are still not supported, and the community is always inventing the best practices. 

       * Native Components: We will need to write some platform-specific code if we want to create native functionality, which is not designed yet. 

       * Existence is Uncertain: As Facebook develop this framework, its presence is uncertain since it keeps all the rights to kill off the project anytime. As the popularity of React Native rises, it is unlikely to happen. 

The disadvantage of React Native 

       * React Native is Still New and Immature: React Native is a newbie in Android and iOS programming languages and is still in its improvement stage, which can harm the apps. 

       * Learning is Tough: React Native is not easy to learn, especially for a fresher in the app development field. 

       * It Lacks the Security Robustness: React Native is a JavaScript library and open-source framework, which creates a gap in the security robustness. When you are creating banking and financial apps where data is highly confidential, experts advise not to choose React Native. 

       * It Takes More Time to Initialize: React Native takes a lot of time for initializing the runtime even for the hi-tech gadgets and devices. 

Example App developed using React Native Framework 

Facebook  

As a hackathon project, Facebook’s developed React Native for company needs. 

To bring all the benefits of web development like fast iterations and having a single team for mobile development. For this reason, Facebook build React Native and leveraged in mobile app development for both iOS and Android apps. 

They created the test app and monitored the performance in iOS. 

It is a significant part of the user’s first impression of the app and determines whether they will stay or leave. What they achieved was cutting time-to-market in half. 

Walmart  

Walmart aspiring to become the world’s largest online retailer. With such big goals, the company needs to make bold moves that involve a higher risk to gain a competitive advantage. That’s why they always seek ways to improve customer experience by trying new technologies. Walmart has already proved its innovative attitude introducing Node.js into its stack. 

After the release of the React Native, they have moved their mobile app into this technology. 

Walmart managed to improve the performance of the app on both iOS and Android by using fewer resources and within a shorter time span. 

95% of the codebase was shared between platforms while the skills and experience of developers were leveraged across the organization.  

For features like great performance, nearly identical to native apps, and extremely smooth animations React Native is used by Walmart. 

ReactJS Vs React Native 

Starting and Setuping 

ReactJs is a JavaScript library which can be used for developing a website, on the other hand, React Native is a framework for building mobile applications. 

You need to choose a bundler like Webpack for starting a new project in ReactJS. React-Native doesn't any operation like that. 

Setup the both is easy and you can immediately run an application. 

DOM (Document Object Model) 

In ReactJS, the DOM manages the data inputs and outputs much faster than others. 

This is because it will partially refresh certain parts of the page, so it reduces the re-building time.  

It improves the performance and speed of the application. Moreover, the possibility of reusable code in React JS further saves you a lot of time. 

In React-Native you can't use HTML to render the app. But some other alternative components help in render the app. Some components that are used by React Native are real native iOS or Android that gets rendered on the app. And you are not able to reuse the  

Libraries, unlike ReactJS Because your code doesn’t get rendered in an HTML page. 

Animations and Gestures 

In ReactJS for animation, it relies on CSS or other JavaScript libraries for animation. 

In React Native you will a new way of animations. 

It provides Animated API for animate a component. In this, you can create any type of animation and can be used with different types of Easing. In this, you will get a far better kind of animation the web pages. 

In React-Native provides something similar to the JavaScript touch events web AP for interacting with user gestures. It provides a list of functions you can use to catch the different touch events 

With this, you can get gesture state information like all the touches and their locations as well as accumulated distance, velocity and touch origin 

Navigation 

Web pages built in ReactJS use React-router for navigation while React Native has an entirely different library- Navigator for this purpose. 

It provides the Navigator component. It is a little difficult to React Native for navigation large scenes. 

Overheads 

You can write a single piece of code and it runs everywhere in ReactJS. 

But in React Native you need a platform-specific code.  

With ReactJs you can easily reach any kind of platform. 

Conclusion  

The React community is growing constantly and is getting bigger in the coming days. React is a great library for making websites, mobile apps and virtual reality experiences. 

React.js and React Native are used for a different purpose. You can build complex UI on your webpage as quickly as you would do with ReactJS and React Native usually works pretty well for both iOS and Android. 

Infinijith is quite good to build applications in both the JavaScript community. Infinijith will recommend you React.js if you want to build an interactive web interface and React Native will the right choice for building cross-platform native apps.