Front End Technologies: 2024 Trends You Need to Know

Front end technologies are in a constant state of evolution, particularly in the web environment. If you keep up with the latest changes in the front end development ecosystem in 2023, you understand the dynamic nature of this field. It was a wild ride with plenty of new features and improvements introduced on the web.

During this period, it has become challenging for web developers to stay updated on all the recent development trends in front end technologies. Some of these front end technologies are so complex that even experts struggle to explain them. That is why blog posts like this are helpful, offering guidance on the front end technologies to focus on in the upcoming year.

Key Trends in Front End Technologies

The overall trend in front end technologies is to shift more into servers, ship less JavaScript to browsers, make fewer requests to display UI, and bundle the code faster than before. This makes the web more performant and the web development process faster. Regarding speeding up front end development, you can check out AI tools like:

• Builder.io
• GitHub Copilot

I mostly code in React, and it is still the most popular framework for building web applications. My trend predictions will often be related to the React ecosystem, but not all of them will focus on React specifically.

CSS Frameworks in Front End Development

Tailwind

A utility-first CSS framework packed with classes like flex, pt-4, text-center, and rotate-90 that can be composed to build any design directly in your markup. It remains the most popular go-to solution in every new front end technology project. It is widespread in the front end ecosystem, and I see it more often than I used to in previous years.

StyleX

A simple, easy-to-use JavaScript syntax and compiler for styling web apps created by Meta. If you are familiar with React Native StyleSheet, the syntax and overall idea are similar. The main benefit StyleX provides over other CSS-in-JS front end technologies is that it is compiled at build time rather than runtime. That means faster browser CSS parsing, resulting in faster page load times.

Linaria

A zero-runtime CSS-in-JS library. Similar in concept to StyleX. I like the syntax even more than StyleX, but because StyleX is backed by Meta, it will likely become more widespread in the front end technologies landscape.

Component Libraries for Modern Front End Technologies

shadcn/ui

Accessible and customizable components you can copy and paste into your apps. According to 2023 JavaScript Rising Stars, this is the hottest project of 2023. Designed components are built on top of RadixUI and Tailwind CSS. The main advantage of this library over others is that it is not an npm-published components library. To use it, copy and paste the code or use the CLI provided by shadcn/ui. This results in highly customizable components that belong to you, so you can do whatever you want with them.

RadixUI

An open-source component library optimized for fast development, easy maintenance, and accessibility. Easier to use than other component libraries I have worked with. Compared to the competition, it looks modern and is easy to customize. A solid component library to start with in 2024 and a significant part of the front end technologies toolkit.

HTML Streaming: A Shift in Front End Technologies

Shipping less JavaScript and shifting toward servers includes running React code exclusively on the server and moving away from JSON in UI rendering. Less JavaScript equals a faster website and better front end technologies performance.

React Server Components

React Server Components allow you to write UI that can be rendered and optionally cached on the server. You can run component-specific logic like data fetching or database mutations exclusively on the server. This eliminates unnecessary client-server network calls to get the data and render it on the client. Instead, you can do that on the server and stream HTML output directly to the browser. It is a huge improvement in the React ecosystem, and my bet is it will become more popular in the coming months as part of the front end technologies trend.

HTMX

HTMX gives you access to AJAX, CSS Transitions, WebSockets, and Server-Sent Events directly in HTML, using attributes so you can build modern user interfaces with the simplicity and power of hypertext. You can have the same HTML streaming benefit as in React Server Components but in any language you want to use. HTMX is like HTML on steroids, allowing you to make HTTP requests directly on button clicks or replace only a portion of HTML instead of the entire document. It's an exciting addition to the front end technologies available today.

AI Tools Shaping Front End Development

GitHub Copilot

AI coding assistant. If you have not used it already, I think you should try it. I can say that almost everyone should use it right now. My personal experience with Copilot is that it boosts my performance by around 10%, and it's really helpful with day-to-day tasks. Keep in mind that you need to have a paid version; otherwise, Copilot will be able to gather your project-specific data for learning purposes, which is often not what your clients want.

No-Code AI Tools

• Builder.io
• V0
• Locofy

These tools integrate with your current setup and let you generate front end code in your favorite tech stack. They also sometimes provide Figma or CMS plugins, which, for example, let you generate code directly from Figma designs. In my opinion, these tools are not “completely ready” yet; you often need to annotate buttons, inputs, selects, and so on, which is time-consuming. I would rather use these tools as a first step for generating basic templates and then modify them as needed. My only concern is about the quality of the generated code, but as far as I have tested it, the code quality looks more than good enough. They will surely gain more popularity in the front end technologies landscape in the future.

Other AI Tools

• Image generators (Stable Diffusion / DALL-E / Midjourney)
• Chatbots
• Langchain

React and Its Alternatives in Front End Technologies

According to 2023 JavaScript Rising Stars, React is still the most popular framework in the front end ecosystem, but it is not a clear winner as it was in previous years. Other options are gaining popularity every year. You should keep an eye on Svelte and Solid especially. These two gained popularity because of their simplicity. If you have experience in React and Svelte/Solid, you probably know what I mean. React is getting more complex every year with all the built-in hooks for the problems the React teams introduced in the first place. This is starting to frustrate people. That is why they started working on the React Forget Compiler. It should make React more developer-friendly. Besides that, I assume React will stay with us and still be the top framework in 2024, continuing to dominate front end technologies discussions.

Microfrontends: An Evolving Front End Architecture

I am not a big fan of micro frontends, but this architectural approach has some advantages. Developers often use it in large companies where there is a need to have independent teams with specific expertise. The idea is not new. However, recently, especially with the help of Module Federation, it has become much easier to work with and maintain. Because applications nowadays are becoming bigger and bigger, I guess programmers will use micro frontends much more often as part of their front end technologies stack.

Module Federation

Multiple separate builds should form a single application. The separate builds act like containers and can expose and consume code between builds, creating a single, unified application.

Run-time Microfrontends

Run-time integration via JavaScript.

Monorepo

With more popularized micro frontends and HTML streaming (which includes doing more work on the server), people are motivated to keep the code in one repository more often than before. That is why tools that help manage monorepos are becoming the go-to solution more frequently in the front end technologies space.

Turborepo

Turborepo is an intelligent build system optimized for JavaScript and TypeScript codebases.

NX

NX is a build system with built-in tooling and advanced CI capabilities. It helps you maintain and scale monorepos, both locally and on CI.

State Management

Long-lived Redux is basically dead, at least in the React ecosystem. There are still plenty of Redux projects, but they are most likely older projects. Although Redux patterns are powerful and predictable in large-scale applications, they are often too complicated and require too much boilerplate in small/medium-sized projects. That’s why people start to use more lightweight alternatives in their front end technologies setup.

Zustand

A small, fast, and scalable bare-bones state management solution. Zustand has a comfy API based on hooks. It isn't boilerplate or opinionated but has enough convention to be explicit and flux-like.

Jotai

Jotai takes an atomic approach to global React state management. Build state by combining atoms, and renders are automatically optimized based on atom dependency. This solves the extra re-render issue of React context, eliminates the need for memoization, and provides a similar developer experience to signals while maintaining a declarative programming model in the context of modern front end technologies.

API Integration in Modern Front End Development

The next trend I noticed getting more popular in front end technologies is how network communication is handled. As I mentioned above, we are more often shifting towards servers. That’s why patterns like tRPC/gRPC are gaining traction. Their advantages are clear:

• Simple
• Type-safe
• Always synchronized
• Self-documented
• IDE autocomplete

tRPC

RPC is short for "Remote Procedure Call." It is a way of calling functions on one computer (the server) from another computer (the client). With traditional HTTP/REST APIs, you call a URL and get a response. With RPC, you call a function and get a response. tRPC (TypeScript Remote Procedure Call) is one implementation of RPC, designed for TypeScript monorepos. It has its flavor but is RPC at its heart.

gRPC

gRPC is a modern open-source high-performance Remote Procedure Call (RPC) framework that can run in any environment. It can efficiently connect services in and across data centers with pluggable support for load balancing, tracing, health checking, and authentication. It is also applicable in the last mile of distributed computing to connect devices, mobile applications, and browsers to backend services. It is a powerful tool in the front end technologies arsenal.

Static Sites and Their Role in Front End Technologies

In this section, I especially want you to pay close attention to the Astro framework. It popularized a front end technology called Islands architecture, and for things like marketing sites, content publishing, documentation sites, blogs, portfolios, landing pages, and e-commerce sites, it’s awesome. Simple, fast, and well-documented - everything we need these days in the complicated front end technologies landscape.

Next.js

Next.js is a React framework for building full-stack web applications. You use React Components to build user interfaces and Next.js for additional features and optimizations.

Astro

Astro is the web framework for building content-driven websites like blogs, marketing, and e-commerce. Astro is best known for pioneering a new front end technology to reduce JavaScript overhead and complexity compared to other frameworks. If you need a website that loads fast and has great SEO, then Astro is for you.

Changes in the Market

A few words about the market itself. Companies no longer wish to take the risk of teaching new developers. Despite there being more tech jobs than developers, this is primarily applicable to regular/senior developers. Firms now place a greater emphasis on trust, and this trust is often garnered only from experienced workers. The cost of money remains high due to interest rates in the United States, leading startups to struggle to obtain financing from investors or banks. I expect the situation will improve slightly, but certainly not as much as in previous years.

Full Stack Developers

I also noticed that, probably because of problems with money, companies are more often trying to hire full-stack developers. Full-stacks are mostly experienced people with medium/high expertise in both front end technologies and backend areas. So overall, as always, the more experience you have and the more skills you acquire, the better job you can find on the market.

Future of Frontend Development

It’s always challenging, if not impossible, to predict the future, especially now when everything is accelerating rapidly after the AI hype. Keep in mind that the observations described above are based solely on my experience working on projects and observing the web tech market. Please do not consider them as guarantees.

I believe that everything will start to stabilize soon. At times, I feel overwhelmed by the numerous changes introduced in the front end technologies ecosystem. If you feel the same way, remember you are not alone. Overall, it’s a positive change that front end development is improving, allowing us to create better apps for users.

Conclusion

Final recommendation? Stay focused, keep learning, and remember that our job is to deliver a good, performant product that solves specific customer issues, rather than using new shiny tools that no one in your team is familiar with.