The news that London would be host to the UK’s first Vue.js Conference was met with excitement by our frontend team. A Javascript framework created by ex-Google employee Evan You‚ Vue.js is a popular choice for frontend developing. As our framework of choice for most projects‚ it is a fundamental part of our work.
Our team is not alone in their love of Vue.js‚ with three of its biggest appeals being:
Accessibility
- Unlike React‚ the Javascript library used by Facebook‚ Vue.js is an extremely accessible framework that seems more natural to develop in.
- It requires less manual work and doesn’t have the steep learning curve associated with React‚ meaning we are able to work quicker on projects and save clients money.
- As a growing company‚ the accessibility Vue.js provides is an important element of our success and customer satisfaction as it allows for new developers to be onboarded quickly and efficiently.
- Vue.js uses HTML and custom attributes elements for component markup and logic which allows for it to be easily navigated by those without in-depth Javascript knowledge.
Performance
- DOM (the HTML markup rendered on a webpage) has the major weakness of being notoriously slow to manipulate whilst performing lots of operations.
- Vue.js has managed to sidestep this through generating a code representation of DOM‚ a “Virtual DOM”‚ which can be manipulated without affecting the page until all changes are calculated.
- This method means our developers can work efficiently and avoid delays which would impact our clients.
- We therefore have less chance of delays and are likely to keep to estimated timescales‚ again saving our client’s costs.
- Another benefit of the “Virtual DOM” is that it automatically keeps track of what needs altering as changes occur rather than having to re-render the whole page.
Bespoke
- Our developers are able to use Vue.js to suit the needs of their bespoke website development as Vue.js provides the component and reactivity system‚ with other important areas available through opt-in officially supported packages.
- By doing this‚ our client’s products are able to have unique selling points that set them against their competitors.
- Our use of Vue.js is dependent on the needs and scope of each project. Each client’s business needs are attended to.
- Vue.js works for smaller and larger bespoke projects‚ with large multilingual single page applications rendered as Search Engine friendly and requiring only three extra libraries.
The conference itself was held in September and attended by five of our developers. The day was packed with talks ranging in length and scope but all sparked interesting questions and conversations.
Chris DeMars talk “I Can’t See: Low Vision A11y & Users” was of particular interest to our team. DeMars explored the idea of visual accessibility in web development‚ asking the question: what should developers implement into their work in order to provide visually impaired people with the best experiences possible? Our developers are keen to put these accessibility practices into place in each project they do.
Chris DeMars
Other favourite talks included Sara Vieira’s “Graph QL + Apollo + Vue = Magic” which considered ways to use technology that interacts with APIs more efficiently. There was also Jen Looper’s “Human vs AI: Build a Mobile App with Vue.js‚ ML Kit‚ and NativeScript”. She discussed the process of building apps using frontend developing‚ a practice that is being increasingly explored by Vue.
Another highly anticipated part of the conference was the live release of Nuxt.js 2.0‚ the original version being one of the most used tools of Vue. Our team is already using this version on a new project!
“The conference validated our confidence in the framework and it was great to give the team an opportunity to learn from developers across the globe!” Sam‚ Lead Frontend Developer
These conferences provide a really important space in which our team can participate intellectually in new and relevant conversations being advanced. Conferences like Vue.js show the exciting progress being made within the industry‚ a progress that we at hedgehog lab are really excited to be a part of. We can’t wait to see what is in store for next year’s conference!
