The Best React UI Framework to Choose in 2022

When you are developing a website for a business user experience is the main priority. Believe it or not but what the users’ view and experience is what matters no matter how complex the back end is.

In order to develop interactive, modern and user-centric websites require frontend UI frameworks that streamline the development process and makes it enjoyable which is why I am going to talk about the best front end UI frameworks for your next web app project.

It can be a lot of work to pick the right UI framework but I have tried my best to curate the list for you. And I personally use these frameworks all the time.

So let’s take a peek…

Best React framework in 2022

Here is what we will cover in this blog post:

1. Material UI
2. Ant Design
3. React Bootstrap

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1. Material UI (MUI)

Material UI (MUI) is a great React UI Framework with a variety of pre-built components. Just to give you an example it has sliders, modal dialogs, menus, date select and many more. Using pre-built components can really speed up your development process and you don’t have to waste time developing your own.

You are not limited to using the default theme. MUI comes with advanced theming features. The code can be easily customized with CSS utilities giving you the ability to control styling and component usage.

How to install Material UI (MUI)

To install and save in your package.json dependencies, run:

// with npm
npm install @mui/material @emotion/react @emotion/styled

// with yarn
yarn add @mui/material @emotion/react @emotion/styled

The best thing about MUI is that you can use styled-components are the styling engine. To do that you can issue these commands:

// with npm
npm install @mui/material @mui/styled-engine-sc styled-components

// with yarn
yarn add @mui/material @mui/styled-engine-sc styled-components

How to use Material UI (MUI) in a React project:

The usage is really very simple. Let’s say you want to add a button to your component. No problem! You can do so like this:

import Button from '@mui/material/Button';

function App() {
  return <Button variant="contained">Hello Material UI</Button>;
}

2. Ant Design

Ant Design is backed by giant like Alipay/Alibaba Group and has a huge list of clean and minimal components. It is based on the design philosophy of being Natural, Certain, Meaningful and Growing. If you look around the api you can see that it is clearly laid out, but not all the time. The bundle size is big compared to MUI in case you are worried about that kind of thing.

How to install Ant Design (Antd) in a React project:

using npm or yarn:

$ npm install antd

$ yarn add antd

How to use Ant Design (Antd) in a React project:

Usage is very simple and pretty similar to MUI. We will use the same example of adding a button to our react project:

import { Button } from 'antd';

function App() {
  return <Button type="primary">Hello Antd</Button>;
}

3. React Bootstrap

It is one of the most popular options when it comes to choosing a front-end UI framework. You get a true React experience when using React Bootstrap without unneeded dependencies like jQuery. It has a vast array of components designed to maximize accessibility.

Since React-bootstrap is accessible by default this gives you, as a developer, more control over form and function of each individual component. Meaning less development efforts and more productivity.

How to install React Bootstrap in a React project:

npm is the best way to consume React-bootstrap:

npm install react-bootstrap bootstrap@<version>

How to use React Bootstrap in a React project:

We will use the same button example just so that we stay consistent:

import Button from 'react-bootstrap/Button';
function App() {
   return <Button variant="primary">Hello React-bootstrap</Button>;
}

As you can see developers looking to build a modern web app has alot of choices when choosing a front-end UI framework. I would suggest not spending too much time when it comes to choosing one vs the other. Test out the UI framework and see which one you feel more comfortable with.

I personally like to use Material UI just because I have gotten used to it and am comfortable with customizing it the way I want. Also I like to use styled-components in my React projects so that makes it a good combo.

I hope this blog post was helpful.