Role of Third-Party Packages/Frameworks in Web Development

When you want to create anything on the web you can use HTML and CSS for it. For example, let’s say you want to create a navbar for your webpage, then you can easily use HTML to structure it and CSS to style it, but the only problem is that “you have to do everything on your own.” But we can use Third-Party Packages/Frameworks as a solution to this problem.

The use of Third-Party Packages/Frameworks minimizes that for you, with the help of Third-Party Packages/Frameworks you can easily create a navbar or anything else without doing manual coding on your own. You just have to copy-paste the code from the official docs section of that Third-Party Package/Framework which you want to insert on your webpage, and that’s it!

Now, the navbar you see on a website needs some HTML, CSS, and JavaScript code behind its looks and functionality. And definitely, it will vary as per the requirements of the owner of the website. More complex websites need a more complex navbar which in fact needs more complex and lengthy coding. Since every other website needs a navbar it’s pretty cumbersome for a web developer to write all the code from scratch again and again. Also writing all the complex code is more error-prone and time-consuming. Here comes the idea of third-party packages known as “Frameworks”. Frameworks provide “ready-to-use” code to the web developers for some everyday styling of the elements. For example styling for the navbar, cards, forms, buttons, etc.

NOTE: Framework means “Don’t do all the work on your own”!

The framework is a code-package/code-file written by other developers, distributed over the world wide web so that everyone is able to include them in their projects.

You can write all CSS/JavaScript code on your own, but often, you have certain features, styles, or tasks that are very common to many projects/websites and for that, you have frameworks or third-party packages available on the internet.

Advantages of using third-party packages:

• Less code to write.
• More time-saving.
• Less cumbersome.
• less error-prone.
• In-build security features

Disadvantages of using third-party packages:

• Less control.
• More default behavior.

There are various third-party packages/Frameworks available on the internet, some of them are listed below:

1. Bootstrap: It is a free open-source front-end web development framework useful for the creation of websites and web applications. It gives you responsive web layouts so that you don’t have to worry about the responsiveness of the webpage.
2. Material UI: This is a framework which is developed by Google in 2014. It is famous for layouts having transitions and animations. The layout is more grid-based and you don’t have to worry about the responsiveness of the webpage.
3. Tailwind CSS: This is also a kind of open-source framework, but a bit different from bootstrap. Unlike bootstrap, it does not provide you with any predefined classes for elements. So, it is easier to maintain code for your application. It is cleaner than bootstrap.
4. Simple parallax: This framework is used when you need a parallax effect while scrolling your page. It adds parallax animations to any image with the help of javascript.

To know the difference between software and a framework, click here. 

When using a third-party package you just have to copy-paste the relevant HTML code from their official website which are having some classes and data- (pronounced as “data dash”) attributes, which are extremely important in giving the resultant look to your website. If you forget to insert any class or make some mistake/typo while inserting the class, you will not get the desired result.

How the third-party packages work behind the scene:

The third-party packages/frameworks have specific classes and functions responsible for giving the desired result to the website. The code of the third-party packages or frameworks is written by some developers present on the remote server. When you include the link tag in the head section of the HTML document it will send the request to that remote server where the actual code for the classes is present and the browser will include that code in your website. You can use these classes even though you did not create them. The coding for these classes is present on the remote server.

Reasons/features to add Third-Party Packages/Frameworks in Web Development:

• Using Third-Party Packages/Frameworks saves time, so you can focus more on the core business logic that your company wants instead of just wasting time creating some pre-developed stuff.
• The code of the Third-Party Packages/Frameworks is tested various times and the feedback of the users cured all the bugs present in the code already. Therefore, less error-prone.
• Third-Party Packages/Frameworks enable you to write less code manually by yourself, instead, you could copy-paste it from the official site of the framework.