Making Sense out of a Jungle of JavaScript Frameworks: towards a Practitioner-friendly Comparative Analysis
This work targets web developers facing a proliferation of JavaScript frameworks, but it is incremental as it calls for action rather than presenting a fully developed solution.
The paper addresses the challenge of selecting a suitable JavaScript framework for web development by proposing a research design for a comparative analysis framework that integrates both researcher and practitioner needs, aiming to help practitioners make informed choices.
The field of Web development is entering the HTML5 and CSS3 era and JavaScript is becoming increasingly influential. A large number of JavaScript frameworks have been recently promoted. Practitioners applying the latest technologies need to choose a suitable JavaScript framework (JSF) in order to abstract the frustrating and complicated coding steps and to provide a cross-browser compatibility. Apart from benchmark suites and recommendation from experts, there is little research helping practitioners to select the most suitable JSF to a given situation. The few proposals employ software metrics on the JSF, but practitioners are driven by different concerns when choosing a JSF. As an answer to the critical needs, this paper is a call for action. It proposes a re-search design towards a comparative analysis framework of JSF, which merges researcher needs and practitioner needs.