Whats new in React 18: Features and Update from Our Experts

Entering like a whirlwind in the JavaScript community, the long-awaited advanced version of React—React 18—is finally here, racing with top UI-building frameworks like TezJS. Released in June 2021, React 18 has already gathered a sizeable active working group of tech-savvy experts, developers, and ardent contributors due to its new out-of-the-box features.

It is bundled with remarkable features such as automatic batching, Suspense for server-side rendering, new APIs (startTransition), a concurrent renderer, and several upgrades for React. Moreover, React 18 doesn’t mess with the existing codes of your current React project; hence, scalability, performance, and security remain intact after the upgrade.

These features and functionalities enable developers to make headway in ReactJS development services for apps with powerful capabilities. So, let’s explore these new features in more detail.

What is new in React 18?

React 18 was released in March 2022. It brought improvements in concurrent rendering, server components, Suspense API enhancements, and automatic batching of state updates. Thus, it enhanced performance and simplified development.

Significantly, React has a few noteworthy features worth looking into. Let’s take a glance through some of them below.

Deep Dive into the New React 18 Features and Updates

1. React 18 has Introduce Concurrent Mode

React 18’s Concurrent Mode is a most innovative feature that revolutionized the way of rendering in React. It enables more responsive and fluid user interfaces by leveraging concurrent rendering. React can work on several projects at once because of this.

The benefit of concurrent mode is that it improves the application’s performance, responsiveness, and scalability, making it ideal for building highly interactive applications. With Concurrent Mode, it enables developers to create smoother, more engaging user experiences and take their applications to new levels of performance and efficiency.

2. Suspense: New Server-side Component

React introduced a new server-side component called Suspense. It enables the server to render React components and transmit them to the client seamlessly. Also, it enhances initial load times and overall performance.

Developers can efficiently handle asynchronous operations like data fetching and code splitting with Suspense, resulting in a smoother and more intuitive programming experience. By combining server-side rendering with Suspense, React 18 provides a robust solution to optimize server-rendered applications and deliver quicker, more captivating user experiences.

3. Achieve Automatic Batching

One of the exciting React 18 features is the ability to achieve automatic batching, which streamlines state updates by automatically grouping multiple updates within a single event loop. It reduces unnecessary re-renders and enhances overall application performance.

With React 18’s Automatic Batching, developers can achieve more efficient and optimized updates, resulting in a smoother user experience and improved productivity during development.

4. Transitions in React 18

In React 18, developers can leverage improved transition support to create visually appealing animations for user interfaces. The enhanced transition capabilities simplify the definition and management of animations during component state changes. It includes mounting, unmounting, or updating.

This feature enables developers to incorporate fluid and engaging transitions into their React applications, enhancing the overall experience with a polished and delightful interface.

5. All-new Client & Server-side Rendering

React 18 brought all-new client and server-side rendering capabilities, revolutionizing the rendering process. With this feature, developers can seamlessly render React components on both the client and server sides, providing enhanced performance and flexibility. It allows faster initial page loading and improved SEO by generating server-rendered content.

Able to choose between client and server rendering based on specific needs empowers developers to build efficient and optimized applications for a seamless experience across various platforms and environments.

6. Addition to Vital Hooks

React 18 features an exciting addition to Vital Hooks, expanding the capabilities and flexibility of functional components. These new hooks allow developers to access critical lifecycle events and perform actions like scheduling updates, handling errors, and managing side effects.

With the addition of Vital Hooks, developers have more control and power in crafting performant and efficient React applications. This enhancement further enhances the functional component paradigm, making it even more compelling and suitable for complex application development in React 18.

7. Strict Mode Behaviors

React 18 introduces strict mode behaviors designed to assist developers in identifying potential issues and following best practices. Enabling strict mode activates additional runtime checks and warnings that help detect problems in component usage and application performance.

By embracing strict mode, developers are encouraged to write more reliable and optimized code, addressing potential pitfalls from the outset. It also helps React 18 promote a proactive development approach, resulting in more resilient React applications.

Benefits of Integrating React 18 in Your Project

Integrating React 18 into your project offers several notable benefits:

Improved Performance

You can achieve significant performance improvements by integrating React 18. The enhanced concurrent rendering capabilities allow for more efficient handling of tasks, resulting in a more responsive application.

Server components reduce initial load times, ensuring faster rendering and improved overall performance. Automatic batching optimizes rendering efficiency by reducing unnecessary re-renders.

UseCallback

Integrating React 18 provides benefits by removing the necessity of adding a class component as a callback, using this for crucial actions in your UI. React promotes wrapping other callbacks with the same approach it employs in its codebase to prevent redundant re-renders.

Also Read: React Performance Optimization Tips

This methodology guarantees enhanced performance and efficiency through function memoization and optimized callback flow, resulting in a smoother and optimized user interface. With React 18, handling callbacks becomes simpler, leading to a streamlined and high-performing application.

Compatibility with Existing Code

React 18 is designed with compatibility in mind, ensuring smooth integration with existing codebases. It offers a gradual adoption approach, allowing developers to upgrade incrementally without requiring rewrites.

This compatibility enables developers to leverage the new features and enhancements of React 18 while preserving their existing code and minimizing disruption. React 18’s compatibility ensures a seamless transition and empowers developers to take advantage of the latest advancements without sacrificing their current codebase.

Memoization

Memoization is an optimization technique that improves performance by caching the results of expensive function calls. In React, developers can leverage the “useMemo” hook to enable the memoization, storing, and reusing of computed values based on dependencies.

This approach minimizes redundant computations, resulting in enhanced performance. Memoization is especially advantageous when handling intricate and resource-intensive computations, as it reduces overall processing time and boosts the efficiency of React components.

Fewer Event Listeners

In React, the introduction of event delegation enables the use of fewer event listeners, leading to improved performance. Instead of attaching event listeners to individual elements, event delegation allows developers to fix a single listener to a parent element and handle events from its children.

It reduces the number of event listeners in the application, resulting in a more efficient event-handling mechanism and better overall performance in React components.

Chintan Gor

CTO, eSparkBiz

Enthusiastic for web app development, Chintan Gor has zeal in experimenting with his knowledge of Node, Angular & React in various aspects of development. He keeps on updating his technical know-how thus pinning his name among the topmost CTO's in India. His contribution is penned down by him through various technical blogs on trending tech. He is associated with eSparkBiz from the past 14+ years where one can get premium services.