Frontend Tools 2019 survey showed that React is voted the most important as well as the most widely used JavaScript tool. For the first time since 2015, jQuery will be replaced by the first place – but remains the tool with which a large majority are best informed.

The results of the annual survey of developers for the Frontend Tools 2019 Survey are available. Ashley Nolan’s survey evaluated 27 questions for 2019, which were answered by 3005 developers. 59% of those surveyed work at least 5 years in frontend development, 13% for more than 15 years. As in previous years, the current questionnaire is subdivided into CSS and JavaScript.

Tools and frameworks for CSS

When asked about the most commonly used CSS frameworks, the trend of the previous year can be confirmed. With 51.61% in 2019, more than half of the CSS experts use either no framework or one of their own . For comparison : in 2018 it was 48.33%. Bootstrap is still the most popular solution, but it loses considerable popularity with around 7% in view of the previous year and is only used by 28% of respondents. In the area of ​​the most popular CSS tools and methodologies, the autoprefixer was once again able to prevail. Almost 56.84% said they would use it in projects. Second place went to BEM with 45.52%, followed by Stylelint with 27.49%.

Frontend Tools 2019: React as leader, jQuery with heavy losses

Much has happened since the last survey in the JavaScript world. Since 2015, jQuery has been the undisputed leader in the table of most used tools – now React is replacing it. While jQuery fell by almost 15 percentage points to only 36.81%, React was able to increase its lead with 52.21%. Over half of the surveyed developers are now using React for their projects. Despite the bitter loss, jQuery is in second place, just ahead of Lodash (32.81%). Another trend is confirmed by the numbers: Angular 2+ and Angular 1 taken together just before Vue.js last year pull the latter tool away. 27.15% of the developers said they use Vue.js in their projects. Adding up the two Angular versions, it is only 22.07% (compared to 24.01% in the previous year). The reason for this is also the falling demand for Angular 1.

And in another discipline jQuery loses approval. When asked about the most important frameworks or libraries for projects, jQuery already lost 12.37% in the 2018 survey. Now the JavaScript library slips to fourth place by another 8.59 percentage point. At the top is now also in this category React (32.78%). At 21.66%, nearly a quarter of respondents said they did not use frameworks or libraries.

Something in contrast to these numbers is the result of the question, with which tool the developers are best versed. With 75% on rank 1: jQuery.

There were also clear results on which accessibility tools are used to make projects more accessible to people with disabilities. 63.13% said they did not use any tools at all. The most used were Color Contrast Checker (22.20%) and Screenreader (15.44%). Ashley Nolan, author of the study, sees the greatest need for development here and points out, in addition to moral aspects, to court rulings against companies that do not guarantee accessibility to their offers.

The results of the survey can be found on the website of Ashley Nolan.