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Have you used "preact"? react's 3kb alternative

Keff on February 11, 2020

I just stumbled across preact "Fast 3kB alternative to React with the same modern API." Taking a quick look at it, it seems quite robust and it se...
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Peter

We use it all the time. We use preact + typescript as the front-end for a data analytics dashboard. Our clients could potentially be in places with less than stellar internet connections, so trying to reduce codebase size is very important for delivering content quickly.

I would recommend preact to anyone and would use it again.

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Keff

Cool, thanks for sharing!

What about compatibility with existing React components and libraries? Did you have any problems with this?

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Peter

I have a bit in the past (back in preact 8), but I have not tried many with the new version (preact X). Compatibility has improved though. We created in house style guides and components that normally could be found in popular libraries.

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marcellothearcane

Have you heard of Tauri? It's like Elecron but 0.6Mb instead of 48Mb

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Keff • Edited

Ohh damn, I have not. I will look into it :)

How efficient is it when running it? Does it consume as much ram as Electron?
And does it use js as well or only Rust?

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marcellothearcane

I haven't actually used it myself, a friend told me about it.

RAM is apparently loads less, but I'm not sure about Rust/Node.

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Keff

Okay, no problem, thanks nevertheless! I will look into it, I don't use Electron often, mainly because it's too heavy for small apps.

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Keff • Edited

I've just seen that the DEV.to team are currently transitioning to Preact :)

From DEV.to Github Repo:
We run on a Rails backend, and we are currently transitioning to a Preact-first frontend.

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Ciprian Amariei

We used it for the widgets our users can generate and embed in their websites. Usage example here: projecthelping.org/volunteer/ The choice was heavily weight by the size and the dev speed.

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Seanmclem

I have not used it. I would consider using it, But the fact that it's not compatible. with a lot of libraries made for react - is a bit of a deal-breaker.

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Keff

Yup, that's a deal-breaker for me as well.

I have tried using it with some react libraries, it gave me some problems but I could make it work in the end. Although not all the libraries I tried worked!

It also seems they try and add as much compatibility with react as they can, and there are always workarounds.