Recs.
Updated
SpecsUpdate
Pros
Pro Supports server side rendering
Riot has support for server side rendering. The views and data are rendered on the server, then those views are sent as HTML to the browser when a user requests them.
This helps with initial loading time and is very useful for SEO purposes because the web app is indexed by search engines same as other static websites that have their HTML on the server.
Pro Minimal DOM operations
Riot takes the expressions from a DOM tree and stores them in an array. Each of these expressions points to a DOM node. On each cycle these expressions are compared to the values in the DOM. So when a value has changed, Riot automatically updates the corresponding node. This way the operations are kept to a minimal amount and since the expressions can be cached, going through 1000 of them takes less than 1ms.
Pro Easy to learn
Two easy to read pages of documentation and you'll be ready to build your first application. Plus the syntax is very close the HTML and JavaScript, and to start making some complex functionality you only need to know around 10 API methods.
Pro Lightweight
Riot is made to be used with websites of any kind, so it's built to be easy and lightweight, but still maintaining all the needed features for a UI library. It's only 2.5 KB in size when minified. So it can also be used for mobile web apps without requiring much bandwidth to download.
Pro Components use familiar HTML tags
Riot components use custom tags which are nothing more than familiar HTML tags coupled with JavaScript. This eliminates the need to learn another templating language or syntax. For example:
<todo>
<h3>TODO</h3>
<ul>
<li each={ item, i in items }>{ item }</li>
</ul>
<form onsubmit={ handleSubmit }>
<input>
<button>Add #{ items.length + 1 }</button>
</form>
this.items = []
handleSubmit(e) {
var input = e.target[0]
this.items.push(input.value)
input.value = ''
}
</todo>
Riot tries to separate HTML and JavaScript, while still keeping them inside the component. This way, the HTML can also be neatly mixed with JavaScript expressions.
Pro Separation of concerns with RiotControl
RiotControl is inspired by Facebook's Flux Architecture Pattern and it's a simple Central Event Controller/Dispatcher for Riot. It's extremely lightweight (like Riot itself) but unfortunately passes up on some features in favor of performance and simplicity.
RiotControl helps with storing the stater of the application, by passing events from views to stores and vice-versa. Stores can communicate with many views and views can do the same with many stores, this enables to clearly separate concerns and inter-component communication.
Cons
Recommendations
Comments
Out of Date Pros + Cons
Con Fewer out-of-the-box features
While Riot is smaller and more lightweight than other alternatives, it comes at the cost of losing features that with other libraries come out of the box. While these features can be added later when needed by using third-party libraries or by writing your own solutions, in the end you might lose the advantage of having a lightweight framework in the first place if the application starts getting larger and more complicated.