4 Essential Elements of a Modern Frontend Architecture

While most frontend frameworks are foundational and accelerate development, building an efficient, scalable, and well-structured architecture from it is crucial for delivering prime UX.

Modern frontend architecture has evolved greatly. It emphasizes modular design, performance, and automation. Therefore, to meet quality standards, you must consider these four elements to adopt new architectural styles, patterns, tools, and practices.

1. Design Systems

You must have a modern design system to be used across the app. This comprehensive collection of reusable user interface components, styles, and guidelines will help establish a consistent visual identity for the app.

The UI components consist of:

• simple UI elements (buttons and text boxes)
• complex compositions (widgets and dialogs and handles theming, typography, icons)

These systems are based on standard component libraries, including Material UI, Chakra UI, and Headless UI.

Modern design systems must allow you to independently develop, preview, and test each component. So, when creating a design system, define your key components, such as buttons, navigation bars, and forms.

At the same time, define typography, colors, spacing, and other visual elements. Make sure to track changes to maintain consistency. Moreover, each component should be well-documented. This is essential as it is highly reused across one or more apps.

2. Components Reuse

Earlier, developers had a shared directory to store common reused components reused across the app. With time, the components in the shared directory became vast and more difficult to reuse.

Such a monolithic structure can limit the productivity. This is because developing and testing each component would require running the complete app. You may also need to perform several actions to load the relevant UI.

An easy way to avoid this is by designing a project that reuses components—from the smallest element to the most complex one. Imagine Lego blocks, where each piece complements the other to form a simple yet intricate structure. This is what component reuse means.

By crafting components that can be reused across various segments of an app, you can have a consistent UI with reduced development time. Such a compostable platform allows each independent block to be assembled into many configurations. This offers the flexibility and scalability required for modern web apps. It also reduces code duplication and saves development time. At the same time, changes can be made without affecting other components. It also eases the testing of individual elements in isolation.

When implementing component-based architecture, determine reusable UI elements like Buttons, forms, and models. Then, develop independent components, each with its own template, logic, and styling. Lastly, organize the components properly to create a component library for easy access and reuse.

Also read: Why Developers Should Care About User Interface (UI) and User Experience (UX)

3. Asset Optimization

A web app’s performance can attract or repel users. From image compression to JavaScript and CSS minification, asset optimization influences UX. So, it is essential to minimize load time. How can you achieve this?

Use performance tools that offer strategic insights. These tools ensure that every image, script, and style sheet is structured and systematic. But a key challenge here is that every asset requires a different optimization strategy.

• For Images

For JPEG, PNG, GIF, and WebP formats, use compression tools. These tools will help reduce file size without losing its visual quality. You can use a next-gen format like WebP for better compression and quality.

In the case of vector images, SVG files are inherently scalable. They are also smaller in size. You can minify these files and consider inline SVG for icons to reduce HTTP requests.

• JavaScript

Reduce the use of heavy frameworks and libraries. Use tree shaking to remove unused code from your bundle. After bundling and minifying your JavaScript files, use code splitting to load code on demand.

Compress your custom JavaScript or TypeScript files for custom scripts. For scripts that are not required immediately, use lazy loading. Furthermore, HTTP/2 can be employed to load resources quickly.

• Video, Audio, and Documents

For video files, compress them and use modern formats for better quality at lower bitrates. Also, consider implementing lazy loading and using placeholder images for videos.

Compress audio files and use AAC formats. This maintains a balance of file size and quality. Always load audio files on demand to save bandwidth.

For documents, compress them and load them only upon user request to save initial loading time.

• CSS and Fonts

You can minify CSS files to shrink their size. Consider compression and critical CSS techniques to load essential styles inline. This will help render content faster. PostCSS or similar tools can be used to auto-prefix and optimize CSS to ensure cross-browser compatibility.

For fonts, choose formats like WOFF2 for better compression. Remember to limit the number of font variations. Only load the characters needed.

4. Caching

Caching helps reduce server load and provides faster content delivery to the end-user. Implementing cache at various levels is essential to improving a web app’s responsiveness.

Here’s where caching can be applied.

• Browser

For static assets like CSS, JavaScript, images, and fonts, configure HTTP cache headers (Cache-Control, Expires). This directs the browser to store these files locally. It instructs them to reuse them on the next visits without re-fetching them from the server.

You can also use service workers to cache dynamic content and assets. This allows for fine-grained control over the cache. It also enables offline capabilities for web apps.

• Content Delivery Networks (CDNs)

At edge locations, CDNs can cache the static assets closer to the user. This minimizes latency and enhances load time. Always ensure that the CDN configuration aligns with the cache invalidation strategy.

• DNS

At the browser level or by the operating system, DNS caching stores the accessed domains’ IP addresses. This cuts the DNS lookup time for the next requests to the same domain.

• Data

Implement caching strategies within your app. This is done to store frequently accessed data, such as API responses or computed results. React-query or Apollo Client libraries offer built-in caching mechanisms to optimize state management and data fetching.

Conclusion

For a modern frontend architecture, elements like design systems, component reuse, asset optimization, and caching must be considered. Emphasizing these four key areas ensures a robust UX and an efficient and flexible development lifecycle that can adapt to changing user needs.

By adhering to these modern elements, you can build visually appealing and performant apps that stand the test of time in the evolving web development landscape.