Frontend - TypeScript, Vite, JSX, and React or Solid

The User Interface (UI) of your web application which users see and interact with is referred to as the “front-end”.

A huge array of technologies are used for building frontends, the most common covered below…

CSS & Styling

Using raw CSS for styling your frontend can quickly become a challenge to mange and can impair developer productivity.

Tailwind is a utility-first CSS framework that can help you build consistent and responsive designs quickly, and is the solid choice for a styling / CSS framework.

JavaScript & TypeScript

A web-based UI which renders in your web browser uses Hyper-Text Markup Language (HTML) for data, and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) for styling.

JavaScript is the programming language used to make HTML & CSS pages interactive, and support is built-in to every modern web browser.

TypeScript is a superset of JavaScript that adds static typing, which improves developer productivity and reduces bugs. While it can’t run in the web browser directly, modern build tools can compile it to JavaScript.

Single Page Applications (SPAs) vs Server-Side Rendering (SSR)

The last decade has been dominated by Single-Page Applications (SPAs), which run “client-side” (in your web browser), allowing for complex interactivity without waiting on page loads from a server with Server-Side Rendered (SSR).

Over time, the market has shifted towards minimising the amount of JavaScript sent to the client-side, due to increase internet speeds and the development complexity trade-offs of SPAs.

Build Systems - Vite

Vite is the market leader of front-end build tooling, and is the solid choice for building frontends.

Templating - JSX

JSX is a syntax extension for JavaScript that is used for “templating”, or rendering HTML using custom logic. It is the solid choice for frontend templating.

Frameworks - React or Solid

Chosing a front-end framework in 2025 is tricky. However, if you chose one with a strong community backing, which uses Vite and JSX, you will be building on solid foundations.

React is the most popular frontend framework, and while it is typically easy to hire for, it carries a lot of history and complexity, which some technology leaders see as overhead and risky in terms of correct execution with ease of maintenance.

Solid is another frontend framework that is gaining popularity for its simplicity and performance, and due to its use of JSX it’s seen as easy to learn for folks coming from React.

Note that both React and Solid can be used inside an Astro project (which also uses Vite) - check out our page on Websites - Astro for more on that.

Package Managers & Runtimes

Bun is a modern JavaScript/TypeScript package manager and runtime that is gaining popularity for its speed and simplicity. It is a great choice for building front-end applications, and is often used in conjunction with Vite and JSX. It is the solid choice for managing dependencies, building, and running your front-end code in production.