What Are Salesforce Lightning Web Components?
Salesforce brought a major change in its functionality in 2014 with the launch of the Lightning Component Framework for building responsive web applications. This framework was supported by the Aura programming framework. However, these components offered limited functionality to Salesforce users and did not support the development of large-scale applications.
As a result, Salesforce came up with a component-driven model that helps developers create large-scale and industry-specific web applications. Over time, the web stack with operating systems, database software, web servers, and programming languages was innovated to make users shift from a basic page-rendering platform to an advanced and full-fledged web development platform — Lightning Web Components.
What Are Lightning Web Components?
It is important to understand what web components are in order to understand the functionality and importance of Salesforce Lightning Web Components. Web components are essentially a set of web APIs that help developers in creating new reusable, custom, and encapsulated HTML tags used in web pages and applications.
The custom components and widgets developed using the web component standards work well across modern browsers and can be used with any JavaScript library or frameworks utilizing HTML.
Base Lightning Web Components can be created using two major programming models — Lightning Web Components (LWC) and the original Aura Components. LWC are custom elements developed using JavaScript and HTML. LWC and Aura Components can coexist and interact on a single web page resulting in admins and end-users appearing as Lightning Components.
Salesforce Lightning Web Components make use of the core web components standards and offer only what is necessary to perform adequately in the browsers supported by Salesforce. Being made of the code that runs natively in browsers, Lightning Web Components are fairly lightweight and deliver distinguished performance. Moreover, the majority of code for LWC is written using JavaScript and HTML.
Being a highlight feature of Salesforce for a long time, Lightning Web Components allow users to write a code that is portable and reusable effectively. This allows developers to create new varieties of components that are reusable, sustainable, easy to maintain, and independent. Also, the Lightning Web Components provide the formulation of a mechanism for making the development of web components easier and more streamlined for developers across the board.
The Benefits Of Using Lightning Web Components
Here are some of the major benefits of using Salesforce Lightning Web Components for building highly responsive web components:
Improved Performance
With Lightning Web Components, you can improve the performance of your web applications. This is because there is no abstraction layer in this framework, making the components render faster and providing you with improved results.
Better Web Standards
Lightning Web Components provide you with built-in browser security features out of Web Components Standards. This facilitates the out-of-the-box use of the framework and lesser custom development functions. When it comes to Salesforce Lightning Web Components, you can acquire more skills to be used in different technologies as you learn more about web standards.
Loading Your Websites Faster
Salesforce Lightning Web Components are considerably faster in loading developed components as it is a lightweight framework developed using web standards.
Writing Common Components
Lightning Web Components allow users to write components without a user interface. These components can be readily reused in other components that are more potent and powerful than static tools.
Easy To Understand And Learn
It does not require one to be highly technical in order to learn the functionality of Lightning Web Components. Essentially, they are taking form via native web standards in your browsers. This implies that there is no need for having specialized knowledge as one would need in the case of the Aura Framework and other similar frameworks. Once you have created JavaScript, you should be good to go.
This makes web development easier, faster, and more scalable for developers using the Salesforce platform.
Easy Transition For Developers
A switch to Salesforce Lightning Web Components would be fairly easy for developers as no additional framework is required for them to learn to start with development. Once they are clear with the basics, they can start with the development without facing any hassle.
Improved Security And Browser Compatibility
With the help of Lightning Web Components, Script, CSS, and other relevant frameworks, users get a better and more limited network range. Each of these frameworks offers increased consistency in the design of the lightning components.
Moreover, these components support two-way data binding that facilitates effective coordination of the movement of data between components.
Facilitating Seamless Mobile Customizations
Lightning Web Components can also be created to provide users with seamless mobile customizations of web applications. The framework provides developers with a range of built-in mobile tools and features that help them create seamless and robust mobile applications.
This requires developers to limit bandwidth usage and create responsive page layouts for business-specific mobile applications. With the help of Salesforce LWC, one can create native Salesforce applications that help users automate specific business processes and work on their customer database on the go.
Other Important Benefits
- The LWC framework standardizes the complete architecture of your system and helps you create web components for pages at a faster rate
- It permits users to reuse codes for faster deployments of web applications
- It simplifies the process of developing a Lightning page
- It supports complete quality assurance testing for all units before going live
- It allows users to implement Lightning Components with a few simple clicks within business applications
- It facilitates a smooth run of applications without any browser interference and enhances the performance of web applications
The Final Word
Salesforce Lightning Web Components provide Salesforce developers with a framework that is efficient, easy to use, scalable, and highly responsive. The framework is designed to help your development team save the time and effort required in creating powerful applications from scratch.
It is advisable for organizations across the board to implement the new and advanced framework by Salesforce to leverage their productivity and be in sync with the latest technological advancements.
