Philosophy & Design

Propa is designed for developers who value performance, control, and a deep understanding of their application's behavior. It aims to provide a modern reactive programming experience without unnecessary abstractions.

Why Choose Propa?

Propa offers a unique blend of features for building efficient and interactive web applications:

• Simplicity: A small API surface that's easy to learn and master. Propa focuses on providing essential tools, allowing you to build without a steep learning curve.
• Transparency: No hidden magic. Propa's reactive system and DOM updates are straightforward, giving you clear insight into how your UI behaves and changes.
• Performance: By avoiding a virtual DOM and leveraging batched updates, Propa minimizes overhead and ensures fast rendering. WebAssembly integration further allows for near-native speed for complex tasks.
• Flexibility: Integrate with existing libraries (like P5.js) and new web technologies (like WebAssembly) effortlessly. Propa doesn't impose a rigid structure, allowing you to adapt it to your project's needs.
• Developer Experience: Enjoy the benefits of reactive programming and JSX in a lightweight package. Type safety with TypeScript is a first-class citizen.

If you're looking for a framework that empowers you to build fast, robust, and interactive web applications without getting bogged down by heavy abstractions, Propa is for you.

Performance Benefits

Propa is engineered for performance through several key design choices:

• No Virtual DOM: Directly manipulates the real DOM, avoiding the overhead associated with virtual DOM diffing and reconciliation.
• Batched Updates: Multiple reactive changes within a single event loop tick are automatically batched and applied in a single requestAnimationFrame. This minimizes browser reflows and repaints, leading to smoother animations and UI updates.
• Tiny Bundle Size: With zero runtime dependencies, your application bundle only contains your code and Propa's lean core. This results in faster load times and reduced bandwidth consumption.
• Native Speed with WASM: Offload computationally intensive tasks to WebAssembly for near-native performance. Propa provides helpers for seamless WASM integration.

Use Cases

Propa is well-suited for a variety of web applications, particularly those where performance and direct DOM control are crucial:

• High-Performance Web Tools: Professional software that requires responsive UIs and efficient data handling.
• Interactive Data Visualizations: Combine reactive data with P5.js for dynamic charts, graphs, and generative art.
• Applications Requiring WASM: Leverage WebAssembly for complex calculations, image processing, physics simulations, or integrating Rust/C++ libraries directly in the browser.
• Rapid Prototyping: Quickly build interactive UIs with a declarative JSX syntax and minimal boilerplate, ideal for iterating on ideas fast.

License

This project is under the MIT license and is maintained by Elia Salerno.