JavaScript InfoVis Toolkit vs. Preact vs. React vs. RequireJS Comparison Chart

Preact provides the thinnest possible Virtual DOM abstraction on top of the DOM. It builds on stable platform features, registers real event handlers and plays nicely with other libraries. Most UI frameworks are large enough to be the majority of an app's JavaScript size. Preact is different: it's small enough that your code is the largest part of your application. That means less JavaScript to download, parse and execute - leaving more time for your code, so you can build an experience you define without fighting to keep a framework under control. Preact is fast, and not just because of its size. It's one of the fastest Virtual DOM libraries out there, thanks to a simple and predictable diff implementation. We automatically batch updates and tune Preact to the extreme when it comes to performance. We work closely with browser engineers to get the maximum performance possible out of Preact.

RequireJS is a JavaScript file and module loader. It is optimized for in-browser use, but it can be used in other JavaScript environments, like Rhino and Node. Using a modular script loader like RequireJS will improve the speed and quality of your code. This setup assumes you keep all your JavaScript files in a "scripts" directory in your project. To take full advantage of the optimization tool, it is suggested that you keep all inline script out of the HTML, and only reference require.js with a requirejs call like so to load your script. All of them map to loading some/path/some/module.js. Ideally we could choose the CommonJS syntax, since it is likely to get more common over time, and we want to reuse code.