The internet has the availability of several applications and websites that we use for daily life tasks. These online utilities feature unique user interfaces that develop meaningful interactions between the user and the system. Meanwhile, the user interface has the availability of several UI components that make the software more intuitive. This article discusses UI components in detail, alongside the best available UIKits.
What Are UI Components?
UI components have immense importance in designing the visual layout of a website or an application. Apparently, there exist several visual elements like buttons, text fields, navigation bars, icons, alerts, symbols, and many others in the UI. With all these elements, a user interface develops by which an end-user interacts.
Meanwhile, the easier and more attractive a user interface is, the more user-friendly that application will be in reality.
History of User Interface
The history of the user interface is a fascinating journey that summarizes the advancement of technology we use today. Command Line Interface (CLI) was the first user interface introduced in the mid-1960s. This revolution proceeded with the introduction of the Graphical User Interface (GUI) embedded in Xerox PARC’s Alto computer in 1970. Meanwhile, Apple Macintosh came out in 1984, which transformed the GUI.
Microsoft Windows was then launched in 1985, extending GUI-based computing to a wider audience. Afterward, the web interface emerged in the 1990s, bringing tools like HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and more. Mobile interfaces, voice interfaces, AR, VR, and AI technology further transformed the GUI that we see today.
What are UI Component Libraries?
A UI component library is a set of tools, pre-built software systems, or code snippets that combine ready-made functionalities with building patterns or designs in an application. Meanwhile, these React UI component-based libraries help speed up software development. After all, this prevents you from coding the entire UI functionality from scratch.
Thus, a consistent UI layout with necessary functions and working procedures gets integrated within the applications. These UI frameworks are reusable, so developers can integrate them into applications with components like sliders, menus, buttons, forms, and much more.
When to Use UI Components?
Knowing when to use UI components makes it easier to keep the design consistent, reduce repeated work, and create a smoother user experience.
1. Rapid Prototyping
If you’re developing software that requires urgent delivery, accelerating the prototyping process becomes essential. Using UI components can help significantly because they speed up development. Instead of spending time coding different elements with custom styling, you can rely on ready-made building blocks that simplify the workflow. As a result, your prototype is completed faster, and overall software delivery time is reduced.
2. Adding Consistent Scalability
While you’re coding UI from scratch, you may need to alter coding snippets in the future if you want the upgrade of functions. Meanwhile, this process can consume much time and effort. A better way is to use UI components for making modular or scalable applications. This is necessary for making instant modifications to the UI of your applications.
3. Teamwork Collaboration
With the help of UI components, design teams can collaborate more efficiently during software development. Many of these elements come with shared libraries, allowing teams to reuse and work on the same interface pieces within a project. This makes communication smoother and helps simplify the overall development workflow, ultimately improving efficiency and reducing delivery time.
4. Cross-platform Development
You need to develop applications for major platforms like web, mobile, and desktop, and each one requires layout adjustments for different screen sizes. In this scenario, using UI components is ideal because their libraries are already optimized for cross-platform compatibility. This means you don’t have to create custom code for every platform, and your interface adapts more easily to different devices.
ZEGOCLOUD UIKits
The internet has several ready-made UIKits to offer. However, the trusted and reliable solution is ZEGOCLOUD, which is an API/SDK for communication applications. Henceforth, by using ZEGOCLOUD, you can make custom applications for your business with personalized UI. Apparently, there are 20+ built-in UIKits with more than 50 components. Meanwhile, the UIKits are open source, offering various benefits like collaboration, community support, cost saving, and more.
With cross-platform support, you can conveniently make UI for web, desktop, and mobile platform applications. Generally, these UIKits have code snippets with dedicated UI components that allow developers to streamline their application development. After all, the developers don’t have to code UI components from scratch because ZEGOCLOUD UIKits will help save their valuable time with instant solutions.
The best thing is there are early-stage testing tools available that may help in the efficient implementation and execution of your applications. There’s also a facility for in-app plugins that will make your application more functional in terms of the user interface.
Meanwhile, there’s an option to use UIKits for different frameworks, including iOS, Android, Flutter, React Native, and more. In contrast, using these UIKits is very simple and easy, as everything is ready-made, and you just have to process the integrations that require no expert-level knowledge.
Conclusion
Overall, UI components are the backbone of all the software and applications we use daily. Without UI, we cannot interact with digital utilities. Moreover, the UI components with built-in libraries are a great assistance in streamlining application development. Furthermore, you learned about ZEGOCLOUD, which offers the best UIKits for building communication applications with customized UI.
FAQ
Q1: What are UI components?
UI components are reusable elements like buttons, cards, inputs, and modals that help build consistent interfaces faster.
Q2: Why are UI components important?
They improve design consistency, speed up development, and reduce the need to rebuild the same elements in every project.
Q3: What is the difference between UI components and UI kits?
UI components are individual elements, while a UI kit is a collection of components designed to work together.
Q4: What makes a good UI component?
A good component is reusable, accessible, customizable, and easy to integrate into different layouts.
Q5: What are examples of common UI components?
Buttons, navigation bars, forms, sliders, tables, tabs, and dropdown menus.
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