Distinctive properties of Web Application Frameworks and Web UI Frameworks?

Question

I am totally new to web applications, and would need a clear and distinctive properties list (differences) where a web application framework stops and an web ui framework starts, to get a deeper/broader understanding of web applications.

As per now I realized, that a web application framework starts at a ajax call, that is wrapped around some rich application, which is written in javascript (client-side technology), but I could not find a distinctive border to web ui frameworks.

Usually in general purpose languages (e.g. C#, Java) for desktop applications, you can clearly state which part of code is handled by a library, or the framework, or your own implementation. How is this with web frameworks (application frameworks and ui frameworks)?

If possible, I have some frameworks, that can be used in the examples: Ext.JS, Angular 4, KendoUI, jQuery, Dojo.

I am also asking this question, because as far as I know, even Wikipedia editors have not been able to precisely categorize the sheer amount of web frameworks. How could those be categorized, based on which distinctive properties?

Answer 1

Web UI Framework

Does the framework primarily propose a visual language for your presentation layer to follow? Then it's a web UI framework.

A web UI framework will:

• Consume and present the data from the business logic layer
• Usually provide plenty of styles
• Be concerned with the presentation layer

Examples are Materialize, Bootstrap, Kendo UI.

Web App Framework

Does the framework primarily structure your application layer around proven, scalable design patterns? Then it's a web app framework.

A web app framework will:

• Expose an API to work with the DOM
• Usually provide services for common needs, such as Routing and AJAX
• Be more dogmatic as to how everything orchestrates together

Examples are Angular, AngularJS, React.

Answer 2

A Web Application mainly consists of 2 parts

• Frontend - The Presentation Layer
• Backend - The Data Extraction/Manipulation/Storage Layer

Now talking about a web application framework or let's call it web framework, it is supposed to have the capabilities of both frontend and backend.

Whereas when it comes to web ui frameworks, it resides only in the frontend section and depends on the some other technology in the backed for the data.

As an example, Django is a Web[Application] Framework and Angular is Web UI Framework.

Calling JQuery as Framework is a bit too much as it lacks many features like routing, 2-way data bindings, module dependencies which most of the other modern age frameworks do.

I hope this helps you categories the frameworks when you look at the capabilities provided.