React Fiber is a complete reimplementation of React's core reconciliation algorithm, introduced in React version 16. It is designed to enhance the performance and responsiveness of complex React applications by enabling incremental rendering. This means that React can break down the rendering work into smaller chunks and spread it out over multiple frames, rather than processing everything in one large batch. This approach allows for better prioritization of tasks, making it possible to keep complex user interfaces responsive and smooth.
The main goals of React Fiber are to improve the perceived performance of React applications, support better error handling, and enable advanced features like animation, layout, and gestures more effectively. Fiber achieves these goals by introducing a new data structure (also called a fiber) that represents a unit of work. Each fiber corresponds to a component instance and contains information about the component, its input/output, and state.
React Fiber operates in two phases: the "render" phase and the "commit" phase. During the render phase, React can pause, resume, or abort work as needed, which is a significant departure from the previous synchronous reconciliation process. The commit phase, on the other hand, is synchronous and involves making changes to the DOM based on the results from the render phase.
Key features of React Fiber include:
Incremental rendering: Ability to split rendering work into chunks and manage prioritization of updates.
Asynchronous execution: Ability to pause, resume, and abort updates without blocking the main thread.
Error boundaries: Improved handling of errors in component trees, preventing the entire application from c...
