Shadow DOM

The Virtual DOM is a lightweight in-memory representation of the actual browser DOM that React uses to optimize UI updates. When state changes, React creates a new Virtual DOM tree, compares it with the previous one through a process called reconciliation, and calculates the minimal set of real DOM mutations needed. This batching and diffing approach avoids expensive direct DOM manipulation and was a key innovation that made React's declarative programming model performant.

Color contrast is the measurable difference in luminance between foreground text (or UI elements) and their background. WCAG guidelines require a minimum contrast ratio of 4.5:1 for normal text and 3:1 for large text to ensure readability for users with visual impairments. Tools like Chrome DevTools, Stark, and WebAIM's contrast checker help developers verify compliance during development.

Docker is a platform that packages applications and their dependencies into lightweight, portable containers that run consistently across any environment. A Dockerfile defines the build steps, and images can be shared via registries like Docker Hub. Containers are essential for automation because they guarantee that code behaves the same in CI pipelines, staging, and production, eliminating "works on my machine" issues.

Blue-green deployment is a release strategy that maintains two identical production environments — "blue" (current) and "green" (new version). Traffic is switched from blue to green only after the new version passes all health checks, enabling zero-downtime releases. If issues are detected, traffic can be instantly routed back to the blue environment, making rollbacks trivial and fully automated.

Flexbox (Flexible Box Layout) is a one-dimensional CSS layout model designed for distributing space and aligning items within a container along a single axis — either horizontal or vertical. It excels at handling dynamic content sizes, centering elements, and creating flexible navigation bars, card rows, and form layouts. Properties like `justify-content`, `align-items`, and `flex-grow` give you fine-grained control over how items share available space.

CI/CD (Continuous Integration / Continuous Deployment) is a set of practices that automate building, testing, and deploying code every time a developer pushes changes. Continuous Integration merges code into a shared branch frequently and runs automated tests, while Continuous Deployment automatically releases validated changes to production. Together they form the backbone of modern software delivery, reducing manual errors and accelerating release cycles.