This 16-video course helps learners examine the basics of events and event handling in React, including synthetic events, the React component lifecycle, document object model (DOM) reconciliation, and preventing default event handling. Begin by observing use of event propagation in the capture and bubble phases, followed by an introduction to synthetic events and their advantages. Explore the phases in a React component's lifecycle; wire up event handlers to elements; prevent the browser's default event handling; and use synthetic events to access event properties. Discover how to build a component to toggle state, and what happens in the mounting phase of a component lifecycle. Learn how to execute code once a component is mounted to the DOM; observe what happens in the unmounting phase of a component's lifecycle; and learn how to hook into the update phase of a component's lifecycle. Conclude the course by discovering how to optimize the rendering of a component, and how to apply error boundaries to catch errors.