If you are a developer who is confused about the right front-end framework to choose, this article will guide you in picking the framework based on typical parameters. At the end of the article, a web developer can get a fair idea of the comparison between Materialize, Bootstrap, and Semantic UI.
Materialize
Materialize is a library created with design principles such as CSS, JavaScript, and HTML and its components combine classic principles of good design and essential browser portability and responsiveness. The framework is extremely light at 29kb and provides built-in features that cover modern support, easy to use features, parallax elements, flow texts, cards, hoverable items & objects. These features help reduce coding time and is that is a key parameter you are looking for, then Materialize will work. Implementing the Materialize framework is also simple — it can be installed by downloading the materialize.min.css and materialize.min.js files on a local machine and integrating it with the HTML code. For the CDN (Content Delivery Network) based version, the materialize.min.css, and materialize.min.js files can be integrated into the HTML code directly from the CDN.
Bootstrap
Bootstrap is a widely-used open source customized to needs. The latest version is HTML, CSS, and JavaScript framework for building responsive, mobile-first websites that can be BOOTSTRAP 4 and is consistent across all browsers. Bootstrap Framework has great advantages -
- Speed of development, particularly helpful when the application needs to be delivered in a very short span of time
- Bootstrap supports Responsiveness and is Consistent across all platforms.
- It is highly customizable and enables web developers to extract based on the needs of the application — they can leave out unnecessary code and components during extraction without altering the basic functionality of the framework.
Bootstrap installation is similar to Materialize — it can be installed by downloading the bootstrap.min.css and bootstrap.min.js files on the local machine and integrating it with the HTML code. For the CDN (Content Delivery Network) based version, the bootstrap.min.css, and bootstrap.min.js files can be integrated into the HTML code directly from the CDN.
Semantic-UI
Semantic-UI is also lightweight, simple, and supportive of responsiveness. In addition, Semantic UI is packaged with more than 20 themes with a range of JS, CSS, and font files. Since pages are built through a semantic method it means that designs can look great and feature a range of components and settings to use.
The Pros and cons of the 3 frameworks
Each of these popular frameworks has robust features and benefits.
Benefits of Bootstrap:
- Responsive design philosophy: Bootstrap adapts to almost any screen resolution and it suits mobile devices perfectly.
- Consistency: The grid layout ensures consistency across all browser versions.
- Quick and efficient: Bootstrap is easy to customize and each component is configured to ensure performance.
Problems with Bootstrap:
Although Bootstrap is widely used by web developers it is not perfect in every way. For instance, the file size of the framework is large and many unused CSS styles have to be trimmed to make the framework look clean. Another disadvantage with Bootstrap is its dependence on HTML Classes for styling which makes editing necessary and therefore messy to use.
So finally, let’s look at the positives and negatives of Semantic-UI.
Benefits of Semantic-UI
- Incredible customization: Semantic-UI offers many more personalization options as compared to BootStrap
- Semantic solutions: Styling of components in Semantic-UI is achieved through Semantic class names and development can be kick-started faster making the framework much easier to use.
- Loading components of choice: Semantic UI provides the ability to load specific components in the application as per needs and it reduces the file size as well as load time.
Problems with Semantic- UI
Semantic-UI comes with a few drawbacks -
- It uses Javascript customization and so it can be challenging to execute custom workaround of the framework as per needs.
- The packages used in Semantic- UI are much bigger in size compared to Bootstrap and as a web developer one may need to use only specific modules of Semantic- UI.
Benefits of Materialize
- speeds up development as it offers default stylings,
- is UX-focused with components that provide more feedback to users
- has ease-of-use because it comes with detailed documentation and specific code examples
Materialize (OR) BOOTSTRAP (OR) SEMANTIC UI: HOW TO DECIDE
If you are planning to create a new website or planning on a redesign of an existing website, Materialize is a good choice. Materialize is not used by many and that will help the site stand out in the crowded space. The framework also supports Hybrid mobile apps.
Knowing that each of these frameworks is not the ‘best’ option, the decision of platform can entirely depend on parameters like ‘look and feel’ and the organization’s perception of how the UX experience of the website should be. Test explore each of them and that can help you make the call.
