What are the best frontend frameworks?

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score 16 · Answer 1

Bootstrap

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Top Pro

Well documented

Documentation is thorough, well organized and full of live examples and templates ready for use. Every component and every part of the framework is explained and covered in depth. See More

Top Con

Websites can start to look the same

If the initial Bootstrap colors and styles are not changed or edited, different websites start looking the same even if they have nothing to do with each other and they are made by different developers. See More

Top Pro

Designed to get a site running quickly

Bootstrap is designed to get a site up and running quickly. Each of it's components is pre-configured to help with getting a site up and running quickly. See More

Top Con

Too many classes

Bootstrap's over-reliance on HTML classes for styling can get very messy very quickly. There's also an overabundance of DOM elements which have a lot of classes and are more often than not nested inside DOM elements with even more classes. This gets problematic down the line because the maintainability of the project gets harder when the project starts to get large. See More

Top Pro

Consistency across browsers

The grid layout with the predefined CSS elements and JavaScript components make it easier to have consistency across different browser versions and even different devices. See More

Top Con

Hard to customise

It's quite hard to customise Bootstrap using pre-processors like SASS and LESS, the only real flexibility is with typography and colours. See More

Top Pro

Easily make professional looking websites

Bootstrap makes it easy to learn how to make professional looking websites. It can even make code junkies semi-enjoy design. See More

Top Con

Bloated

Tons of classes have to be added to elements, not all are friendly or easy to remember. The default styling is pretty bad although the typography is nice. See More

Top Pro

Great community

Bootstrap is very popular and has a large community. As a result of this it is much easier to find help with anything you might need. This also gives you a treasure trove of prebuilt components to use and add to your site. See More

Top Con

Large file size out of the box

Bootstrap has an out-of-the box filesize of ~276K, which is pretty large considering it's just CSS. Most of those styles aren't even used in 90% of web pages built with Bootstrap. By only including the required styles it can be trimmed by 70%-75%. See More

Top Pro

One of the most popular ones

Ranked on GitHub as the most starred CSS repository. See More

Top Con

Slow development

Development has been stalled for almost a year with no "final" release. When it finally releases it may not be utilizing the latest web technologies and will be instantly outdated. Many other frameworks are hitting the web that is much more modern. See More

Top Pro

Custom builds

If you don't want to download the full Bootstrap framework. Custom builds of Bootstrap can be created, including only the desired CSS, CSS components, and JavaScript components. This can be done directly from the Bootstrap website by simply choosing what components to download. See More

Top Pro

Customizable

Bootstrap can be customized in a variety of ways. Either by overriding the default CSS styles with new CSS styles or by editing the .scss Bootstrap files. See More

Top Pro

A wide variety of themes available

To help you avoid the "Bootstrap look", there are many resources that provide a great selection of themes and templates for Bootstrap. See More

Top Pro

Responsive design philosophy

Bootstrap is developed to be instantly compatible with all sizes of screens, so you don't have to worry about which device the user is accessing your site from. Yet if you prefer, you can disable responsiveness of Bootstrap. See More

Top Pro

Supports responsive embeds

Allows easily adding responsiveness to <iframe>, <embed>, and <object> elements. See More

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score 20 · Answer 2

Foundation

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score 3 · Answer 3

Semantic UI

Top Pro

Official support for third-party applications

There are several official implementations of Semantic UI for many popular libraries, frameworks and CMS. Such as Angular or Wordpress. See More

Top Con

Very large file size

Packages are much bigger when comparing to Twitter Bootstrap or Zurb Foundation. See More

Top Pro

Well documented

The documentation is easy to use, well written and has lots of examples each with their source codes. See More

Top Pro

It's semantic

Uses semantic class names for its styling, making it easier to grasp and understand even for beginners looking to jump right in. See More

Top Pro

Load only the components you need

The whole Semantic-UI package is well organized, with every component neatly set up with it's own stylesheet and JavaScript file. This way you can load only the components you need for each page, minimizing the load time and file size. See More

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score 1 · Answer 4

UiKit

Top Pro

Namespaced

It's handy that everything is prefixed by "ui" so you know at a glance what classes are UIKit stylines. See More

Top Con

Closed development

Development is mostly done in-house and not publicly available. See More

Top Pro

Ready to use themes available

There are plenty of ready to use themes available from the official website. You can choose the theme that you want to use from the dropdown menu and then download the CSS, LESS or SASS file for that theme to use for the website. See More

Top Con

Not very popular

UiKit is not a very popular framework, especially compared to other options. As such it may be hard to find learning resources other than the official documentation or it may be more likely for development of UiKit to be dropped than for another more popular framework See More

Top Pro

Built-in animation capabilities

UiKit has some built-in animation features which can be used to animate various components. See More

Top Pro

Great style even out of the box

UiKit has a pretty good and clean style even out of the box without any customization needed. See More

Top Pro

Very customizable

UiKit's rather minimal style can be easily customizable to create an entirely new look to fit the needs of the designer. See More

Top Pro

Extremely modular

Every aspect of the framework is designed to be modular, this way designers can easily choose which components to add to their stylesheet without risking to damage the overall style. See More

Top Pro

Well architected

The code is pretty clean and follows well-defined conventions. See More

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score 1 · Answer 5

jQuery Mobile

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score 1 · Answer 6

JQuery

What are the best frontend frameworks?

6 Options Considered

Bootstrap

Well documented

Websites can start to look the same

Designed to get a site running quickly

Too many classes

Consistency across browsers

Hard to customise

Easily make professional looking websites

Bloated

Great community

Large file size out of the box

One of the most popular ones

Slow development

Custom builds

Customizable

A wide variety of themes available

Responsive design philosophy

Supports responsive embeds

Foundation

Semantic UI

Official support for third-party applications

Very large file size

Well documented

It's semantic

Load only the components you need

UiKit

Namespaced

Closed development

Ready to use themes available

Not very popular

Built-in animation capabilities

Great style even out of the box

Very customizable

Extremely modular

Well architected

jQuery Mobile

JQuery

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