When comparing Semantic UI vs mini.css, the Slant community recommends mini.css for most people. In the question“What is the best CSS framework?” mini.css is ranked 4th while Semantic UI is ranked 7th. The most important reason people chose mini.css is:
The whole framework is built on flexbox and works really well on most platforms.
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Pros
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.
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.
Pro The elements offer a huge amount of customization, far beyond a framework like bootstrap
Pro Beautifully designed
Semantic UI has a futuristic and beautiful design. Many will satisfied with the design, especially when Semantic UI is used as a CSS framework.
Pro It'll have almost any UI component/element you may think of for your project
It includes tons of UI components that you may need for almost any type of project you may work on; And of course, you can always only pick what you need.
Pro Well documented
The documentation is easy to use, well written and has lots of examples each with their source codes.
Pro Easy to use
Just start code from the beginning of the journey, from first page of documentation.
Pro Flexbox-based
The whole framework is built on flexbox and works really well on most platforms.
Pro Active developer
The developer is actively maintaining the project and responding to any issues and questions.
Pro Minimal
The framework is really tiny, under 7KB gzipped.
This is what makes mini.css stand out, because it looks like a pretty powerful library and it still is under 10KB.
Pro Responsive
It works great on all devices, mobile websites are really easy to develop and view.
Pro Style-agnostic
Few flavours so far, but there is a lot of space for customization.
Pro Great documentation
From basic syntax, templates, examples, customization to-dos and don'ts. The documentation is pretty great.
Pro Supports CSS custom properties (var)
No other framework supports CSS variables right now (as of November 2017). The latest alpha of mini.css supports this feature, making customization even easier.
Pro Accessible
ARIA rules are a priority and it works very well for all users.
Works really well with screenreaders.
Cons
Con Large file size
Packages are much bigger when comparing to Twitter Bootstrap or Zurb Foundation. Semantic UI is really extremely large and it would be better to use specific modules and components, rather than the whole thing.
Con Not maintained anymore
Use Fomantic-UI instead.
Con Buggy
Contains a lot of UI inaccuracies, like wrong positioning, cannot mix classes, etc.
Con Not for beginner developer/unfamiliar with Javascript
Many features in Semantic UI uses Javascript customization such as for Modal. This is unlike Bootstrap that can add Modal just with customizing the HTML attributes. Developers who plan to using Semantic UI must be familiar with Javascript or JQuery to get the most out of it.
Con Small number of classes
Once you wanna do something that is not mentioned in the doc - prepare to spend an hour, then give up and implement a custom "workaround".
Con Archived
Git repo has been archived so it's pretty unlikely to receive bug fixes or new features.
Con Not widely used
A large community is always an advantage especially for open source projects. It means better documentation, continued development, and lowers the possibility for the project to be abandoned in the future since the probability for someone from the community to keep maintaining it is larger if the community is larger.
Con Single developer
There is no team developing this framework, except one guy.