When comparing Semantic UI vs Element, the Slant community recommends Semantic UI for most people. In the question“What are the best Bootstrap alternatives?” Semantic UI is ranked 1st while Element is ranked 12th. The most important reason people chose Semantic UI is:
Uses semantic class names for its styling, making it easier to grasp and understand even for beginners looking to jump right in.
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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 Good documentation
The documentation is per version and it has basic examples that are easy to understand.
Pro JQuery is not required
Pro It's light but not empty
You can find for example date picker, option box, Sliders, Carousel, and all the basics like grid layout etc.
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 Needs Vue JS
This can be PRO if you already using Vue for your project.