Top 5 CSS Frameworks to use in 2019
March 21, 2019
CSS frameworks are a must when developing web applications. Popular among front-end developers these tools significantly shorten the amount of time devs would spend writing CSS allowing for rapid UI development. They contain a lot of useful tools right out of the box with responsive web design in mind. Here are just a few that I use in my daily projects and are worth checking out.
- Tailwind CSS
A utility-first framework
Tailwind is different from the other frameworks on this list as it is not a full encompassing UI kit. No pre-defined themes or components are involved. Some developers may not particularly like this but in my opinion I think this is great as there are no abstractions in the framework. Being utility-first allows for complex websites to be built & gets rid of the main problem I found with Bootstrap in that many applications looked very similar. Tailwind is an impressive tool to use; highly flexible and customizable for the project at hand.
- Zurb Foundation
A customizable responsive design framework
Foundation is another solid framework of choice as it is also customizable and jam packed full of awesome features. If it’s quickly coming up with a prototype for a web application or developing a complex user interface; Foundation is an efficient tool for a developer to use. The markup with foundation has semantic meaning behind it and was developed with a mobile first mentality. Designs can really come to life even on smaller devices using Foundation. The framework is not only used for web development but also email layouts. The company also offers training and certifications to learn how to use the framework but it is relatively easy to get up and running and there is all the information a developer would need in the documentation.
- Materialize
Based on Material Design
Materialize is created and designed by the Google team it is heavy on text shadowing and has a clean and smooth interface when applied to applications. I’ve personally used this framework often and enjoy it’s ease of use, perfect grid system, and design principles that makes my applications really stand out. There are many visual cues with its features that allow for easy user interactions. From floating action buttons to parallax initialization, there are many components to make use of and you are not limited to having to install jQuery, regular JavaScript can be used to get those features working too.
- Bootstrap 4
One of the most popular & widely used
This was my first CSS framework that I ever used and I actually still use it quite often in my applications. By far the most popular on this list, plenty of websites are built on Bootstrap. It is a tried and tested CSS framework that has plenty of support should any issues occur. There are a ton of features and it just simply works right out of the box. Developed by the team over at Twitter it is constantly being improved and is really easy to use and understand. There are only a few downsides to mention the first one being that it will not make your application look unique as it very popular. Another downside I find is that it’s not very customizable. With custom CSS code you will have to override certain properties in the framework, but if you need to get a simple and clean user interface Bootstrap is still a good tool to work with. Bootstrap 5 will be getting rid of jQuery altogether.
- Bulma
A framework based off of Flexbox
I have not used Bulma all that much but it is highly popular among developers and I have heard good things about it and it sits at #5 on my list of top CSS frameworks. What is great about Bulma is that it is open source so any developer can get the code and contribute! This makes for a large community of devs who are involved in the project so if there are any issues with development that would quickly be addressed. It is based on Flexbox; a layout method for aligning items based on rows and columns. Developed with a mobile first design & highly modular to give developers only the tools they will need. Bulma has some great documentation with plenty of code snippets to get comfortable on how it all works. I will definitely make use of this tool in future projects.
Personal blog by Alex Virdee, 