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  1. Stackups
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  3. Frameworks
  4. Front End Frameworks
  5. Bootstrap vs Foundation vs Semantic UI

Bootstrap vs Foundation vs Semantic UI

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Bootstrap
Bootstrap
Stacks57.4K
Followers13.2K
Votes7.7K
GitHub Stars173.6K
Forks79.2K
Foundation
Foundation
Stacks1.2K
Followers1.2K
Votes740
Semantic UI
Semantic UI
Stacks992
Followers1.5K
Votes673
GitHub Stars51.2K
Forks4.9K

Bootstrap vs Foundation vs Semantic UI: What are the differences?

# Introduction
This Markdown code snippet will provide key differences between Bootstrap, Foundation, and Semantic UI.

1. **Grid System**: Bootstrap uses a 12-column grid system, while Foundation uses a customizable grid system, and Semantic UI offers a 16-column grid system with more flexibility in terms of customization and responsiveness.

2. **Design Philosophy**: Bootstrap is more opinionated and provides a consistent and uniform look and feel, Foundation focuses on rapid prototyping with a modular and customizable approach, and Semantic UI emphasizes natural language principles for easier understanding and implementation.

3. **Component Library**: Bootstrap has a comprehensive set of pre-designed components and themes, Foundation offers a smaller but more versatile component library, and Semantic UI provides a rich library of components with a focus on UI consistency and theming.

4. **Customization Options**: Bootstrap offers less customization out of the box but has a wide range of themes and plugins available, Foundation allows for deeper customization through Sass variables and mixins, and Semantic UI provides extensive theming options and tools for creating unique designs.

5. **Community Support**: Bootstrap has a larger and more established community with a vast array of resources and third-party plugins, Foundation has a smaller but dedicated community with a focus on quality over quantity, and Semantic UI has a growing community with a focus on active development and support.

6. **Learning Curve**: Bootstrap has a relatively easy learning curve due to its popularity and extensive documentation, Foundation has a steeper learning curve but offers more advanced features for experienced developers, and Semantic UI may require more time to understand its unique terminology and concepts but provides a robust set of tools once mastered.

In Summary, this Markdown code snippet highlights the key differences between Bootstrap, Foundation, and Semantic UI in terms of grid system, design philosophy, component library, customization options, community support, and learning curve.

Why do developers choose Bootstrap vs Foundation vs Semantic UI?

  • Bootstrap is known for being responsive, consistent, and flexible. It’s widely used and well documented, and fans appreciate its responsiveness.
  • Foundation is also appreciated for its responsive grid. Users call it fast, quick to prototype, and highly customizable.
  • Semantic UI is easy to use and elegant, according to fans.

What are some alternatives to Bootstrap, Foundation, and Semantic UI?

  • Materialize - A modern responsive front-end framework based on Material Design
  • Pure - A set of small, responsive CSS modules that you can use in every web project
  • Milligram - A minimalist CSS framework

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Advice on Bootstrap, Foundation, Semantic UI

Bridget
Bridget

Full Stack Developer at Bridget Sarah

May 29, 2020

Decided

I do prefer to write things from scratch however when it came to wanting to jump-start the frontend, I found that it was taking me a lot longer hence why needing to use something very fast.

Bootstrap was the boom when it came out, I didn't like it, to be honest, set in its way and a pain to over-ride and in addition, you can tell from a distance if you're using boostrap and as everything looks the same.

I came across Tailwind CSS as I wanted more dynamic features, you could say, I've been now doing it for a few days and I love it a lot. I've been practising with the full stack part installed but I an't we wait until I do a new project, and I'll e able to select exactly what I want. Much faster.

681k views681k
Comments
Daniel
Daniel

Frontend Developer at atSistemas

Jun 10, 2020

Needs adviceonNew RelicNew RelicNext.jsNext.jsReactReact

I'm building, from scratch, a webapp. It's going to be a dashboard to check on our apps in New Relic and update the Apdex from the webapp. I have just chosen Next.js as our framework because we use React already, and after going through the tutorial, I just loved the latest changes they have implemented.

But we have to decide on a CSS framework for the UI. I'm partial to Bulma because I love that it's all about CSS (and you can use SCSS from the start), that it's rather lightweight and that it doesn't come with JavaScript clutter. One of the things I hate about Bootstrap is that you depend on jQuery to use the JavaScript part. My boss loves UIkIt, but when I've used it in the past, I didn't like it.

What do you think we should use? Maybe you have another suggestion?

1.07M views1.07M
Comments
Kexin
Kexin

Mar 4, 2021

Decided

I replaced Bootstrap with Material-UI during the front-end UI development, because Material-UI adopts a component-based importing style, making it suit well in a "React programming style". This makes me comfortable when programming because I can treat importing UI components as other React components I define.

281k views281k
Comments

Detailed Comparison

Bootstrap
Bootstrap
Foundation
Foundation
Semantic UI
Semantic UI

Bootstrap is the most popular HTML, CSS, and JS framework for developing responsive, mobile first projects on the web.

Foundation is the most advanced responsive front-end framework in the world. You can quickly prototype and build sites or apps that work on any kind of device with Foundation, which includes layout constructs (like a fully responsive grid), elements and best practices.

Semantic empowers designers and developers by creating a shared vocabulary for UI.

Preprocessors: Bootstrap ships with vanilla CSS, but its source code utilizes the two most popular CSS preprocessors, Less and Sass. Quickly get started with precompiled CSS or build on the source.;One framework, every device: Bootstrap easily and efficiently scales your websites and applications with a single code base, from phones to tablets to desktops with CSS media queries.;Full of features: With Bootstrap, you get extensive and beautiful documentation for common HTML elements, dozens of custom HTML and CSS components, and awesome jQuery plugins.
Semantic: Everything is semantic. You can have the cleanest markup without sacrificing the utility and speed of Foundation.;Mobile First: You can build for small devices first. Then, as devices get larger and larger, layer in more complexity for a complete responsive design.;Customizable: You can customize your build to include or remove certain elements, as well as define the size of columns, colors, font size and more.;Professional: Millions of designers and developers depend on Foundation. Now we have business support, training and consulting to help grow your product or service.
Build Responsive Layouts Easier;Self Explanatory;Tag ambivalent;Powerful tools for expressing groups and collections;Portable and self-contained
Statistics
GitHub Stars
173.6K
GitHub Stars
-
GitHub Stars
51.2K
GitHub Forks
79.2K
GitHub Forks
-
GitHub Forks
4.9K
Stacks
57.4K
Stacks
1.2K
Stacks
992
Followers
13.2K
Followers
1.2K
Followers
1.5K
Votes
7.7K
Votes
740
Votes
673
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 1582
    Responsiveness
  • 1193
    UI components
  • 943
    Consistent
  • 779
    Great docs
  • 677
    Flexible
Cons
  • 26
    Javascript is tied to jquery
  • 16
    Every site uses the defaults
  • 15
    Grid system break points aren't ideal
  • 14
    Too much heavy decoration in default look
  • 8
    Verbose styles
Pros
  • 160
    Responsive grid
  • 93
    Mobile first
  • 80
    Open source
  • 75
    Semantic
  • 72
    Customizable
Cons
  • 5
    Requires jQuery
  • 4
    Awful site
Pros
  • 157
    Easy to use and looks elegant
  • 92
    Variety of components
  • 64
    Themes
  • 61
    Has out-of-the-box widgets i would actually use
  • 57
    Semantic, duh
Cons
  • 5
    Outdated build tool (gulp 3))
  • 3
    HTML is not semantic (see list component)
  • 3
    Poor accessibility support
  • 2
    Javascript is tied to jquery
Integrations
No integrations availableNo integrations available
AngularJS
AngularJS
React
React
Ember.js
Ember.js
Meteor
Meteor

What are some alternatives to Bootstrap, Foundation, Semantic UI?

Materialize

Materialize

A CSS Framework based on material design.

Material Design for Angular

Material Design for Angular

Material Design is a specification for a unified system of visual, motion, and interaction design that adapts across different devices. Our goal is to deliver a lean, lightweight set of AngularJS-native UI elements that implement the material design system for use in Angular SPAs.

Material-UI

Material-UI

Material UI is a library of React UI components that implements Google's Material Design.

Blazor

Blazor

Blazor is a .NET web framework that runs in any browser. You author Blazor apps using C#/Razor and HTML.

Quasar Framework

Quasar Framework

Build responsive Single Page Apps, SSR Apps, PWAs, Hybrid Mobile Apps and Electron Apps, all using the same codebase!, powered with Vue.

Nuxt.js

Nuxt.js

Nuxt.js presets all the configuration needed to make your development of a Vue.js application enjoyable. You can use Nuxt.js for SSR, SPA, Static Generated, PWA and more.

UIkIt

UIkIt

UIkit gives you a comprehensive collection of HTML, CSS, and JS components which is simple to use, easy to customize and extendable.

Tailwind CSS

Tailwind CSS

Tailwind is different from frameworks like Bootstrap, Foundation, or Bulma in that it's not a UI kit. It doesn't have a default theme, and there are no build-in UI components. It comes with a menu of predesigned widgets to build your site with, but doesn't impose design decisions that are difficult to undo.

Vuetify

Vuetify

Vuetify is a component framework for Vue.js 2. It aims to provide clean, semantic and reusable components that make building your application a breeze. Vuetify utilizes Google's Material Design design pattern, taking cues from other popular frameworks such as Materialize.css, Material Design Lite, Semantic UI and Bootstrap 4.

Polymer

Polymer

Polymer is a new type of library for the web, designed to leverage the existing browser infrastructure to provide the encapsulation and extendability currently only available in JS libraries. Polymer is based on a set of future technologies, including Shadow DOM, Custom Elements and Model Driven Views. Currently these technologies are implemented as polyfills or shims, but as browsers adopt these features natively, the platform code that drives Polymer evacipates, leaving only the value-adds.

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