Overview

Bootstrap

Stacks55.5K

Followers13.2K

Votes7.7K

GitHub Stars173.6K

Forks79.2K

Materialize

Stacks690

Followers1.2K

Votes557

GitHub Stars39.1K

Forks4.7K

Bootstrap vs Materialize: What are the differences?

Bootstrap and Materialize are both popular front-end frameworks used for building responsive and visually appealing web applications. Let's explore the key difference between them.

Layout: The key difference between Bootstrap and Materialize lies in their layout structure. Bootstrap follows a responsive grid system that is based on a twelve-column layout, allowing for easier and more flexible positioning of elements. On the other hand, Materialize uses a twelve-column system as well but with an added emphasis on using cards and grids, making it more visually appealing and intuitive.
Design Philosophy: Another significant difference is their design philosophy. Bootstrap focuses on a more minimalistic and straightforward design approach, providing a basic set of predefined styles and components. Materialize, in contrast, adopts a more vibrant and material-inspired design language with more visually appealing components and animations.
Customization Options: When it comes to customization options, Bootstrap offers a wide range of themes and templates that can be easily customized to match specific design requirements. It provides a robust set of CSS and JavaScript components that can be modified to meet different design needs. Materialize, on the other hand, offers fewer customization options but provides a comprehensive collection of pre-built components and styles.
Integration with JavaScript Frameworks: Bootstrap is widely known for its seamless integration with JavaScript frameworks like jQuery, making it easier for developers to add interactive functionalities to their web applications. Materialize also supports JavaScript frameworks but has a more native integration with AngularJS, providing additional functionalities for Angular developers.
Community and Documentation: Bootstrap has a massive and active community, which translates into extensive documentation, support, and a vast range of third-party resources available for developers. Materialize, although growing in popularity, has a smaller community compared to Bootstrap, resulting in relatively fewer resources and documentation available.
Browser Compatibility: Bootstrap is known for its excellent browser compatibility, ensuring that web applications developed using it work effectively across a wide range of browsers. Materialize, on the other hand, may have minor compatibility issues with older browsers, requiring additional tweaks to ensure proper functionality.

In summary, Bootstrap offers a more minimalistic design approach, extensive customization options, and superior browser compatibility, while Materialize provides a visually appealing design language, a comprehensive set of pre-built components, and seamless integration with AngularJS for developers.

Why do developers choose Bootstrap vs Materialize?

Bootstrap is known for being responsive, consistent, and flexible. It’s widely used and well documented, and fans appreciate its responsiveness.
Materialize is appreciated by fans of Google’s Material Design; it’s known for being responsive, easy to use, and well documented.

What are some alternatives to Bootstrap and Materialize?

Semantic UI - A UI Component library implemented using a set of specifications designed around natural language
Material UI - A CSS framework and set of react components that implement Google’s Material Design
Foundation - The most advanced responsive front-end framework in the world

Advice on Bootstrap, Materialize

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

Frontend Developer at atSistemas

Jun 10, 2020

Needs adviceon

New Relic

Next.js

React

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

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	Materialize
Bootstrap is the most popular HTML, CSS, and JS framework for developing responsive, mobile first projects on the web.	A CSS Framework based on material design.
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.	Speeds up development;User Experience Focused;Easy to work with
Statistics
GitHub Stars 173.6K	GitHub Stars 39.1K
GitHub Forks 79.2K	GitHub Forks 4.7K
Stacks 55.5K	Stacks 690
Followers 13.2K	Followers 1.2K
Votes 7.7K	Votes 557
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 102 Google material design 74 Easy to use 74 Responsive 54 Modern looks 48 Open source Cons 7 Mobile errors 6 Poor Grid System 2 Unmaintained

What are some alternatives to Bootstrap, Materialize?

Foundation

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 UI

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

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

Blazor

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

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

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 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.