Bootstrap vs Materialize vs Semantic UI

Overview

Bootstrap

Stacks57.4K

Followers13.2K

Votes7.7K

GitHub Stars173.6K

Forks79.2K

Semantic UI

Stacks992

Followers1.5K

Votes673

GitHub Stars51.2K

Forks4.9K

Materialize

Stacks698

Followers1.2K

Votes557

GitHub Stars39.1K

Forks4.7K

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

Bootstrap, Materialize, and Semantic UI are all popular front-end frameworks that provide pre-built CSS styles and JavaScript components to help developers create responsive and visually appealing websites.

Grid System: Bootstrap and Materialize use a traditional grid system with a 12-column layout, while Semantic UI uses a semantic grid with defined classes for different screen sizes. This allows developers to easily create responsive layouts, but Semantic UI's semantic grid offers more flexibility in terms of customization and responsive design.
Design Philosophy: Bootstrap follows a more traditional and conservative design approach, focusing on simplicity, consistency, and compatibility. Materialize follows a modern and visually appealing design approach, incorporating vibrant colors, shadows, and material design principles. Semantic UI also follows a modern design approach but emphasizes ease of use and intuitive class names.
Component Selection: Bootstrap provides a wide range of ready-to-use components, including navigation bars, forms, buttons, and modals. Materialize offers a similar set of components but also includes additional components such as parallax effects and floating action buttons. Semantic UI has a comprehensive set of components with a focus on ease of use, including advanced filtering, sorting, and search capabilities.
Customization Options: Bootstrap provides a variety of customization options through Sass variables, allowing developers to easily modify colors, spacing, breakpoints, and more. Materialize offers a similar level of customization through Sass variables, but also provides a theming tool that allows developers to create custom themes. Semantic UI provides a theming tool called "Theming Express" that enables developers to easily customize the look and feel of their website.
Documentation and Community Support: Bootstrap has been around for a long time and has a large community, extensive documentation, and a wide range of online resources and tutorials. Materialize has a smaller community compared to Bootstrap but still offers good documentation and resources. Semantic UI has a smaller community and documentation compared to Bootstrap and Materialize, but it is known for its well-organized documentation and helpful examples.
JavaScript Integration: Bootstrap has a robust set of JavaScript plugins that can be easily integrated into a project for enhanced functionality, such as carousels, tooltips, and modals. Materialize also provides JavaScript components, but they are not as extensive as Bootstrap's. Semantic UI offers a limited number of JavaScript modules, focusing more on the CSS and component aspect.

In Summary, Bootstrap, Materialize, and Semantic UI are popular front-end frameworks that offer different design philosophies, customization options, and component selections. Bootstrap is a more traditional and conservative choice, Materialize focuses on modern design and visual appeal, and Semantic UI prioritizes ease of use and intuitive class names. Depending on specific project requirements and preferences, developers can choose the framework that aligns best with their needs.

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Advice on Bootstrap, Semantic UI, 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	Semantic UI	Materialize
Bootstrap is the most popular HTML, CSS, and JS framework for developing responsive, mobile first projects on the web.	Semantic empowers designers and developers by creating a shared vocabulary for UI.	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.	Build Responsive Layouts Easier;Self Explanatory;Tag ambivalent;Powerful tools for expressing groups and collections;Portable and self-contained	Speeds up development;User Experience Focused;Easy to work with
Statistics
GitHub Stars 173.6K	GitHub Stars 51.2K	GitHub Stars 39.1K
GitHub Forks 79.2K	GitHub Forks 4.9K	GitHub Forks 4.7K
Stacks 57.4K	Stacks 992	Stacks 698
Followers 13.2K	Followers 1.5K	Followers 1.2K
Votes 7.7K	Votes 673	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 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	Pros 102 Google material design 74 Responsive 74 Easy to use 54 Modern looks 48 Open source Cons 7 Mobile errors 6 Poor Grid System 2 Unmaintained
Integrations
No integrations available	AngularJS React Ember.js Meteor	No integrations available

What are some alternatives to Bootstrap, Semantic UI, 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.

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.

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.

Related Comparisons

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

Grid System: Bootstrap and Materialize use a traditional grid system with a 12-column layout, while Semantic UI uses a semantic grid with defined classes for different screen sizes. This allows developers to easily create responsive layouts, but Semantic UI's semantic grid offers more flexibility in terms of customization and responsive design.
Design Philosophy: Bootstrap follows a more traditional and conservative design approach, focusing on simplicity, consistency, and compatibility. Materialize follows a modern and visually appealing design approach, incorporating vibrant colors, shadows, and material design principles. Semantic UI also follows a modern design approach but emphasizes ease of use and intuitive class names.
Component Selection: Bootstrap provides a wide range of ready-to-use components, including navigation bars, forms, buttons, and modals. Materialize offers a similar set of components but also includes additional components such as parallax effects and floating action buttons. Semantic UI has a comprehensive set of components with a focus on ease of use, including advanced filtering, sorting, and search capabilities.
Customization Options: Bootstrap provides a variety of customization options through Sass variables, allowing developers to easily modify colors, spacing, breakpoints, and more. Materialize offers a similar level of customization through Sass variables, but also provides a theming tool that allows developers to create custom themes. Semantic UI provides a theming tool called "Theming Express" that enables developers to easily customize the look and feel of their website.
Documentation and Community Support: Bootstrap has been around for a long time and has a large community, extensive documentation, and a wide range of online resources and tutorials. Materialize has a smaller community compared to Bootstrap but still offers good documentation and resources. Semantic UI has a smaller community and documentation compared to Bootstrap and Materialize, but it is known for its well-organized documentation and helpful examples.
JavaScript Integration: Bootstrap has a robust set of JavaScript plugins that can be easily integrated into a project for enhanced functionality, such as carousels, tooltips, and modals. Materialize also provides JavaScript components, but they are not as extensive as Bootstrap's. Semantic UI offers a limited number of JavaScript modules, focusing more on the CSS and component aspect.

Bootstrap vs Materialize vs Semantic UI

Overview