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  1. Stackups
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  5. Headless UI vs Material-UI

Headless UI vs Material-UI

OverviewComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Material-UI
Material-UI
Stacks2.7K
Followers3.7K
Votes445
Headless UI
Headless UI
Stacks53
Followers48
Votes0
GitHub Stars28.1K
Forks1.2K

Headless UI vs Material-UI: What are the differences?

Headless UI and Material-UI are two popular UI libraries used for building user interfaces in web applications. While they have some similarities, they also have key differences that make them distinct from each other.
  1. Component Styles: One key difference between Headless UI and Material-UI is how they handle component styles. Headless UI provides a set of minimalistic and unstyled components that developers can customize according to their own design needs. On the other hand, Material-UI comes with its own pre-designed and styled components following the Material Design guidelines. This allows developers to quickly create visually appealing interfaces without much customization effort.

  2. Design Language: Headless UI does not enforce a specific design language or style. It provides a more flexible and customizable approach where developers can define their own design system or integrate with other existing design systems. In contrast, Material-UI strictly adheres to the Material Design language, providing a consistent user experience across different platforms and applications.

  3. Component Ecosystem: Material-UI has a more extensive component ecosystem compared to Headless UI. It offers a wide range of ready-to-use components such as buttons, inputs, and modals, making it easier for developers to build complex UIs quickly. Headless UI, on the other hand, focuses more on providing a foundation of basic building blocks that developers can use to build their own custom components and UI patterns.

  4. Accessibility: Material-UI places a strong emphasis on accessibility, ensuring that its components are usable by all users, including those with disabilities. It provides built-in accessibility features and follows best practices to make the UI accessible. While Headless UI also supports accessibility, it does not have the same level of built-in accessibility features as Material-UI.

  5. Developer Experience: Headless UI offers a more developer-centric experience, providing a set of utility functions and hooks that can be used to customize and control the behavior of the components. It empowers developers to have more control over the UI logic and allows for advanced UI customization. Material-UI, on the other hand, focuses more on abstracting away the implementation details and providing a simpler and more intuitive API for developers to work with.

  6. Community and Support: Material-UI has a larger and more active community compared to Headless UI. It has a vast amount of online resources, documentation, and community forums where developers can ask questions, share knowledge, and seek help. Headless UI, while still being widely used, may have a smaller community and fewer resources available in comparison.

In summary, the key differences between Headless UI and Material-UI lie in their approach to component styles, design language, component ecosystem, accessibility, developer experience, and community support.

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Detailed Comparison

Material-UI
Material-UI
Headless UI
Headless UI

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

It is a set of completely unstyled, fully accessible UI components, designed to integrate beautifully with Tailwind CSS.

Tables; Forms; Snackbars; Buttons; Theming
UI components; Designed to integrate beautifully with Tailwind CSS
Statistics
GitHub Stars
-
GitHub Stars
28.1K
GitHub Forks
-
GitHub Forks
1.2K
Stacks
2.7K
Stacks
53
Followers
3.7K
Followers
48
Votes
445
Votes
0
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 141
    React
  • 82
    Material Design
  • 60
    Ui components
  • 30
    CSS framework
  • 26
    Component
Cons
  • 36
    Hard to learn. Bad documentation
  • 29
    Hard to customize
  • 22
    Hard to understand Docs
  • 9
    Bad performance
  • 7
    For editable table component need to use material-table
No community feedback yet
Integrations
React
React
Emotion
Emotion
Next.js
Next.js
styled-components
styled-components
Node.js
Node.js
Tailwind CSS
Tailwind CSS

What are some alternatives to Material-UI, Headless UI?

Bootstrap

Bootstrap

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

Foundation

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 UI

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

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.

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