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Less vs Materialize

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Less
2.5K
1.2K
+ 1
930
Materialize
690
1.2K
+ 1
557
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Less vs Materialize: What are the differences?

Developers describe Less as "The dynamic stylesheet language". Less is a CSS pre-processor, meaning that it extends the CSS language, adding features that allow variables, mixins, functions and many other techniques that allow you to make CSS that is more maintainable, themable and extendable. On the other hand, Materialize is detailed as "A modern responsive front-end framework based on Material Design". A CSS Framework based on material design.

Less can be classified as a tool in the "CSS Pre-processors / Extensions" category, while Materialize is grouped under "Front-End Frameworks".

"Better than css", "Variables" and "Mixins" are the key factors why developers consider Less; whereas "Google material design", "Responsive" and "Easy to use" are the primary reasons why Materialize is favored.

Less and Materialize are both open source tools. It seems that Materialize with 36.1K GitHub stars and 4.8K forks on GitHub has more adoption than Less with 16.1K GitHub stars and 3.46K GitHub forks.

According to the StackShare community, Less has a broader approval, being mentioned in 498 company stacks & 169 developers stacks; compared to Materialize, which is listed in 46 company stacks and 56 developer stacks.

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Pros of Less
Pros of Materialize
  • 215
    Better than css
  • 177
    Variables
  • 141
    Mixins
  • 99
    Maintainable
  • 79
    Used by bootstrap
  • 55
    Open source
  • 50
    Extendable
  • 43
    Functions
  • 39
    Dynamic
  • 30
    Fast
  • 2
    CSS is valid LESS, very easy to pick up
  • 102
    Google material design
  • 74
    Easy to use
  • 74
    Responsive
  • 54
    Modern looks
  • 48
    Open source
  • 42
    Good documentation
  • 37
    Code examples
  • 29
    Extremely light - 29kb
  • 28
    Flexible
  • 15
    Great Support
  • 10
    It looks beautiful
  • 8
    Very nice looking components to quickly build out
  • 7
    Smooth animation
  • 6
    Great Grid System
  • 4
    Great
  • 4
    Ruby gem to integrate in 2 seconds flat
  • 3
    Angular2 Support
  • 2
    MIT Lisence
  • 2
    Friendly api, easy setup, good documentation
  • 2
    Easy setup
  • 1
    React
  • 1
    Grid system
  • 1
    Because of the easy to use and very editable library
  • 1
    Responsivness
  • 1
    Jibberish
  • 1
    Friendly Api
  • 0
    Better class name
  • 0
    Rtl support

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Cons of Less
Cons of Materialize
    Be the first to leave a con
    • 7
      Mobile errors
    • 6
      Poor Grid System
    • 2
      Unmaintained

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    What is Less?

    Less is a CSS pre-processor, meaning that it extends the CSS language, adding features that allow variables, mixins, functions and many other techniques that allow you to make CSS that is more maintainable, themable and extendable.

    What is Materialize?

    A CSS Framework based on material design.

    Need advice about which tool to choose?Ask the StackShare community!

    What companies use Less?
    What companies use Materialize?
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    What tools integrate with Less?
    What tools integrate with Materialize?

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    Blog Posts

    How MapJam Is Building A Scalable Custom Maps Service
    Jul 29 2016 at 2:27AM

    MapJam

    JavaScriptGitHubNode.js+26
    20
    5034
    What are some alternatives to Less and Materialize?
    CSS 3
    CSS3 is the latest evolution of the Cascading Style Sheets language and aims at extending CSS2.1. It brings a lot of long-awaited novelties, like rounded corners, shadows, gradients, transitions or animations, as well as new layouts like multi-columns, flexible box or grid layouts. Experimental parts are vendor-prefixed and should either be avoided in production environments, or used with extreme caution as both their syntax and semantics can change in the future.
    Sass
    Sass is an extension of CSS3, adding nested rules, variables, mixins, selector inheritance, and more. It's translated to well-formatted, standard CSS using the command line tool or a web-framework plugin.
    JavaScript
    JavaScript is most known as the scripting language for Web pages, but used in many non-browser environments as well such as node.js or Apache CouchDB. It is a prototype-based, multi-paradigm scripting language that is dynamic,and supports object-oriented, imperative, and functional programming styles.
    Python
    Python is a general purpose programming language created by Guido Van Rossum. Python is most praised for its elegant syntax and readable code, if you are just beginning your programming career python suits you best.
    Node.js
    Node.js uses an event-driven, non-blocking I/O model that makes it lightweight and efficient, perfect for data-intensive real-time applications that run across distributed devices.
    See all alternatives

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