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  5. Material Design Lite vs Semantic UI

Material Design Lite vs Semantic UI

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Semantic UI
Semantic UI
Stacks992
Followers1.5K
Votes673
GitHub Stars51.2K
Forks4.9K
Material Design Lite
Material Design Lite
Stacks697
Followers394
Votes62
GitHub Stars32.2K
Forks5.0K

Material Design Lite vs Semantic UI: What are the differences?

What is Material Design Lite? Material Design Lite Components in HTML/CSS/JS. Material Design Lite (MDL) lets you add a Material Design look and feel to your static content websites. It doesn't rely on any JavaScript frameworks or libraries. Optimized for cross-device use, gracefully degrades in older browsers, and offers an experience that is accessible from the get-go.

What is Semantic UI? A UI Component library implemented using a set of specifications designed around natural language. Semantic empowers designers and developers by creating a shared vocabulary for UI.

Material Design Lite and Semantic UI can be primarily classified as "Front-End Frameworks" tools.

Some of the features offered by Material Design Lite are:

  • Blog Template
  • Dashboard Template
  • Text Heavy Webpage Template

On the other hand, Semantic UI provides the following key features:

  • Build Responsive Layouts Easier
  • Self Explanatory
  • Tag ambivalent

"Material Design straight from the original creators" is the top reason why over 23 developers like Material Design Lite, while over 134 developers mention "Easy to use and looks elegant" as the leading cause for choosing Semantic UI.

Material Design Lite and Semantic UI are both open source tools. Semantic UI with 45.9K GitHub stars and 4.84K forks on GitHub appears to be more popular than Material Design Lite with 31.3K GitHub stars and 5.32K GitHub forks.

Snapchat, Create.It, and Reviewable are some of the popular companies that use Semantic UI, whereas Material Design Lite is used by Google, Troopers, and Boxme. Semantic UI has a broader approval, being mentioned in 77 company stacks & 55 developers stacks; compared to Material Design Lite, which is listed in 9 company stacks and 26 developer stacks.

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Advice on Semantic UI, Material Design Lite

Kwasi
Kwasi

CTO

Feb 23, 2021

Review

You can choose between Angular Material or PrimeNG, if you have experience in integrating third party javascript libs you can use SemanticUI , Bootstrap or Foundation. All above UI Frameworks support side navigation with off page canavas implementation.

9.26k views9.26k
Comments

Detailed Comparison

Semantic UI
Semantic UI
Material Design Lite
Material Design Lite

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

Material Design Lite (MDL) lets you add a Material Design look and feel to your static content websites. It doesn't rely on any JavaScript frameworks or libraries. Optimized for cross-device use, gracefully degrades in older browsers, and offers an experience that is accessible from the get-go.

Build Responsive Layouts Easier;Self Explanatory;Tag ambivalent;Powerful tools for expressing groups and collections;Portable and self-contained
Blog template;Dashboard template;Text heavy webpage template; Stand alone article template;
Statistics
GitHub Stars
51.2K
GitHub Stars
32.2K
GitHub Forks
4.9K
GitHub Forks
5.0K
Stacks
992
Stacks
697
Followers
1.5K
Followers
394
Votes
673
Votes
62
Pros & Cons
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
  • 23
    Material Design straight from the original creators
  • 11
    Based on bem philosophy
  • 9
    Nice animations
  • 7
    SCSS
  • 5
    Simple Material Design
Integrations
AngularJS
AngularJS
React
React
Ember.js
Ember.js
Meteor
Meteor
No integrations available

What are some alternatives to Semantic UI, Material Design Lite?

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.

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.

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