From the previous blog Bootstrap 3 vs 4 vs 5: Which to Choose? comparisons are made between each version and what major changes are for them. When it comes to designing and ease of use for developing CSS, HTML, and Javascript, Bootstrap is one of the most popular front-end frameworks.  According to the BuiltWith report, Bootstrap is the most popular design framework and powers over 20 million websites.  And some of the most popular and beautiful websites that are using Bootstrap (to name a few) are Lee Clothing, Reuters News, Etsy, and many others.

While Bootstrap is unquestionably excellent at what it does, there are some other frameworks or bootstrap alternatives that are equally good and may better suit your needs.

 

Top Bootstrap Alternatives

 

 

Zurb Foundation is the prototype theme that is used for browser prototyping. It enables you to quickly create a website or application while leveraging well-tested mobile and responsive technology.

The front-end framework is a collection of design patterns in HTML, CSS, and Javascript. These design patterns aid the user in saving time by avoiding boring, boilerplate code. Sites built on this foundation perform well when multiple screens are used, such as laptops, mobile phones, PCs, and iPads. The reason for this is that the Zurb Foundation has a responsive framework that employs CSS media queries and a mobile-first strategy.

Foundation is semantically rich, coherent, adaptable, and completely customizable. You can begin by designing for small devices and then increase the complexity of this structure layer by layer for a complete and responsive design.

Moving on to its flaws, because Foundation is a very detailed network of a front-end framework, using it requires extensive knowledge and perseverance. It also employs an opinionated CSS preprocessor (Sass).

According to the Zurb Foundation, Foundation is the professional choice for designers, developers, and teams.

  • Semantic – everything is semantic
  • Mobile First – build for small devices first.  Then, as devices become larger and larger, add more complexity for a fully responsive design.
  • Customizable – you can modify your build to include or remove specific elements, as well as define the size of columns, colors, font size, and other settings.
  • Professional – the foundation is used by millions of designers and developers. We offer business support, training, and consulting to assist you in growing your product or service.

Some of the brands that are using Foundation are Adobe, eBay, Cisco, and many others.

 

Bulma first appeared on the market about three years ago and quickly became popular. It was one of the first CSS frameworks to include a fully functional flexbox grid. Aside from that, it has a large selection of components required to code any type of website. Bulma comes with a beautiful color palette right out of the box, and it wouldn’t be wrong to call it the most beautiful framework on the market. It can be used directly to create visually appealing websites with minimal effort.

One of the major disadvantages of Bulma is that it is a pure CSS framework, so JavaScript Plugins are unavailable, and the flexbox available here is not suitable for bidimensional layouts.

Bulma, on the other hand, can be considered an all-around alternative to Bootstrap if you do not use any JS plugins and only use linear layouts.

According to the Bulma

  • 100% Responsive – designed for mobile first.
  • Modular – just import what you need
  • Modern – built with Flexbox
  • Free – open source on GitHub

 

Materialize is a modern responsive front-end framework built on Google’s Material Design principles. Material design is a design language developed by Google that combines traditional design methods with innovations and technology. This framework is ideal for developers who want to add a touch of Material Design to their website without writing any complicated code. It includes card design, Sass mixins, a drag-and-drop mobile menu, ripple effect animation, and many other features. The framework’s developers have also provided code examples and detailed documentation to assist new users in getting started with the framework. Materialize is easy to work which can speed up development. 

Moving on to its drawbacks, Materialize does not support older web browser versions and does not always deal with certain nestings of components correctly, resulting with user experience by design with user experience designing in an odd appearance.

Overall, Materialize is a highly responsive framework that saves you from having to start coding from scratch.

 

Tailwind is a CSS framework that prioritizes your utility first, with classes like flex, pt-4, text-focus, and turns 90 that can be used to build any plan directly in your markup.

It is also extremely adaptable because it is built around utility classes. Additionally, the Tailwind CSS IntelliSense extension for VS Code available here will keep you from cramming things like class names, etc.

It has exceptional top-notch CSS framework support, composable changes, and angles controlled by CSS variables, support for current state selectors like center obvious, and a lot more. One disadvantage is that it does not come with any components by default.

 

Material UI is a highly customizable React UI framework designed exclusively for React components, making web development faster and easier. Every customization is done in a JavaScript environment, including styling, which is extremely common in React applications.

One of the major disadvantages of Material UI is that it only supports React-based components. Aside from that, it employs CSS-in-JS (a technique of writing CSS styling in JavaScript).

If you are only interested in React-based applications, Material UI may be a good alternative to Bootstrap for you.

 

Which front-end frameworks should you use with WordPress?

When it comes to using front-end frameworks with WordPress, you have many choices. While Bootstrap and Bulma are the most popular choices among WordPress developers, you can use AngularJS framework to create a beautiful and high converting single landing page in a matter of hours. Keep in mind that WordPress front-end is highly customizable, giving you the ability to create a custom theme using any front-end framework that you are comfortable with.

 

Sources:

https://blog.hubspot.com/website/w3-css-vs-bootstrap
https://www.bootstrapdash.com/blog/beautiful-bootstrap-websites
https://get.foundation/
https://bulma.io/
https://materializecss.com/
https://tailwindcss.com/
https://mui.com/