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  1. Stackups
  2. Application & Data
  3. Frameworks
  4. Front End Frameworks
  5. Bootstrap vs Pure vs Semantic UI

Bootstrap vs Pure vs Semantic UI

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Bootstrap
Bootstrap
Stacks57.4K
Followers13.2K
Votes7.7K
GitHub Stars173.6K
Forks79.2K
Semantic UI
Semantic UI
Stacks992
Followers1.5K
Votes673
GitHub Stars51.2K
Forks4.9K
Pure
Pure
Stacks36
Followers120
Votes61

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

  1. Grid System: Bootstrap uses a 12-column grid system, while Pure uses a responsive grid that is not based on a fixed number of columns. Semantic UI offers a 16-column grid system with a better control over element placement compared to Bootstrap and Pure.
  2. Customization: Bootstrap provides a lot of pre-designed components and styles, making it easy to create a website quickly. Pure offers a more minimalistic approach, providing only essential styles, requiring more customization for unique designs. Semantic UI has a theming engine that allows easy customization of the design system.
  3. JavaScript Components: Bootstrap includes JavaScript components like modals, carousels, and tooltips, offering a wide range of functionalities out of the box. Pure focuses solely on styling and layout, lacking pre-built JavaScript components. Semantic UI provides a rich library of ready-to-use JavaScript behaviors and components for a more interactive user experience.
  4. Community Support: Bootstrap has a large community and numerous resources available, making it easy to find solutions to problems and access third-party plugins. Pure has a smaller community but is maintained by the team at Yahoo, ensuring ongoing support and updates. Semantic UI, although growing, may have fewer resources and community support compared to Bootstrap and Pure.
  5. File Size: Bootstrap has a larger file size due to its extensive features and components, which can affect page load times. Pure is lightweight, focusing on minimalism and performance optimization, resulting in smaller file sizes. Semantic UI strikes a balance between the two, offering a rich set of features without compromising on performance.
  6. Documentation & Learning Curve: Bootstrap has comprehensive documentation and a large number of tutorials available, making it easy for beginners to learn and use. Pure has simpler documentation but may require more effort to set up custom styles. Semantic UI has detailed documentation with interactive examples, but its unique syntax and components may have a steeper learning curve.

In Summary, Bootstrap provides a feature-rich framework with extensive community support, Pure offers a minimalistic approach with lightweight performance, while Semantic UI strikes a balance between the two with rich features and customization options.

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Advice on Bootstrap, Semantic UI, Pure

Bridget
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
Daniel

Frontend Developer at atSistemas

Jun 10, 2020

Needs adviceonNew RelicNew RelicNext.jsNext.jsReactReact

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
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
Bootstrap
Semantic UI
Semantic UI
Pure
Pure

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.

Pure is meant to be a starting point for every website or web app. We take care of all the CSS work that every site needs, without making it look cookie-cutter.

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
A responsive grid that can be customized to your needs;A solid base built on Normalize.css to fix cross-browser compatibility issues;Consistently styled buttons that work with <a> and <button> elements;Styles for vertical and horizontal menus, including support for dropdown menus;Useful form alignments that look great on all screen sizes;Various common table styles;An extremely minimalist look that is super-easy to customize;Responsive by default, with a non-responsive option;Easy one-click customization with the Skin Builder;Extremely small file size: 4.5KB minified + gzip
Statistics
GitHub Stars
173.6K
GitHub Stars
51.2K
GitHub Stars
-
GitHub Forks
79.2K
GitHub Forks
4.9K
GitHub Forks
-
Stacks
57.4K
Stacks
992
Stacks
36
Followers
13.2K
Followers
1.5K
Followers
120
Votes
7.7K
Votes
673
Votes
61
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
    Poor accessibility support
  • 3
    HTML is not semantic (see list component)
  • 2
    Javascript is tied to jquery
Pros
  • 14
    Lightweight
  • 10
    Responsive
  • 10
    Simple
  • 9
    Minimalist
  • 4
    Pure
Integrations
No integrations available
AngularJS
AngularJS
React
React
Ember.js
Ember.js
Meteor
Meteor
No integrations available

What are some alternatives to Bootstrap, Semantic UI, Pure?

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.

Vuetify

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.

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