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Bulma vs Materialize: What are the differences?

Bulma and Materialize are both popular CSS frameworks that aim to simplify web development and provide pre-built styling components. However, there are several key differences between the two.

  1. Customization: Bulma offers a highly customizable approach, allowing developers to easily modify and customize the framework's components. On the other hand, Materialize provides a more opinionated design philosophy, with fewer customization options and a focus on consistent visual aesthetics.

  2. Size: Materialize has a larger overall file size compared to Bulma. This can impact website loading times, especially on slower internet connections. Bulma, on the other hand, focuses on providing a lightweight and minimalistic framework, resulting in faster load times.

  3. Component Design: Bulma employs a mobile-first design approach, ensuring that its components are optimized for mobile devices. Materialize, on the other hand, takes a more desktop-first approach and provides components that are designed to work well on larger screens.

  4. Flexbox: Bulma extensively uses the CSS Flexbox layout system, making it easier to create flexible and responsive designs. Materialize, on the other hand, relies on a combination of CSS classes and grid systems for its layout, providing slightly less flexibility in design.

  5. JavaScript Integration: Materialize provides extensive JavaScript support and comes bundled with pre-built JavaScript components like dropdowns, modals, and carousels. Bulma, on the other hand, is a purely CSS framework and does not provide any built-in JavaScript functionality. However, developers can easily integrate third-party JavaScript libraries with Bulma.

  6. Community and Documentation: Materialize has a larger and more active community, with a wealth of resources, tutorials, and third-party plugins available. It also has comprehensive documentation, making it easier for developers to get started. Bulma, while rapidly growing, has a smaller community and documentation, but still provides sufficient resources for developers to work with.

In summary, Bulma and Materialize differ in their customization options, file size, component design approach, layout systems, JavaScript integration, and community documentation support.

Advice on Bulma and Materialize
Daniel Hernández Alcojor
Frontend Developer at atSistemas · | 8 upvotes · 988.4K views
Needs advice
on
BootstrapBootstrapBulmaBulma
and
UIkItUIkIt

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?

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Replies (7)
Recommends
on
UIkItUIkIt

I have used bulma in several projects. We could not customize with the websites very well. Also when we need "quick solutions" Bulma is not suitable (I mean basic animations, to-top buttons, transparent navbar solutions etc. For these solutions, you need extra js codes).

Everybody knows about Bootstrap (heavy but popular).

Now we start a new project with UI kit, I like it. Pros: It is fast and lightweight and imho it has very good UI. Cons: Small community. Documentation.

Check this link for kick-off. https://github.com/zzseba78/Kick-Off

Maybe it is helpful.

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Damien Lucchese
Recommends
on
BulmaBulma

Been checking out Bulma, myself, and really dig it. I like that it's a great base level jumping off point. You can get a layout going with it, pretty quickly, and then customize as you want. It definitely sounds like it's the one you're leaning towards but a big factor would be who will be using it most? Your boss, yourself, others? Whichever you like best, you'll prob be most productive with but if in the end your boss says it has to be UIkit, then best to be open-minded and give it another shot. Sometimes you may not jive with new tools in your stack, at first, but then they can become tools you learn to love. Best to you in your decision! Take care & keep safe.

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Recommends
on
DiezDiez

I've moved away from the concept of UI kits. Not that many support CSS grid. A lot of the icons are easier to use in SVG. I've had success in the concept of design framework and design tokens. I build my brand identity in Figma, and extract in Diez. Then Diez integrates into React and SASS. Much easier because design is decoupled from software in a central authority, and software updates automatically from design changes.

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Recommends
on
BulmaBulma

Honestly - pick whatever you are the most comfortable with. You can achieve almost the same effects with different tools, so why not use something I like using?

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Recommends

I used UIKit and Bootstrap many times. I love Bootstrap for fast, easy layouts to web apps. Clean code, easiest and fastest way to write layouts for front end if you learned something before about Bootstrap. Now in React I use React-Boostrap too. About UIKit I can say its nice idea. It's easier than Bootstrap. This is good option for trainee developer to learn how u should create layout of your website, but for me UIKit have not enough functions. If you need to create something complicated, u have an error in your mind. You must create amazing code combinations for UIKit where in Bootstrap in the same ideas you have easy solutions.

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Tomer Fishaimer
Frontend Architect at Aqua Security · | 2 upvotes · 536.1K views
Recommends
on
Tailwind CSSTailwind CSS

Actually it really depends on your needs, there are 3 types of UI frameworks you can use:

  1. A complete set of UI components like: https://react-bulma.dev/en/getting-started.

    Pros:

    Having a lot of pre-built UI components saves a lot of time

    Cons:

    need to learn the react framework and the bulma styles, and it's harder to customize to your needs

  2. A pure css framework, like Bulma, where you write all the components yourself.

    Pros:

    A lot of flexibility to build the components you need

    Cons:

    You are bound to Bulma classes and markup.

    Takes more time since you need to build the components

  3. A utility class framework like: https://tailwindcss.com/.

Pros:

Most flexible, mix and match classes as you like and build your own markup

Very easy to customize to your needs

Cons:

Might take time to get used to and takes more time since you need to build the components

If you choose options one, then it's just a matter of deciding what style you like (material,ant, bulma) and go with the library that implements it If you go with pure css and build your own components, I can't recommend tailwind enough, I've been finding myself building entire pages without writing a single line of css.

And if later on, the designer wants to make a change to some color, or size, I just need to change one value in the config file, and the entire app is updated.

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Pros of Bulma
Pros of Materialize
  • 12
    Easy setup
  • 6
    Easy-to-customize the sass build
  • 6
    Community-created themes
  • 5
    Responsive
  • 5
    Great docs
  • 4
    Easy to learn and use
  • 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 Bulma
Cons of Materialize
  • 2
    Not yet supporting Vue 3
  • 7
    Mobile errors
  • 6
    Poor Grid System
  • 2
    Unmaintained

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What is Bulma?

Bulma is a CSS framework based on Flexbox and built with Sass

What is Materialize?

A CSS Framework based on material design.

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What tools integrate with Bulma?
What tools integrate with Materialize?
What are some alternatives to Bulma and Materialize?
Bootstrap
Bootstrap is the most popular HTML, CSS, and JS framework for developing responsive, mobile first projects on the web.
Material Design
Material Design is a unified system that combines theory, resources, and tools for crafting digital experiences.
Material
Express your creativity with Material, an animation and graphics framework for Google's Material Design and Apple's Flat UI in Swift.
UIkIt
UIkit gives you a comprehensive collection of HTML, CSS, and JS components which is simple to use, easy to customize and extendable.
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.
See all alternatives