When building a new application or project, it is a good idea to use a UI framework to reduce time on styling the different elements and overall layout and interface. This article is going to explore two great UI frameworks that you can use for your project, Bootstrap and Bulma.
Both of these CSS frameworks are some of the best that you can use for any project, and they’re free!
CSS frameworks make building a good looking application fast and easy. It can help with the layout in regards to how many columns and rows that you would like to add to per section of the app, and the overall styling of buttons and fonts. It is also easy to add such frameworks to the application, all you will have to do is follow their documentation, step by step.
Let’s start with Bulma.
Bulma is an open source css framework based on flexbox. If you are not aware, in some cases, you can have both Bulma and Bootstrap used in the same project. Bulma is the newer of the two being released in 2016, whereas Bootstrap was released in 2011. Today, there are over 100+ companies that are using Bulma for styling applications. Here are some projects that are using Bulma for those that want to see what this UI framework looks like: https://bulma.io/expo/
Bulma is very lightweight and some would consider it to have a smaller learning curve than many other UI frameworks. Bulma does not use any JavaScript elements, which makes it so lightweight compared to other frameworks. Although the community is not as large as Bootstrap, it has many advantages in terms of its simplicity.
Try Bulma today by going to the following: https://bulma.io/
Moving on to Bootstrap.
This is the most popular open source CSS framework today. Some recognized companies and applications are using Bootstrap such as Twitter, Shopify, and Lyft just to name a few. You can see what the elements look like by visiting the following: https://getbootstrap.com/docs/3.4/getting-started/#examples
Bootstrap being the popular framework has a larger following behind it making it to be much more accessible in terms of support. Just like Bulma, it’s open source. Another similarity that Bootstrap and Bulma share, is the fact that they are mobile-first designed. Bulma was originally developed for Twitter and later became an independent project.
Check out Bootstrap and how you can include it into your project by going to the following: https://getbootstrap.com/