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Choosing Semantic UI over Bootstrap for the Open Event Front-end

There are many design frameworks. In this blogpost, I am going to list out some pros of Semantic UI and why it is better suited for the Open Event project than Bootstrap or other frameworks.

Components:

The very main reason why we chose Semantic UI in Open Event frontend is the number of components it offers, such as step, segment, rails, cards, lists, headers, dimmers, dropdown, and form validation. We can use many of these components right away, which helps us to speed up development.

Installation:

Semantic UI also provides very good integrations with the majority of technologies available out there. Bootstrap, however, can be integrated anywhere with CDN’s.

Following are the technologies that Semantic UI can be integrated with:

  • As a NPM package
  • React
  • Angular
  • Ember JS

Also Semantic UI has CDN’s. Thus Semantic UI has easeful installation. The documentation on the official site provides a good view of installation.

Documentation:  

In regards to the documentation too, Semantic UI is more suitable for us. The official site has a neat and clean documentation for each component. In the case of Bootstrap, the documentation is also good but personally, for me, the Semantic UI’s documentation is easier to read understand.

Designed with completely em:

em is a unit in CSS which ensures that components are scaled according to the different device sizes.Every component is made by using em and rem so that the webpage doesn’t get distorted whenever screen size changes.

Concise and Expressive:  

In English, it’s much easier to say “There are three tall men” than “There is a tall man, a tall man, and a tall man”. This means that in Bootstrap, to achieve a thing (say a navbar), we need to have 2-3 nested classes of “navbar”, ”navbar-default”, etc. whereas with Semantic UI, it can be done with single one.

Code appearance:

In the case of Semantic UI, the code looks much cleaner since the classes created are of a short length and cause less confusion. Following code indicates how clean things can be done with Semantic UI.

class="ui secondary menu"> class="active item"> Home class="item"> Messages class="item"> Friends
class="right menu">
class="item">
class="ui icon input"> type="text" placeholder="Search..."> class="search link icon">
</div> <a class="ui item"> Logout </a> </div> </div>

                    Fig. Semantic UI

<nav class="navbar navbar-default">
class="container-fluid">
class="navbar-header"> class="navbar-brand" href="#">Brand
<!-- Collect the nav links, forms, and other content for toggling -->
class="collapse navbar-collapse" id="bs-example-navbar-collapse-1">
class="navbar-form navbar-left">
class="form-group"> type="text" class="form-control" placeholder="Search">
<button type="submit" class="btn btn-default">Submit</button> </form> <ul class="nav navbar-nav navbar-right"> <li><a href="#">Link</a></li> <li class="dropdown"> <a href="#" class="dropdown-toggle" data-toggle="dropdown" role="button" aria-haspopup="true" aria-expanded="false">Dropdown <span class="caret"></span></a> <ul class="dropdown-menu"> <li><a href="#">Action</a></li> <li><a href="#">Another action</a></li> <li><a href="#">Something else here</a></li> <li role="separator" class="divider"></li> <li><a href="#">Separated link</a></li> </ul> </li> </ul> </div><!-- /.navbar-collapse --> </div><!-- /.container-fluid --> </nav>

                      Fig. Bootstrap

Looks:

In terms of looks, it is well said that “User makes user experience” i.e the user experience depends more on the user viewing the website rather than the developer. Still, according to me, every Bootstrap site looks similar whereas a site built with Semantic provides a different, crisp look. Unlike other sites, a site built with Semantic looks beautiful.

Redesigning infinitely:

Creating a site in Semantic means you never have to rewrite your codebase from scratch. Redesigning means retooling your UI toolkit, adjusting UI definitions, not creating entirely new HTML layouts.

Conclusion:

There are many reasons why Semantic UI is a bit more suitable, powerful than Bootstrap for the Open Event project. Still, the choice of the framework depends on the purpose of your website or what you want to build. The official documentation of Semantic-UI can be found out at https://semantic-ui.com.

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