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5 Most Promising Responsive Frameworks Compared

Most popular Responsive frameworks in 2016

Frameworks are one of the primary development tools which aid in better and faster web development. By making use of frameworks, programmers can develop a maintainable, well structured, and upgradable websites in less time.

Responsiveness is among the most important evolutions in web designing. With surge in gadgets like smartphone, tablets and smartwatches, responsive frameworks are gaining huge recognition. In this blog post, we are going to compare features of 5 most promising frameworks in the year 2016 viz Bootstrap, Foundation, Semantic UI, Pure and UIkit.

Feature Comparison


Bootstrap
Foundation
Semantic UI
Pure by Yahoo!
UIkit by YOOtheme
Creator
Mark Otto and Jacob Thornton
ZURB
Jack Lukic
Yahoo
YOOtheme
Released
2011
2011
2013
2013
2013
Popularity
75,000+ stars on GitHub
18,000+ stars on GitHub
12,900+ stars on GitHub
9,900+ stars on GitHub
3,800+ stars on GitHub
Core concepts
RWD and mobile first
RWD, mobile first, semantic
Semantic, tag ambivalenc, responsive
SMACSS, minimalism
RWD, mobile first
Framework size
145 KB
326 KB
552 KB
18 KB
118 KB
Preprocessors
Less and Sass
Sass
Less
None
Less, Sass
Responsive
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Modular
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Starting templates
Yes
Yes
No
Yes
Yes
Icon set
Glyphicons Halflings set
Foundation Icon Fonts
Font Awesome
None. You can use Font Awesome instead
Font Awesome
Add-ons
None bundled, but many third-party plug-ins are available
Yes
No
None
Yes
Unique components*
Jumbotron
Icon Bar, Clearing Lightbox, Flex Video, Keystrokes, Joyride, Pricing Tables
Divider, Flag, Rail, Reveal, Step, Advertisement, Card, Feed, Item, Statistic, Dimmer, Rating, Shape.
None
Article, Flex, Cover, HTML Editor
Documenta-
tion
Good
Good. Many additional resources are available
Very good. Semantic offers a well organized documentation, and separate site to offer guides for getting started
Good
Good
Customization
Basic GUI Customize. No color picker available, you have to input the color values manually
No GUI customizer, only manual customization
No GUI customizer, only manual customization
Basic GUI Skin Builder
Advanced GUI Customizer
Browser support
Firefox, Chrome, Safari, IE8+ (you need Respond.js for IE8)
Chrome, Firefox, Safari, IE9+; iOS, Android, Windows Phone 7+
Firefox, Chrome, Safari, IE10+ (IE9 with browser prefix only), Android 4, Blackberry 10
Latest versions of Firefox, Chrome, Safari; IE7+; iOS 6.x, 7.x; Android 4.x
Chrome, Firefox, Safari, IE9+
License
MIT
MIT
MIT
Yahoo! Inc. BSD
MIT


*unique components means these are unique in comparison only to the frameworks presented in this list

Bootstrap

Currently, Bootstrap is an undisputable market leader in responsive frameworks. With correct responsive website design tools, this framework enables developing successful sites. Given its massive popularity and recognition, which is still growing on daily basis, you can be assured that this awesome framework will not fall short you, or make you alone on the way of constructing successful and feature rich websites.

The key strength of Bootstrap is its enormous popularity. Technically, it is certainly not superior to the other frameworks in the list; nevertheless, this framework provides considerably more resources such as third-party plug-ins, articles, tutorials, and so on than other 4 frameworks put together. To put it briefly, Bootstrap is far-and-wide and this is paramount reason individuals continue to pick this framework.

Foundation by ZURB

Zurb’s Foundation is the next most demanding and favored framework in this assessment. With a strong backing of a company like ZURB, this framework has many advanced features. In fact, this framework is used by many big websites including Facebook, Yahoo!, Mozilla, National Geographic, and eBay to name a few.

Foundation is a superb framework with business support, consulting and training offered. In addition to this, this framework offers a lot of resources to allow you to learn the framework in easier and faster way.

Semantic UI

One of the most popular frameworks, Semantic UI makes website designing task much more semantic. This framework utilizes the concept of natural language, which makes codes a lot more understandable. It is the most sophisticated framework among those stated here. Besides, the complete structure and naming conventions of this popular framework also surpasses the other frameworks mentioned in this list.

Pure by Yahoo!

Pure framework is compltely written in CSS and is a lightweight, modular framework. It comprises various components which may be used together or separately according to your requirements. This framework provides only bare-bones styles which ensures clean start of project. It is an ideal framework for those people who don’t need a fully featured framework, but need only some components for their project.

UIkit by YOOtheme

UIkit by YOOtheme is an intelligent collection of easy to use and customize components. Although it is not as popular and used as other frameworks mentioned in the list, it provides the same functionality. Furthermore, designing a website with UIkit is pretty easy. It’s successfully used in many WordPress themes. It also offers a flexible but powerful customization mechanism, either manually or via GUI customizer.

Wrapping Up

After reading the comparison table, I’m sure you’ll be able to find the right framework according to your business needs. Right framework coupled with reputed web development company results in successful websites. So, next time be cautious while choosing the frameworks for your website.

Mark Wilston is an avid tech lover and blogger at PixelCrayons. He loves to read and write different blogs related to web design and latest technologies. Contributing in a blog post aids him spreading the words online with a new set of people.

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