
Ask HN: Which CSS/HTML frameworks should I consider for modern web development? - SeanAnderson
Hey all,<p>I&#x27;m putting a stack together for a new website which I am building from scratch. It will only target modern browsers with full flex-box support. This greatly reduces, but, presumably, does not eliminate cross-browser rendering discrepancies.<p>The plan is to build the website to material design&#x27;s specs. Previously, I built a material Chrome extension and the layout came out well, http:&#x2F;&#x2F;imgur.com&#x2F;a&#x2F;vyd56. I am fluent in material design specs and feel capable of creating reusable web components. However, that project only targeted the latest versions of Chrome -- not all modern browsers.<p>With that in mind, I thought it would be a good idea to evaluate tools which might help ensure consistent design across platforms. I played around with a few of the more popular material tools, but, unfortunately, was pretty let down.<p>I&#x27;ve tried out:<p>- MDL, http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.getmdl.io&#x2F;: It&#x27;s too lite. There&#x27;s not enough components to build a full-fledged application and if I&#x27;m going to be building some components myself then I don&#x27;t have much of a desire to mix-and-match.<p>- Polymer, https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.polymer-project.org&#x2F;1.0&#x2F;: I think Polymer will be better in another year. Right now it feels half-baked. Some of the components have very obvious issues which I hacked around to get a prototype going. Documentation was difficult to parse and after 3 days I don&#x27;t feel great about moving forward with it.<p>- Materialize, http:&#x2F;&#x2F;materializecss.com&#x2F;: This is the next most promising. I have not yet played around with it and would love to hear some pros&#x2F;cons regarding it.<p>That said, I&#x27;m totally comfortable &quot;materialifying&quot; components myself. It would be nice to have it all for free, but not mission critical.<p>So, I&#x27;m left wondering: should I stop looking for something so &#x27;heavy&#x27; and settle on a simple grid system. Bootstrap? Skeleton? Others? Is it even worth considering a grid system if I&#x27;m just going to use flex containers?
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sudo_bang_bang
I love React, it really does make development more straightforward. I was
skeptical for a long time, but React + Redux is a great way to go. As for grid
system, you can't beat Bootstrap. For a material design spec, I would check
out this set of React components: [http://material-ui.com/#/](http://material-
ui.com/#/)

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wlkr
A material design framework I quite like is
[http://materializecss.com/](http://materializecss.com/). I'm a big fan of
minimalist frameworks and also find Min to be great
[http://mincss.com/index.html](http://mincss.com/index.html).

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achairapart
These days I use mostly Basscss[1] as my front-end framework. It's more than a
utility layer than a framework, built on OOCSS principles. It has
grid/type/colors systems, flex utils and basically everything you need for
modern development.

It's a swiss knife if you are into fast prototyping and it's light. Actually,
it's less than 12Kb minified and gzipped.

[1] [http://www.basscss.com/](http://www.basscss.com/)

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ciokan
Def. worth a try: [http://www.semantic-ui.com](http://www.semantic-ui.com)

devcasts.io is my website using it and I can't tell you how many hours it
saved me with the rich set of widgets and features it has

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RUG3Y
I like using Materialze or Bootstrap, depending on what the client needs.
Lately I've been going very minimal and going without frameworks. My favorite
tool right now is harpjs.

