A Beginner's Guide to Bootstrap and Materialize Design Framework

Written by hackernoon-archives | Published 2018/12/07
Tech Story Tags: web-development | materialize | bootstrap-design | design-framework | bootstrap

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The latest innovations and advancements in the field of technology have helped mobile technology to grow and greatly evolved over the years. However, the fascinating aspect of mobile technology is that it is still evolving with each passing day. Still, experts in the field of telecommunications have been putting in extra efforts to ensure a great user experience to the ones who are browsing the internet through their smartphones and tablets. A recent study conducted by experts revealed that approximately 17 percent smartphone users in the United States use their phones for internet browsing.

As a result, most website designers and developers have been putting in extra efforts to customize their websites in order to make them fit into the screen of smartphones and other mobile devices. However, this is not an easy task because designers will have to pay great attention to detail to several intricate details. This is where RWD or responsive website design comes into play. If you are new to the world of website designing, then you might be probably wondering what RWD really is. If that’s the case, then we are here to help you.

How does RWD really work

Responsive website design or RWD plays a crucial role in helping users to develop and design websites that are capable of fitting or adapting into the screen sizes of different devices without compromising customer experience. It is significant to note that millions of web designers and developers from all over the world are using RWD in their designs. RWD is usually used to make sure that the website visiting and app using experiences are smooth fluid and to make them fit into devices with different screen sizes.

Fascinating facts about RWD

As you would probably know, CSS has a max-width rule for placing or arranging images inside a grid. The flexibility of RWD enables you to easily fit your images into the grid frame. In addition, the CSS3 module will give you control over styles, weight, height, orientation, and more.

The innovative fluidity of grids will help you to organize and manage contents without preset widths. This means that web designers who use RWD will be able to organize the contents of their site or page in an attractive and intuitive way so that they will look good on different devices. These are the major reasons why website designers love to work with RWD.

Website designers will have to pay attention to the fact that there are plenty of frameworks that provide RWD. However, materialize and Bootstrap is the most popular ones due to their simplicity and excellent features. It is true that you might be able to make your web design responsive by writing some codes instead of using these frameworks. Still, Bootstrap and materialize works best when it comes to helping users to implement RWD.

Few Benefits of RWD

One of the major benefits of using RWD in your designs is that it will add a bit more consistency to your designing works. In addition to that, users who implement the use of RWD will even be able to easily develop prototypes of designs at a rapid pace. Finally, the availability of Grid presents you a unique opportunity to make adjustments to the designing process to make your project look good on different devices.

What is Bootstrap

Bootstrap can be defined as a powerful and immensely popular development framework that offers the best front-end development features. The idea of Bootstrap was born in the mind of two Twitter employees, who gradually went on to design a framework, which will power responsive website designs. This, in turn, resulted in the creation of the Bootstrap framework. It might come as a surprise to many people when they hear the fact that Bootstrap was initially called as Twitter Blueprint.

This fascinating front-end framework is capable of allowing users to easily design mobile-first websites. Bootstrap frameworks usually come with three major files or components and they are called Bootstrap.js, Bootstrap.css, and font icons or Glyphicons. Apart from these three components, Bootstrap has jQuery, and this powerful framework is also cross-browser compatible.

Why Designers love to use the Bootstrap Framework

The user-friendliness and simplicity of the Bootstrap Framework are one of the major reasons why designers love to use it. This framework is equipped with a handy JavaScript library, and it can also be combined with CSS, SAAS, and LESS. Bootstrap framework is also pretty much easy to use and learn.

Most of the modern smartphones and tablets are equipped with a wide variety of excellent features. This means that it will be crucial for website designers to pay attention to these features if they want their websites to look great when viewed through mobile devices. If you use Bootstrap, then you will be able to ensure that without any worries or hassles.

Bootstrap also offers an excellent collection of pre-built elements that will help you to easily customize your website. In addition to that, this powerful framework also has an extensive browser compatibility, which means that Bootstrap is compatible with Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer, and other popular internet browsers.

What is Materialize

The slick design of the materialize front-end framework enables users to ensure that their websites will be flawless and highly-responsive. In simple words, materialize can be described as a basic CSS framework that is used for the sole purpose of designing responsive websites. This powerful framework is built based on the material design concept of Google.

Several web designers particularly the ones who are new to the world of frameworks and responsive websites will be amazed to know that this framework is created by using JavaScript, CSS, and HTML. This means that users with minimum knowledge of JavaScript, CSS, and HTML will be able to easily learn and use this framework.

Unknown facts about the Materialize Framework

The Materialize framework is actually a combination of CSS that is written in JavaScript and Sass framework. One of the most fascinating things about this framework is that it contains a 12-column grid layout, which supports responsive website designing. In addition, this framework offers plenty of handy components that includes parallaxes and toasts that are not available with the Bootstrap framework.

Website designers should note is that the Materialize framework is compatible with multiple numbers of web browsers including the latest version of Internet Explorer. This excellent framework also powers different types of materialistic designing across several devices and platforms along with customized transitions, basic styling, animations, and components.

Moreover, the built-in features of Materialize framework comprise of cards, flow texts, and several other handy items. Web designers who are working with this framework will even be able to make us of Avatar Content and Parallax elements. However, you need to keep in mind the fact that both Bootstrap and materialize framework can be used to design flawless templates that are fully responsive in nature.

If you are unable to determine which one of these frameworks are the best choice for you or if you wish to learn more on bootstrap admin templates, we are here to help you.


Published by HackerNoon on 2018/12/07