The term “CSS” stands for Cascading Style Sheet. It’s something that designers use to control how HTML elements appear on screens. Today, it’s possible for experts to create responsive and beautiful UI solutions without ever learning CSS languages, thanks to the use of CSS frameworks. However, if you want to get the most out of these tools, then you need to know how you can select the best ones for your needs. Usually, that means considering the following things:

• Maturity: It’s important to know that your framework has been tried and tested for performance before you start using it yourself.
• Active development: make sure that the CSS framework is available to be updated with the latest technologies over time, so you don’t fall behind.
• Popularity: Ensure that you look for frameworks that have higher popularity, this infers that there are more people who appreciate this particular tool.
• Specificity: Make sure that your chosen framework doesn’t have a high level of specificity. It will be easier to customise your solution with new rules if you choose a broad tool.
• Good documentation: Make sure that the framework offers great documentation to improve the learning process.

Here are five of our favourite CSS Frameworks to get you started, and the good and bad points that come with each of them.

1. Materialize

One of the most popular CSS Framework solutions on the market today is “Materialize”. This solution is based on the material design of the well-known Android operating system. If you’re the kind of person who enjoys investing in material design, then this framework is perfect for you, providing features like slide navigation, autocomplete, waves, and more.

Materialize is a solution well-suited for creating out-of-the-box design features. It comes with highly responsive features, and plenty of great documentation too. What’s more, with Materialize you can control the visual interactions of UX design elements to improve experience for your users. The only major problem is that some older browsers are not supported by Materialize as a CSS framework. What’s more, the files themselves are very heavy and bulky in this format.

2. Bootstrap

Another frequently used CSS framework is “Bootstrap”, a development framework that was designed with the intention of putting mobile first in all design, using CSS, HTML, and JavaScript. This is a very popular option for developers because it allows for the creation of complicated layouts in HTML5 development, using a 12-column grid. Additionally, it also provides a range of additional web components like responsive navigation, tabs, carousel, and more.

Like Materialize, Bootstrap provides an appealing and consistent UI experience straight out of the box. It comes with a range of great premium and free themes, as well as plugins and templates. What’s more, it easily fixes issues with CSS compatibility and is well-supported by a host of the most common online browsers. However, if you want to customise your content, then you’ll need to do a lot of CSS rewriting, and the complicated style can lead to a lot of difficult HTML output. In other words, it might not be ideal for beginners.

3. Pure CSS

This might be one of the most well-preferred frameworks over any other CSS solution on the market, because of the small file size and simplicity. It works well with a range of new projects, and includes a lot of project build features which allows you to access your CSS resets naturally. This framework has normalize.CSS files integrated which means that you can enjoy a more convenient cross-browser level of consistency.

The Pure CSS framework is very lightweight, allowing for the addition of extra files through a single stylesheet. You can also enjoy access to your CSS file through CDN, which makes development a lot simpler and faster if you’re new to the CSS world. Perhaps the biggest disadvantage of Pure CSS is the fact that the number of templates and designs are very limited, and the technical development community is quite small, so it’s hard to get answers to your questions.

4. Bulma

Complete with a buzzing development community that helps to make managing this particular CSS Framework a little easier for beginners, the Bulma CSS is a popular and often-used solution for developers. The framework supports all the current web browsers, except for the Internet Explorer browser if you’re below version 10. If you’re using the Bootstrap CSS framework, then you may not need to migrate fully into the Bulma framework.

If you want something that’s effective and relatively easy to use, then you should have a good time with the Bulma CSS framework. It’s very lightweight, which makes it more than simple to customise for modern developers. It also allows for plenty of front-end development if you’re looking to build exceptional designs with the integrated Flexbox feature. The only major problems come from the fact that Bulma is still in development, and in need of additional growth. What’s more, the CSS of this framework is particularly slow on the IE web browser.

5. Kube

Last, but not least, Kube is a CSS framework that is growing in popularity. It supports many of the top web browsers, and a lot of CSS developers use this tool in order to create beautiful and responsive website. With Kube, you can easily focus on the website development process with a range of default templates and styles that are simple and beautiful in their appearance. When it comes to improving layout, the fact that this particular CSS framework is based on Flexbox means that you can enjoy an exceptional range of functionalities and features.

The benefits of Kube are pretty significant if you’re looking for a good CSS framework. The files are lightweight and easy to use, and you’ll get all the important tools and resources you need for development packaged in, which is great for when you want to focus on web development. At present, the popularity of this framework is still growing, so there is still some way to go before it’s the most popular option on the market, however, it’s worth trying if you’re exploring your CSS options.