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go with?’, we still cannot live without CSS and contribute to adding life to our HTML pages.

Cascading Style Sheets, known more popularly as CSS, give styles to your pages or HTML elements. You can control the layout of multiple web pages with a single style element or write custom CSS for different elements. For example, you can create an h1 element in blue color using:

h1{color: blue; text-align:center}

or set the background of your page to black:

body {background-color: black;}

All CSS components are stored in .css files. As the count of web pages increases, so do the styling elements, and your CSS file becomes large at some point. If more people work on a project, it becomes difficult to manage who changed what styles, thus creating randomness in the code.

CSS frameworks have solved a lot of randomness in developing code and got developers to sigh with relief. Different frameworks are useful for different project requirements, and each has some unique features.

You may want to read the CSS Cheat Sheet for a quick brush-up of your CSS concepts.
Why Do We Need CSS Frameworks?

Apart from the fact that coding has become easy, here are some significant benefits of having a CSS framework:

Cross-browser functionality
Symmetrical layouts
Maintainable and device friendly styling
Good web design practices
Ensures high productivity and speed of development

Top CSS Frameworks in 2021

1. Tailwind CSS

Tailwind enables faster development of the front-end. Instead of a default theme or built-in UI components, you’d get pre-designed widgets menu and utility classes to build your website. Tailwind has modular components, and if you make changes in one place, other parts of your code won’t get impacted. Tailwind requires the least amount of learning and is easy to use. You can customize your website using CSS helper classes.

Features:

It is a utility-first type of framework that provides helper classes.
It lets you choose the design you want for your website and is not opinionated.
Detailed documentation for each class, allowing developers to search what they need quickly (Example, Grid, Flexbox, etc.)
More productivity and smaller package size
No naming or context-switching, i.e., switching between HTML and CSS to see the changes.
Code can be re-used elegantly using the Components feature.

Github Link: https://github.com/tailwindlabs/tailwindcss

2. Bootstrap

Bootstrap is the most popular CSS framework globally and got instant popularity because of its responsive design. It was the first framework that gave priority to mobile devices as well. With Framework, there is no need for a separate design for mobile viewing – add the necessary classes, and the website will adapt to the screen size based on the device. The grid was introduced in this framework, which led to a drastic reduction in the code a developer has to write.

Features:

Compatible with all browsers – no need to write browser-specific code allowing for rapid prototyping.
The most commonly used CSS framework with broad community support, Bootstrap, has changed how CSS is applied to websites.
All the commonly used components are built-in. For example, navigation, forms, cards, buttons, badges, etc., are readily available.
Excellent JavaScript components with custom CDN
Free to use – and version 4.5 has more pre-set layouts and responsiveness.
Anyone can learn – easy even for those new to CSS.

Github Link: https://github.com/twbs/bootstrap

3. Foundation

One of the most advanced and sophisticated UI frameworks, Foundation enables faster website development. Just like Bootstrap, Foundation follows a mobile-first approach and is fully responsive. It is much suitable for huge web applications that need a lot of styling. Foundation is customizable, flexible, and semantic. There are over 2k contributors on Github and decent community support. The foundation leaves it upon developers to explore their creativity as much as possible.

Features:

Very easy to read the code and understand.
It is not just a CSS framework but a complete front-end framework loaded with useful tools.
Comes with a command-line-interface (CLI) to compile Foundation sources to CSS that can be used in HTML markup.
It was originally developed by the company ZURB, now maintained by volunteers.
Flexible, modular, and extensible.
Provides many optional modular JavaScript components and plugins like tooltips, alerts, carousels, dropdown, placeholder, cookies, etc.
Flexible navigation patterns that save many lines of code improving productivity.

Github Link: https://github.com/foundation/foundation-sites

4. Bulma

Although new, Bulma has quickly climbed up the list of top 10 CSS frameworks. Bulma has over 2 lakh users and is growing. It has no JavaScript components (no .js) and the most readable CSS classes. To create grids, Bulma has a powerful system known as tiles, making the page elegant and neat. It is highly modular and easy to learn. Although small, Bulma has a community of passionate individuals wanting to change the way CSS is used for websites.

Features:

Innovative design with Sass variables that make customization simple even for beginners.
Very versatile framework and comes with typography, tables, components for vertical alignments, media objects, layout, etc.
Free and open-source (MIT License).
Flexbox based, so that creation of vertically aligned and grid items is effortless.
Since it is modular, you need not import everything – only import the components that your project uses.
It contains utility functions to calculate colors, visibility, spacing, etc.

Github Link: https://github.com/jgthms/bulma

5. UI Kit

UI Kit has a comprehensive collection of CSS, HTML, and JS components. It is modular and light-weight. UIKit is used for iOS application development and is easy to use. You can customize your app to any level with this framework. It contains all the core components like labels, buttons, table views, etc. There are plenty of ready-to-use themes, and you can use them using the corresponding SASS or LESS CSS file.

Features:

Comes with many pre-built components like animations, Iconnav, padding, alert, accordion, etc.
Clean and minimalist design with a modern interface.
Self-contained system and takes more effort to extend or modify (when compared to other frameworks).
Easy to set up.
A free and open-source framework that works on any browser.

Github Link: https://github.com/uikit/uikit

6. Materialize CSS

Materialize was created by Google in 2014. It is a responsive UI framework for websites and Android apps. Also it provides many ready-to-use components, classes, and starter templates. But it is compatible with Sass and has a responsive layout based on this framework’s 12-column grid format. So, if you want to work with Material Design (Google’s design language) and create Google-like effects on your website, Materialize CSS will be an excellent choice for you.

Features:

So it is easy to work with and focuses on user experience by utilizing principles of material design.
Since better in-built animations and transitions to speed up development.
Plenty of themes to start.
Also it is elegant padding and depth effects like lighting and shadows.
Materialize requires the only jQuery, unlike that requires popper.js and offers everything that offers – Colors, shadows, Grid, tables, Badges, cards, chips, navbar, etc.

Github Link: https://github.com/Dogfalo/materialize