“Should I use a CSS framework?”
That’s a question you will often ask yourself if you are beginning out with Web Development. In my experience, I knew I wanted to use bootstrap, which is one of the most used CSS frameworks, I just did not know why.
I set out on a research to find out what special thing there was about the framework and why it was a worthy choice when compared with the CSS grids.
I hope that by sharing my findings, I can help you to make your own decision about whether to use CSS frameworks or not.
Documentation
If you are working on a project with a few other devs, you will need to also include documentation to help your team members understand your code anatomy. Creating useful documentation is time-consuming, skilled work in itself, and yet it is something that the big frameworks do very well.
Asking questions becomes easier
I have learn’t that for every problem you encounter, someone else has already gone through it and probably solved it, unfortunately, because we do not know how to ask the right questions, we spend a lot of time trying to solve the problem.
Using a framework can give you a starting point for your question; in general, you will be asking how to modify or style a particular component rather than starting from scratch. This is an easier thing to ask, as well as an easier thing to answer.
No need for designing lessons
“I’m not a designer”
That’s something you will always hear from every front end developer trying to come up with a great user interface. It would be lovely to have the funds to hire a designer, but, What happens if you don’t?
A framework might be the only solution you have to deliver a clean and nice UI without necessarily being good at design or having to hire a designer.
Dealing with screen responsiveness
Personally, I always found it difficult to decide breakpoints for web pages.
Most frameworks like bootstrap are written with mobile designs taking priority, hence this solves the need to create different media queries to facilitate the different screen sizes
Finally…
I am not saying frameworks are holy without cons, but for this post, I chose to highlight why you should give them a try.
I do however suggest that you do make research on the demands of your website first before you decide on which framework to use.
Happy Coding