Bootstrap and UI Frameworks: Making Web Design Less Ugly

22 Feb 2024

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Who cares right?

Have you ever opened a web page and thought “Wow! This looks like it was made 20 years ago!” Hallmark signs of an old website are super bright colors, the use of 10 different fonts on the same webpage, and just overall very messy. Nowadays, modern websites try to look sleek and simple. Minimalistic design is the new trend. This is because back in the day, the only way to keep someone on your webpage was to attract their attention and keep them there. You couldn’t pay google to make your webpage the top search like you can now. While that may or may not have worked back in the day, it defintely does not work now. All you’ll be doing with an ugly website is give people in a dark room a headache.

Why it matters

So why does UI framework matter? It’s essentially a preset option that allows your website to look professional and modern. It will make your website look more consistent making the user experience smoother and more predictable, saves developers time since they don’t have to manage every little aspect of CSS, and many UI frameworks allow for responsive design which allows websites to be viewed on any device of any size. If you want to work professionally on web design, every project will require some use of UI frameworks! Nobody uses raw HTML and CSS in this day and age.

What do I think

In my personal experience with Bootstrap, I think it’s a very convenient tool. When I first started using HTML and CSS, it’s really annoying to have to manage all the margins and padding of every single part of the website. Additionally, everything just looks really funky and ugly. It’s hard to make a nice website, it’s just natural instinct to just want to add as many different things as possible to a website, which in turn just makes the website worse in my opinion. All in all though, I don’t really see any downsides to UI frameworks, and I believe it will be very beneficial for my professional career in the future.