The Secret to Beautiful Websites
08 Oct 2020
My first experience with programming was developing a website for my English class using Bootstrap. I didn’t know anything about coding in general but I wanted to challenge myself by making something from scratch, so what better way to do that than making a website? I decided to use Bootstrap to help me make the website because at that time, my friend who was a computer science major recommended it to me and helped start me off with the project. I was able to find a free Bootstrap template online and used that as my basis for my site. All I had to do was change small little things here and there and added other elements that I wanted. Looking back at it, I was glad that I used a framework to help me build my website because it made my life a lot easier and helped me get my feet wet with programming.
If I had to do my project with just HTML and CSS, my website definitely wouldn’t have looked as good. I wouldn’t have been able to replicate many of the ui elements that Bootstrap enabled me to do, like accordions or hover animations. Bootstrap allowed me to personalize my website and make it pleasing to the viewer without having to pull my hair out trying to figure out the small details. With Bootstrap, I was able to make my website look like an actual, professional website. When I showed my website to my english class, my classmates asked me what website builder site I used to make my site because it looked nice. Being able to tell them that I made it from scratch and coded it made me feel proud of myself.
Early on I was made aware of how useful UI frameworks were for developing websites, so I was excited when I found out that we were going to work with UI frameworks in developing websites. I haven’t heard of Semantic UI, but I found it really easy to understand and work with it. Semantic UI made it so that it was easy to follow their documentation and implement it in our own websites. I honestly had a lot of fun developing websites with Semantic UI because of how easy it was to implement new features and elements to my website. Seeing all the possibilities that I could add to my site awakened my creativity side and made me feel excited. I don’t think I would have any fun if I had to implement the same features in raw HTML and CSS.
From my experience, I feel like Semantic UI was easier to work with than Bootstrap. Semantic UI does not use abbreviations in their names unlike Bootstrap. For example, Bootstrap would abbreviate button as btn, but Semantic UI makes sure to use the whole word which makes it easier to read. Overall, I think UI frameworks greatly improves the efficiency of developing websites and allows developers to implement complex UI features easily. Not having to deal with ugly HTML and CSS and instead using UI frameworks also makes it easier on the eyes when troubleshooting. Easy to read code is something that everyone appreciates and UI frameworks aims to be that.