UI Frameworks are an interesting part of web design which provide an abstraction from writing raw HTML and CSS. Rather than having to reinvent the wheel every time you want to create a navigation bar, float an object, or anything else, you can use the provided classes from a CSS framework to quickly implement them. Then, if you must further customize the objects you may use a stylesheet you write to overwrite some portions of the CSS of the framework. In return for taking the time to learn a framework, you become able to much more quickly create and customize a page without having to fiddle with the CSS as much. This allows you to much more quickly get a page up and running. Furthermore, UI frameworks are designed to look nice, so it is much easier to get a grasp on the overall feel of the page you’re creating even if you haven’t fully customized the CSS yet. Overall, while learning a UI framework on top of raw HTML and CSS is another layer to keep track of, the benefits should not be underestimated.
My experience with HTML and CSS before this class was highly limited. As such, when first covering the topic in this class I was a little scared of how it was going to go, as it differs from creating programs in that there isn’t an algorithm that you envision and then incarnate into whichever language you’re using. I was rather frustrated with the raw HTML and CSS as I felt like it was a sisyphean task to try to get everything where I wanted. When I moved something, something else moved from where it should be. When I tried to evenly space things, I couldn’t get them to. No matter how I shrank, squeezed, or otherwise contorted my window, I was never able to get something that I really liked. Once we started using UI frameworks, however, not having to worry so much about the spacing allowed me to focus a bit more on creating the sites themselves. As such, I have found myself clearly in agreement with the idea that UI frameworks are worth using.