The Limited Possibilities of UI Frameworks
07 Oct 2021UI frameworks offer an easier way to build an aesthetically pleasing web page without having to code every detail in stylesheets. Despite this, it comes with its own set of challenges. For instance, learning to use the UI Framework is like having to partially learn a new programming language because it introduces new class definitions that can be used to make your life simpler. However, Playing with a UI framework is like playing with someone else's code. It is easy to understand your own code because you coded it, you know how you yourself think. However, frameworks are files of code written by someone else and present the challenge of trying to understand someone else's code. Although it can become tedious to work with because of its nature, it can present a simple solution to create a normal webpage in fewer lines of code. This is an example of a page built with a UI Framework:
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It's simple but pretty and only took a few lines of CSS code. Now here is an example of a simple page without the use of UI frameworks:
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This was a small web page I made in highschool as a project, but as you can see, this relatively simple page took over 400 lines of CSS. Frameworks present another set of drawbacks, and that is both it's lack of abilities and freedom. A UI is a set list of style modifications that can only take you so far. There is no possible way that every possibility can be covered by a single framework. It may allow you to easily set the colors by changing its class value to a color such as red or blue, but what about other obscure colors such as "amaranth" or "vermilion"? Colors most people haven't even heard of. Will frameworks cover those colors as well? What about colors that don't even have a name? There are about 16.8 million possible colors a computer can display. The only way to add such unique characteristics to your page is to manually set the style for your page, white defeats the purpose of a UI. Sometimes, a UI just doesn't have what you need to make your page. Sometimes you want a unique page, but frameworks make nice normal looking pages. In such cases, all you can do is simply manually set your own style to match your vision.