Introduction

CSS has evolved a lot in recent times. From making websites look good using fonts and colors to working with layouts, complex grid systems, transition, animations and many more. The introduction of CSS3 and its new features has made CSS a very powerful and indispensable tool for front-end web development.

You might have heard of CSS frameworks like Tailwind, Foundation, Bulma and many others. These are very popular and indeed useful but have you ever wondered if we really need them? if yes, then why?. Let's get into it

What Are CSS Frameworks?

Before we go any further, let's talk a little about what a CSS Framework is. A CSS framework is something like the skeleton of pre-written CSS code to build your web pages upon. These styles can then be reused within the entire project.

Advantages of Using CSS Frameworks

Let's quickly look at what CSS frameworks bring to the table when it comes to building web applications

1. Consistency

Having consistent components through out your website makes it look and feel a little more harmonized and aesthetically pleasing. It also gives room for re-usability. Imagine visiting a website and you see 10 different colors all over the place, different types of buttons on different pages, text sizes which are all over the place and so on. I am pretty sure you won't visit that website again because of how it looks.

CSS frameworks establish common design languages throughout your site. This means:

• Users won't feel like they're lost in a maze
• Your team is not going to go insane trying to maintain the codebase – Instead of explaining to your boss why every page on this site looks different

2. Speed

It can be quite traumatizing dealing with complex grid systems and especially building them from scratch. Thankfully, we don't have to go through all that hassle, because of CSS Frameworks. They speed up your entire development process helping you to focus on what makes your application unique instead of re-inventing the wheel.

<!-- Without CSS framework -->
<div class="custom-grid">
  <div class="custom-column">...</div>
  <div class="custom-column">...</div>
</div>

<!-- With framework (e.g., tailwind) -->
<div class="flex justify-center items-center">
  <div>...</div>
  <div>...</div>
</div>

3. Responsive Design becomes Easy

Now adays, people browse and visit websites on almost everything. So, making your website responsive has become a very crucial step in building web applications. CSS frameworks make this process a lot easier. Making websites responsive with normal CSS involves writing a lot of code which can sometimes become very messy, good thing we have CSS frameworks to ease the job.

/* Without CSS framework */
@media (max-width: 768px) {
  /* Mobile styles */
}
@media (min-width: 769px) and (max-width: 1024px) {
  /* Tablet styles */
}
@media (min-width: 1025px) {
  /* Desktop styles */
}

/* With framework( e.g tailwindcss) */
<div class='text-black sm:text-blue lg:flex-col'>...</div>

4. Browser Compatibility

Have you ever built a website and when testing it on different browsers, you realize some sections of the website appear differently or don't show at all on some browsers?. CSS frameworks helps in taking care of compatibility issues in advance. CSS frameworks often use normalize.css or other reset stylesheets to make sure that CSS styles work consistently across different browsers

Downsides of Using CSS Framework

1. Bloated Code

Using CSS frameworks involves loading styles for almost everything the frameworks has to offer which can significantly slow down your website and also affect its performance.

3. The Learning Curve

Learning CSS frameworks takes time as different frameworks handle things differently and you find yourself constantly referring to the documentation for implementation guide.

So, Do We Really Need CSS Frameworks?

The truth is, whether or not we need CSS frameworks depends on the specific requirements of your project.

For small projects, CSS frameworks are sometimes not really needed but can be very helpful in large projects since it can help to save time, maintain consistency and handle browser compatibility as mentioned above.

Conclusion

CSS frameworks won't fix everything about the way you style your web applications, but they will speed up your development process.
CSS frameworks are tools, and as tools, they are very valuable when used the right way.
After all, the best developers are masters of their tools but not slaves So, sometimes you should step outside the box and try something new like building your own CSS framework.
So, What do you think? Do you like CSS frameworks or do you prefer to write everything manually? Let me know in the comments! 👇