[Closed] Your Thoughts! Bootstrap 3 vs Foundation 4

[Alen]

@deeve007 +1

@Arcturus, just to give you an idea of what @deeve007 is talking about:

• Ilya Grigorik – Optimizing the Critical Rendering Path

[Alen]

this is even fading away for mobile

what?

You know that milliseconds lost can cost companies some serious conversion. Take a look at the video I linked, there’s more to the mobile and how it communicates with the tower, and how all resources play a role.

[Dustin]

I don’t disagree, and perhaps I should revise what I said. It will be awhile before everyone has 4G speeds on their mobile device. It’s a frustrating user experience when mobile sites load slow.

What’s the consensus on having a separate mobile site? I’ve never really been a fan of it, and I dislike being forwarded to a mobile site with less/different content.

Here’s another good article on mobile performance and optimization. CSS framework size and mobile load speeds seems to be a topic that lacks attention.

[Alen]

Forwarding user to m. sub-domain is anti-pattern when we talk about mobile performance. Ilya mentions this in the talk.

Just to clarify one point.

It doesn’t matter if you have 3G or 24G. The issue is not speed. It’s latency.

[Dustin]

Forwarding user to m. sub-domain is anti-pattern when we talk about mobile performance. Ilya mentions this in the talk.

Cool, I’ll have to watch that, thanks.

[AnnaLiv]

@deeve007

For the majority of projects I work on (small to medium sized business & ecommerce sites) I could list a dozen or more small CSS frameworks that are much better suited, in my opinion.

Deeve (or anyone else who has suggestions), any chance you could post this list of small CSS frameworks that you feel are better?

Others have already asked you, and I too am interested in finding a suitable framework for my project. If Bootstrap or Foundation turn out to be too bloated, then recommendations would be more helpful than simply saying there are better frameworks out there without giving examples.

Thanks.

[Dustin]

@AnnaLiv

Deeve (or anyone else who has suggestions), any chance you could post this list of small CSS frameworks that you feel are better?

Pure, Kube, Neat by Bourbon, Semantic Grid, intuit.css, EZ-CSS, Skeleton, 1140px Grid, Less Framework, The Square Grid, Atatonic, Baseline, Elastic, FEM, KNACSS, Toast, IVORY, Goldilocks, Ingrid, Quantum, Proportional Grids, Simple Grid, One% CSS, rwd grid, 320 and Up.

That’s 25 of them for you.

[svetafriend]

This thread sounds like the inside of my head for the past 4 months! I’ve tried so many frameworks that I’m completely stuck. Yeah, duh. I’m a biz owner who needs to move on and focus… FWIW, I’ve been with both bloat haters and framework lovers and I’m still reeling.

AnnaLiv, if you search for “responsive html5 css3 framework” you’ll find lots and lots – too many. My sense is that if you compare what you have time to learn with the 3 approaches below (big, smaller, scratch) honestly, then choose and stick. If you’re a code lover, go small or scratch and put the time in.

I’ve tried (that I can remember now):
Big – BS (various versions), Gumby, Foundation
Small(er) – Skeleton, HTML5 Boilerplate, Less Framework, Initlializr
Grid based: blueprintcss, 960 grid system, goldilocks, susy
Scratch or partially –semantic grid system + others, reading, reading, working + plenty of great reading and tips here.

Even took a really good code a responsive site by scratch class online – abandoned after a full-charge start. Learned Less, installed ruby, compass, etc, etc. They still litter my computer and that’s crap. Along with templates free and paid, then abandoned.

I feel defeated, so, what do I do now? Some guy at stackoverflow told me to go to wix or weebly, so I stopped asking.

I’ve created a lot, layouts, elements, wireframe sketches, (color schemes – jeez, that’s nothing) but I just can’t pull it together…

Basically, I’m done. Joined u-exchange hoping to find someone to trade a site for jewelry (my partner’s been at it for 40 years). Why need to save? That’s TL; DW.

Off topic, but it’s a set of circumstances that plenty of small biz owners are beset with now. Making a website has certainly changed.

What say any of you?

Thanks, Lauren

[Dustin]

@svetafriend

Frameworks are good but they shouldn’t make the designer. If you want it done right then hire a professional. Most business owners don’t have time to keep up with the web technologies and that’s expected.

Something much better than Wix or Weebly would be Squarespace.

[g.en.e]

I completely agree with Archus here. The framework is only a small part of the site creation process. And from the sounds of it, your problem is somewhat bigger than a presentation framework, but staying on topic I would advice some easy guidelines to consider should you still be interested in doing it yourself:

1. What is it you want from a presentation framework?
   a. Mainly grid for responsiveness?
   b. Grid + Basic things like form / buttons / typography
   c. The whole shabang (or subset)
   d. Dunno, ppl told me it would do me good

2. Am I doin it for this one site or for the many?

3. What kind of site is it i’m building
   a. Think section / page and page division wise
   b. What kind of customer devices will be used
   c. What browser flavours to u target

4. Do I work solo or in a team?
   a. Pay attention to docs / (online/offline) courses / blogs / books more

5. Am I (is my team) purist or not?

6. Do I want to use prefab themes, to what end?

7. What platform do I work on and what knowlegde do I have

8. How much time am I able / willing to invest into this thing

By anwsering these kind of questions u can better decide what’s good for you. In the end you’l gain more insight in what these beast really do and enable you to switch easily without the burden of the initial learing curve.

[svetafriend]

Thanks for the replies! don’t wanna hijack this any further, but…it will lead you all back to the BS vs Foundation – and worse. Really, I just think of all the same redundant loads of code pages hogging space on servers everywhere.

Arcturus, just for future reference, I checked out Squarespace and all the really horrific looking code – check it out! Page loads bite where I live (rural) and many of our customers face the same…
Look at one they link to + the page generated.. Gack.

Gets you all back to the BS vs Foundation vs X vs what biz owners who have coded sites by hand face…

I’ve built and rebuilt our site for 9 years and we’ve lived on getting 1st page hits for many search terms. And not from dirty tricks.

g.en.e, Thanks, I’ve done all that and more…. just burned out. Seems I better just get my act together…

Sorry, folks, I’ll go away now…
Lauren

[Dustin]

@svetafriend

Not to hijack the thread either, but there are a load of website templates with super clean code. And if you use WordPress or run an eCommerce site, there’s stuff for that, too. Have you tried ThemeForest?

[g.en.e]

@svetafriend: a bit off track, but I think a very interesting question to answer starting off with any of them magical frameworks:

To what functional end do you seek the aid of this framework? Name the top3, none directly adressing technical issues.

[Brad Metcalf]

+1 for Skeleton. Don’t have any experience with Foundation. But Bootstrap is bloated. We have a dev in house that uses it on every project he can despite only using 10% of it. It drives me crazy. Depending on the feature, there is usually a light weight alternative he could of found via Google.

[g.en.e]

Could you guys define bloated to me, so that I can understand what it is can be improved (by the team) to solve this problem?

In my opinion BS as well as Foundation are:

• All features are coded completely separately, neatly separated into their separate source files (less/sass and js)
• Css defs are the near prefect optimals (size-wise ) and functionally tested by a very wide range of users
• Coded for ease of use for a wide group of users (css-naming that is)
• BS: in some cases not yet optimally (semantically + reusability (dry) wise ) separated concerns (like colors, margins, paddings, gutters) in less and or even mixins. This is a wip, will become better in time. F4: dunno, haven’t studied it to this end yet.

The only thing you would need in my opinion is to study how to get the minimal / optimal base set you need for your design by:
– using the less base libs and comment out everything you don’t need.
– use their website and generate the prefab css subset.

And yes, I think skeleton does a good job in only taking the absolute minimum of defs needed for any site layout, no matter how robotic or artistic. Can’t comment on the quality, dryness or bug-free-ness over the browserflavours out there though.

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