What is the alternative to bootstrap ? Which one do you use?

help
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Hello,

I have used Bootstrap and materialize css for front end. But I’m not happy with it. Is there any best alternative to these two which is maintained very well and having more features ? Let me know which front end framework do you use.

Thanks!

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I just last week did an exercise is this area. I needed to develop a small hybrid app very quickly (it is here, by the way, sorry it is in Swedish).

So I tried three different ways:

First I tried Ionic2/Angular2. I used Ionic1 before, and like it a lot, but it has performance issues. It turns out not much work is happening in supporting Angular2 under Meteor, so after a few hours of not even getting the Meteor Angular2 tutorial up and running due to package version mismatches I gave up. Ionic2 can be combined with other view layers (React or Blaze) but that is a really messy solution. So no Ionic2, then.

Then I tried OnsenUI2/React. This combo works nicely, and the Onsen React API is clear and compact. But when I opened the app on Android handsets, it was slow. As in unacceptably slow. Don’t know why exactly, but I didn’t have time to dig into that.

So instead I went with Framework7. I was a bit hesitant to mix F7 with React, as I didn’t know id Reacts funky shadow dom manipulations would work with it, so I used BlazeComponents instead. So the Framework7/BlazeComponents combo is what you see on the site. It worked very well. No weird bugs and good performance, even with nice 3D swipes :slight_smile:

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We also use FS7 - even with React - and it works well.

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@tomfreudenberg : Is it necessary to use Angular JS while using React ? Because I have no idea about Angular.

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No - they are at least “opponents”

https://www.codementor.io/reactjs/tutorial/react-vs-angularjs

In Meteor you may use Blaze, React, Angular - as you like to decide.

If using Blaze, you may “move” smoothly some parts to React sometimes you like

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We are using Semantic-UI with Meteor + React, and we like it very much. I think one of the only reasons why bootstrap was more popular is because there was a big company behind it.

There is an official project, stardust, to convert all the modules away from jquery for React. Some modules haven’t been converted yet, but it will happen soon. Stardust wasn’t ready with progress bar or sidebar menu when we needed them, so we found alternative components to do the same thing, then dressed them up with Semantic-UI classes to give them the right look.

There is a little bit of a learning curve, as with anything, but once you get into it, you start to really love it.

I just launched a community forums for Semantic-UI last week. So come join if you have any questions about Semantic-UI!

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@maxhodges : Thanks for your reply. I have never done work with react. In fact yesterday I found Semantic-UI is an awesome front end framework!! Will it be tough to get started with stardust ? I’m used to with blaze and never used React before. Should I move to stardust ? If yes, can you suggest me the tutorial where I can learn how to react with meteor!

Thanks again! :slight_smile:

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Hi Max @maxhodges

have you had experiences with FS7? I was three times on the check what kind of UI to choose. Last project we choosed second time FS7 and are more or less happy in case that we can create “native looking” apps for IOS and Material. Even that the components are looking nice on SemanticUI - they are opinioned.

Thanks for your personal point of view
Tom

Update: Some cross links to this forum about “same” question / topics

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@tomfreudenberg : What repo should I use in case I want to use FS7 ?

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I just assumed you were using React because you asked about Angular and React.

You can use Semantic-UI directly in Meteor + Blaze (without React)! Just install from the atmosphere package!

scroll down to the Meteor section:
http://semantic-ui.com/introduction/integrations.html#install-via-atmosphere

Welcome to Semantic-UI!

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I do use React - my question was more reflecting towards IOS and Material UI-Components and UI-Workflow (Native Look&Feel) of SemanticUI vs FS7

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@maxhodges From looking at the docs, Semantic seem to be lacking some of the more modern touch widgets (like swipeable carousel and cards, sliding and sortable lists). Are these available as plugins from somewhere or just not there yet?

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Maybe you start with that discussion here … Not sure if the Repos are a bit outdated in case of meteor 1.3.4.1 and newer components - but it is a good starter

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@maxhodges : Do you have any example meteor app with Semantic UI+React. I really want to learn it.

Thanks. :slight_smile:

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our app is in dev so it’s not public yet, but here’s a simple boilerplate app you can pull to see how we use Semantic-UI in Meteor with React

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@maxhodges : Thank you so much mate. :slight_smile:

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ah for mobile…we’re creating responsive designs which work across all devices, but yeah it’s doesn’t look so much like a native app. I’ll ask Jack Lukic the creator of Semantic-UI about mobile components. Just the other day he was saying that he hasn’t introduce any new components in a while…

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if you clone the project, you probably need to run npm install from the project folder to kick it off. let me know if you have troubles

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@maxhodges : Sure, Thanks!

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Great app! Is your code available on Github?