After using many CSS frameworks over the years, I’ve become wary of them. They give you a boost at the beginning but then you get stuck with their decisions and limitations. I currently start with a CSS reset and then hand-roll everything, liberally stealing pieces from existing frameworks by looking at their demos and copying the computed styles in the browser dev tools. My last few apps have stolen mostly from Tabler.
eahanson
jam
I used Bulma several years ago for a project and it was mostly fine. Since then I’ve created my own design system based on css variables.
2
woylie
If I had to choose a Framework, it would be either Bulma or something more minimal like Pico CSS. However, I feel the same as @eahanson: These frameworks help you get started quickly, but at some point, I reach a point where I feel limited and want to throw out the framework in favor of CSS that I control for 100%. In the last project where I used Bulma, I gradually removed and replaced all framework styles until nothing was left. I don’t think the initial productivity boost was worth it then.
3
AstonJ
Bulma looks nice and Pico seems to have been mentioned a few times… might be worth putting a list together and creating a poll - anyone fancy doing it? (Maybe you @arcanemachine? 
)
If anyone’s interested maybe first create a post here with the list in case someone thinks of any not on it.
To qualify, the framework should be one that can be used with Phoenix.
Ideally we’d need a way to differentiate between:
- Using currently
- Want to use
- Want to explore
So each framework would have an entry with each of the above, eg:
- Tailwind (using currently)
- Tailwind (want to use)
- Tailwind (want to explore)
- etc
This could help show what is actually being used right now, what people are interested in, and what they are almost certainly going to use…
2
AstonJ
Let’s start the list here - this is wiki post - please feel free to add to it (please follow the same format):
- Tailwind - https://tailwindcss.com
- Bootstrap - https://getbootstrap.com
- Foundation - https://get.foundation
- Bulma - https://bulma.io/
- Pico - https://picocss.com/
- Milligram - https://milligram.io/
- Beer css - https://www.beercss.com/
- Kelp - https://kelpui.com/
3
sreyansjain
I used to like Bulma a lot, but it seems that it is not being maintained. Just check the Github issues.
What i really liked about Bulma - The ui is so clean and minimal, that normal users would not notice any design. The ui would get out of the way and let the content/data shine.
Only if it were maintained and used modern css/html it would be really really nice.
/small rant about app development /
But then again these choices are really subjective. We are ultimately just drawing rectangles on screen. I also sometimes think that web ui needs to be standardized a bit more. We as web devs want to make our apps unique. This comes at a cost and decision fatigue. What if all my apps look the same? I run a web agency (and mostly do business apps), and I would certainly like all my apps to look uniform. I am not against theming, but using a different css framework for every other project. I don’t want to do that anymore.
At present Beer css seems a nice choice for me in terms of css size and the components it offers. But if bulma became modern and smaller, I would like to pick bulma, just because its so clean. And I would like to stick with it.
But alas, its the web, and the only constant is change.
/ small rant ends /
1
mikesax
I’m using TailWind BUT I am really thinking of just using @apply to define high-level classes the way I would in traditional CSS, but applying Tailwind classes. I like how Tailwind makes CSS easier to write, but I find that including full details within the HTML makes it hard to read and maintain.
3
olivermt
This topic makes me very happy my nick is not apply at least!
(i know the guy with the github handle @impl, he doesnt code elixir but lets just say he followed the refactoring of how behaviours worked closely against his will)
5
Philicare
<response class=”tailwind is awesome but ido not feel confortable when my html code looks like this so iwould rather take time to build my own classes”>Mais je me répète : Tailwind is awesome<\/response>.
4
jam
This is what Daisy UI does. But at that point you might as well just use CSS with a nice set of CSS variables.
3