Fomantic-UI vs. Material UI

What is Fomantic-UI?

Fomantic-UI is a modern version of the popular Semantic UI, made and improved by the community. It is a tool for building websites that are responsive, easy to style, and user-friendly, fast.

It focuses on semantic class names that read like natural language, making code more intuitive and easier to understand. Since it’s a fork, it has continued where Semantic UI left off, with new features, updates, and active maintenance by the community.

Key Features of Fomantic-UI

×

• Human-Friendly Classes: Semantic class names like ui button, ui card, ui grid.
• Rich Components: Buttons, forms, modals, dropdowns, cards, tabs, and more.
• JavaScript Behaviors: Built-in behaviors for modals, accordions, dropdowns, sliders, etc.
• Responsive Grid: Powerful 16-column responsive grid system.
• Theming System: Fully themable with LESS variables and customization options.
• Extensible: Modular build — include only what you need.
• Community-Powered: Active development and updates compared to the abandoned Semantic UI.

Advantages of Fomantic-UI

• Full-Featured: Includes both CSS components and JavaScript behaviors.
• Rich UI Library: Over 50 components for quick UI building.
• Readable Code: Natural-language style class names make HTML easier to read.
• All-in-One Framework: No need to rely on external JS for basic UI behaviors.
• Strong Theming Support: Easily customizable with LESS variables.
• Community Driven: Regularly updated and maintained by the community.

Disadvantages of Fomantic-UI

• Requires jQuery: JavaScript behaviors still depend on jQuery.
• Learning Curve: Semantic-style class names may feel unusual for new developers.
• LESS Dependency: Built on LESS, which is less popular today compared to Sass or CSS-in-JS.
• Not as Popular: Smaller ecosystem compared to Bootstrap or Tailwind CSS.
• Heavy File Size: Larger compared to lightweight frameworks like Bulma or Milligram.

What is Material UI ?

Material UI also known as MUI is a popular ui framework that helps developers build modern, good-looking websites. MUI provides a collection of ready-made components like buttons, forms, menus, and cards that follow Google’s Material Design which is a clean and consistent visual style.

As it built on React, MUI saves you time by letting you use these predesigned parts instead of starting everything from scratch.

Whether you're building a small personal project or a large web application, MUI helps make your site look professional and work well on both computers and mobile devices.

Key Features of Material UI

×

• Rich Component Set: Buttons, dialogs, data grids, pickers, more.
• Accessibility: Prefers WCAG best practices and ARIA attributes.
• Material Theming: Customizable palettes, typography, and spacing.
• CSS-in-JS: Dynamic styling via Emotion or styled-components.
• Dark Mode Support: Easy theme toggling built-in.
• Tree Shaking: Supports importing specific components to reduce bundle.

Advantages of Material UI

• Comprehensive Component Library: It covers almost every common UI need: buttons, forms, grids, modals, tables, tooltips, and more. It constantly updated with new components and features.
• Customizable Themes: Lets you easily change colors, typography, spacing, and more. plus you can create your own design system or match an existing brand style as well.
• Enterprise-Ready: It is used in production by large companies and apps as its stable, well-documented, and actively maintained by a strong development team.
• Responsive Design Support: Components that adapt to different screen sizes with built-in responsive utilities.
• Internationalization (i18n) Support: Easily supports multiple languages and right-to-left (RTL) layouts.
• Layout System: Built-in grid and flexbox systems simplify layout creation.
• Seamless Integration with React: It is designed specifically for React, with hooks, states, and props handled smoothly.

Disadvantages of Material UI

• Styling Confusion: Multiple styling options like styled components, emotion, sx prop, makeStyles etc, can be overwhelming or inconsistent.
• Learning Curve: New developers may find MUI's system like themes, styling with sx, custom breakpoints complex at first time.
• Some Features Are Paid: MUI X Pro and Premium components like advanced data grid require a commercial license.
• Look Can Be Generic: Many apps using MUI may look similar if not customized enough. Extra effort is needed to give your app a unique appearance.
• Too Tied to React: MUI only works with React. Not usable in plain HTML/JS or other frameworks like Vue or Angular.
• Bundle Size: It can increase the size of your app bundle if not optimized specially with MUI X.