10 Best CSS Tools

No matter how the industry changes, it’s always going to be important to have a good understanding of vanilla CSS. But in this era of front-end tools, there are a number of powerful CSS frameworks that can make development a breeze.

It’s not uncommon to hear people bash CSS. With its focus on the cascade, global styling and the idiosyncrasies of its layouts, it has attracted its fair share of ire from frustrated developers. For these people, frameworks and libraries that modify vanilla CSS to make it more intuitive are an absolute godsend. Meanwhile, for some CSS purists, frameworks simply add a layer of abstraction to something that needs no adornment.

Neither side is right or wrong. There’s great value in understanding the core language (especially some of the new features like flexbox and Grid Layout) but there’s also great value in being able to build something quickly that’s scalable and maintainable. That’s where CSS frameworks and libraries can help.

In this feature, I’m going to help you get familiar with some of the most interesting and powerful CSS frameworks available. Some of these are well-known, while others are newer tools that are just starting to pick up steam. Either way, you’ll benefit greatly from getting to know these useful tools.

BOOTSTRAP

> https://getbootstrap.com/

1 Let’s start with the most popular framework in the world. While Bootstrap is certainly not exclusively a CSS framework, its most popular features are the CSS-based ones. These include a powerful grid system, badges, buttons, card components, navbars and much more.

If you’re not familiar with how a framework like Bootstrap works, a few code examples will help, so you can see how easy it is to build maintainable interfaces by editing nothing but HTML.