Head-to-Head: MaterializeCSS vs Windi CSS Analysis
materialize-css
v1.0.0(about 5 years ago)
Materialize CSS is a modern and responsive CSS framework based on Google's Material Design guidelines. It provides a wide range of ready-to-use UI components, such as forms, buttons, cards and navigation menus, that can be easily customized to fit your website's style. Materialize CSS also includes Javascript components, such as modals and dropdowns, that enhance the user experience. This package is simple to use and integrate, making it a popular choice for quickly building visually appealing, mobile-first websites.
Windi CSS is a modern utility-first CSS framework that provides classes for designing pages quickly. It offers an intuitive syntax with over 250 built-in utilities for colors, typography, spacing, and more. The framework has a small footprint and can work independently or alongside other CSS frameworks.
Materialize CSS has been around for a longer time and has a larger user base compared to WindiCSS. It is a popular front-end framework inspired by Material Design. WindiCSS is a relatively newer library that has gained popularity for its utility-first CSS approach.
Size
Materialize CSS is a feature-rich library and has a larger file size compared to WindiCSS. WindiCSS, on the other hand, focuses on generating lean and optimized CSS styles, resulting in smaller file sizes.
Styling Approach
Materialize CSS provides a pre-defined set of CSS styles and components following the Material Design guidelines. It offers ready-to-use components and a more opinionated approach. WindiCSS, on the other hand, is a utility-first CSS framework that provides a collection of utility classes to build custom styles quickly.
Customization
Materialize CSS provides extensive customization options, allowing developers to modify the library's styles and themes based on their needs. WindiCSS, on the other hand, promotes a more flexible and customizable approach by using utility classes that can be easily composed and customized.
Integration
Materialize CSS is primarily focused on providing a complete front-end solution and is designed to be used with jQuery. It offers ready-to-use JavaScript components and plugins. WindiCSS, on the other hand, is a pure CSS library that can be used with any JavaScript framework and does not rely on any specific JavaScript dependencies.
Developer Experience
Materialize CSS has extensive documentation and a large community, making it relatively easy to find resources, tutorials, and support. WindiCSS also provides good documentation but being a relatively newer library, it may have a smaller community and fewer resources available.
Performance
WindiCSS is known for its excellent performance due to its utility-first CSS approach. It eliminates unused styles during the build process, resulting in smaller CSS file sizes and faster loading times. Materialize CSS, being a more feature-rich library, may have a slightly higher performance overhead.
