Hi Community, I am choosing between Platform, UIkit or Source.
Not considering Foundation 6 as it comes with a very steep learning curve.
What are the strengths and weaknesses of Platform, UIkit, Source?
Would love to hear your experience. Thanks.
Don’t forget Foundry - also worth considering.
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Source is really more a mini-framework than a full-blown one. It’s good, fast, great support and gives you a great base from which to build sites using your favourite 3rd party stack.
I have Platform, and used it once, but didn’t expand on its use. Not a reflection on it, per se, it just didn’t hit the mark for me personally.
Uikit (3) is my weapon of choice in the RW world. In my opinion, it’s the best out there, but only in so far as it works the way I like to work. It has a very complete range of stacks that when used together, can accomplish pretty much everything you need to build complete sites. Add in the huge range of classes that are baked in, and it results in a framework that is super fast, incredibly adaptable and extremely capable. Support is also excellent.
UIkit does have a learning curve, though. I don’t use F6, but from what I hear, the curve isn’t as steep, but there is no doubt you do need to put some effort in to get the best out of it.
To give you an example of what I mean, let’s say you want to make a full size (100% browser width and height) “hero” header. Most frameworks have a single stack for doing this. UIkit takes a different approach. There is a multitude of ways to do it using a different mixture of the included stacks, depending on precisely the end result you want. The upshot of this is UIkit is less “drag and drop” of a single stack to do a single task, the upside though of this approach is that you have a lot more control over the end result than most other frameworks.
I use UIkit to make some pretty standard sites, my portfolio is here: https://www.caffeineinjection.com/portfolio/, but I’ve seen some stunning sites built with it. So it’s not just about “regular” sites.
If you want a reasonably simple framework to get going with, Foundry is a great place to start. Whilst @Lucas the dev of UIkit has handed the user as much control as possible. @Elixir the dev of Foundry has taken the opposite approach, restricting what can be done, in an effort to allow the users to get great looking sites built quickly with the minimum of head-scratching moments.
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Questions like this are going to get you a whole lot of opinions and not many answers.
It’s like asking who makes the best truck and giving three options(Ford, Ram, and Chevy) and asking for the strengths and weaknesses of each.
All the Ford lovers are going to boasts about Fords and The Chevy and Ram advocates will do the same for their choice.
Then you get proponents of the choices like Toyota that you left off.
It’s probably better to do some research and ask specific questions about each platform. You’ve already done some as you have ruled out Foundation 6 without even asking a question about it.
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I love Source, but Im not a developer so don’t need the expansive choices of style that perhaps a developer would need. So I guess it really depends where your coming from. If it’s for a personal site, I think Source will cover you, as it can really do a lot and as its free, why not download it and give it a whirl. There are some great tuts to get you up and running and you will then be able to decide if it fits your needs or not…
All the frameworks are fantastic, with a learning curve. this is my personal site with Source, plus a few extras from BWD. Good luck and … take your time.
silence-of-touch.com/en
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