Many people disagree on what something beautiful, but most people can agree what makes a user interface look decent and function well. Creating said interfaces, however, can be time consuming and can produce some very long and confusing code. The primary way to develop websites uses HTML and CSS code to create and style the various aspects of the pages. It is this combination of code that is responsible for the lengthy, confusing webpage code. In order to make this process easier, user interface, or UI, frameworks were developed. These are similar to coding languages in that they have unique syntax but differ in that they are woven into HTML. They modify styling of elements, often making it easier by simplifying the syntax.
One such framework is SemanticUI. This framework works by providing a flexible class system that flows well with English. It allows for easy creation of many good-looking UI elements with relatively little code. In order to make a large menu with no borders, one must only specify the class of the section to be “ui large borderless menu” and it will create such an element. This elegance of this cannot be understated, as this format also allows for complex user defined styles to be incorporated into the classes. Simply add an adjective of your choice, and you can declare unique properties for an element in a stylesheet (a separate CSS file that keeps track of style information). So if we wanted to modify our “ui large borderless menu”, we could call it a “ui large borderless special menu”, then define it under the entry “.ui.large.borderless.special.menu” in our stylesheet and we can add our own flavor to it. This modularity allows for easy, rapid customization of websites, and rapid development. SemanticUI can handle anything from mimicking an existing website to creating something entirely new.
UI frameworks are around because they make web design simpler. If they didn’t, they’d likely fall out of popularity and subsequently disappear. Learning them is certainly a worthwhile endeavor if you want to do any web design, as they will massively simplify and speed up the process. The time investment to learn is comparable to the investment to learn HTML and CSS, and since it makes using both easier, it is a worthwhile skill to pick up.