Frameworks... You Just Can't Live Without It!
23 Feb 2017You must be insane if you created that without a framework
Okay, I might be exaggerating a little. It isn’t necessarily difficult to manually write everything in HTML/CSS. I actually find CSS to be somewhat intuitive on its own. Semantic UI is not the solution to everything. What it is though is a way to make creating visually-appealing websites simpler. It allows you to get more out of much less.
To WYSIWYG or not to WYSIWYG
In high school, I earned a certificate in Digital Media from the Mid-Pacific School of the Arts. While for a few of my senior projects I worked on learning programming, most of my high school career was spent learning the principles of design. In-class lessons were not focused on the technical aspect of web development. In my freshman year, we created portfolios using iWeb, which was what you call a WYSIWYG tool (What You See Is What You Get). These sort of tools allow you to design media digitally similarly to how you would in real-life. They shield you from the underlying code involved.
Dreamweaver
Dreamweaver: my old, beloved daily driver
As I started to take higher level classes, we began to use more complex tools for web design. The biggest one of these was Adobe Dreamweaver. Looking back at it now, I miss using Dreamweaver. It was basically an IDE focused on HTML/CSS but with heavy integration with other Adobe products (like Illustrator, a vector graphics program). I haven’t used it since high school, but it appears that the latest versions have full integration with the Bootstrap framework!
Frameworks could be a real lifesaver
Had I known about the existence of frameworks in high school, it would have made life so much easier. I might actually consider going back to my high school and suggesting to my teacher that she should teach students about using frameworks. It would allow students to spend less time coding and more time designing, while still forcing students to learn the basics of HTML/CSS.