Let’s say you’re a self-employed web designer. You’ve learned the requisite languages, and now you’re looking to make a website as part of a freelance gig. You can make one from scratch, coding each and every line from your own design choices.
Or, you could find a well-established framework to code some of the more complex ideas, saving you a bunch of time. Sounds great, right? To properly use a framework in designing a website, you will need to know what a framework is, which kinds there are, and how to choose one.
What is a Framework?
A framework, in general, is a set of criteria, concepts, and practices for resolving a very particular issue. In the field of web design, our framework is a package of files (generally of file types HTML, CSS, JS documents etc.), each defining unique tags and ways to build your site a certain way. Generally, most websites will share common framework, so most developers will not have to build every single high-level element from scratch themselves.
What Are the Different Kinds of Framework?
There are 2 basic types of frameworks for web designers, divided by the role they serve in the creation of a website. A front-end framework helps you on the superficial aspects of the page, such as the layout of the grid, the menus, and such. On the other hand, a back-end framework helps you in what happens behind the scenes: the way the drop-down menu works, how elements are handled across various devices and such.
How do I choose a Framework?
What do you want?
I would recommend choosing one for your own by taking a quick look at the more popular ones, and then deciding whether you would like to use the design or not.
Here are a few popular ones:
- Bootstrap - A CSS framework which gives you many advanced tags allowing you to make clean-looking sites
- Skeleton - A framework generally used for developing sites for mobile users
- Base - A framework designed to be accessible across many different kinds of browsers
For all freelancers doing independent work, I hope this article was helpful for you. Hopefully you all can find a good framework for making a beautiful site!
