This is Part 2 of my CSS Framework breakdown. Part 1 can be found here.
Part 1 started with the first three most popular frameworks. Each had its specific uses cases as we go into the next three a trend becomes apparent and the trend continues to the end of the list of frameworks. So for Part 2 instead of featuring the remaining frameworks pictured above I thought to depict the strengths it'd be better to show who uses some of the less popular frameworks to get an idea for the visual design they are most known for.
Semantic UI is a bit different from the rest as its initial design philosophy appears to be if its a variable you can theme it and customize it. On paper, this sounds great because this means you have an endless supply of variation. And because its layouts take advantage of this theming design you have a fairly need package read to go fairly quick if you intend to use it all. This is where the downside arguably a large one shows itself. The learning curve is massive for Semantic and the coding conventions are stricter than most of the other frameworks. With any experience, you will notice right away what one problem is and that's bloat from convention to application files will tend to be a lot bigger with Semantic because of the strict adherence to its syntax. So while stylistically Semantic is nice. You can easily put something together very similarly using any of the frameworks in Part 1 in half the time. Notable Companies that have used Semantic are Snapchat, Accenture, and Kmong.
Bulma is interesting because it was designed to solve practical styling needs for smaller teams or independent developers. This is further illustrated once you start overriding the default behavior. It is great for a beginner because of the high modular format it was created as. A bigger benefit is for bootstrap developers it has a specific section dedicated to migrating or integrating with Bootstrap. The only caveat I’ve seen with Bulma is that is not as popular as the other frameworks but it is very well documented with a passionate community supporting it. So it can be a strong contender when you are working on a web application by yourself or on a small team. Companies that have used Bulma are Tipoff, Rubrik, and Mission bio.
UIkit is best summed up by its core tenet and that's minimalism. Don’t be fooled though it may boast the most features out of all the frameworks it hides this functionality is subtle minimalistic components and user interfaces. It tends to steer into the less is more philosophy and choosing that the content you are displaying is more apparent then the interface you use to interact with. The idea is that UIkit wants to accent your design choices not make them for you. Because of this, the elegance of UIkit is amazing. This sleek design does come with a negative depending on how one feels about Javascript. The catch being to requires DOM manipulation so using a virtual DOM framework like React will require extra effort to integrate seamlessly. In terms of the cleanest design, I think UIkit wears the crown proudly. Because of this distinctive take, vibrant colorful web applications really flex how elegant UIkit can be. Even the companies that use UIkit work with a very different UI in comparison to most websites. Some of these companies being, Crunchyroll, Lumeneo, and Solar Winds.
Now that we’ve rounded out the most popular frameworks in recent years. We see that there are a ton of variations for styling as well as different philosophies at play with what they were designed to do. Something like Foundation having a high learning curve but also having the largest unique design out of the bunch because of the added difficulty of picking it up. Whereas Bootstrap has the smallest curve and you get a lot of built-in functionality the downside being a sameness to much of the components across many websites as they generally look the same. But even the less known frameworks speak volumes much like UIkit it may have been the last reviewed but it by no means is any less useful than the more popular frameworks especially if you prefer a simple elegant style solution. My preference hasn’t changed too much as I think if I am on a team or on my own I prefer to work with Bootstrap as I have the most experience with it. But I do see myself learning to use Foundation over time and using UIkit for my side projects due to modularity and it being very lightweight.