I am exploring new frontend web frameworks to substitute the glorious BOOTSTRAP that I consider a bit old and lacking of innovative features for my purposes. In particular I am analyzing if FOUNDATION can be a valid subsitute. The web is full of enthusiasts of this framework and they say that Facebook and Yahoo use it…
Wow, the premises are really stimulating!
So I decided to download it, to read the documentation and start with some experiments. I am also excited to use the responsive picture change feature. That’s what HTML5 is trying to do with the <picture> tag, but made in JS for retro-compatibility. Foundation applies this concept to every element in the page:
you can customize large, medium and small types of any element and this is really interesting.
I am not so enthusiast about some features that I don’t want to see in a self-described “innovative framework”. In this category I can include:
- JQuery as the main and only JS framework supported, and only in the Foundation tested version!
- Ruby as the only server side scripting language.
- Modernizr.JS?? (are we still in the 2009?)
- The need for initializing: $(document).foundation();
For the rest, I am still curious and will let you know my progress and eventually new projects based on it. Will Foundation win Bootstrap in rapid backend prototyping?
Maybe this is the start for a new WAR between TWITTER (bootstrap) and FACEBOOK (foundation)…
(featured image of this post is a HOMAGE to Isaac Asimov’s “Foundation cycle”, where the framework gets its name).
Why do you think Modernizr is wrong? There are a lot of html5 features and some browsers don’t support them.
However, your post is helpful and only confirm my perception about Foundation.
Thanks.
Hello Carlos and thank you for the comment.
Modernizr is absolutely not wrong, but looks obsolete in my vision. Some features used on Foundation as on Bootstrap too are not compatible with old browsers, also if these browsers can understand HTML5 tags, by modernizr help.
For example responsivity which is CSS3 based (@media queries): responsive pages render very bad on not HTML5 ready browsers. In 2008-2009 we still hadn’t responsive webdesign and modernizr was a cool solution. But now we cannot imagine not responsive web pages, so modernizr became obsolete. Bootstrap doesn’t use it, but it uses html5shiv.JS and respond.JS that are not much better than modernizr, but better.
Thank you. Now I understand the point.