With the way my personality is, my interests are always changing. I like to try different experiences to keep life a bit more interesting. I can never just stick to one thing for a long period of time otherwise I will get too bored. For a CS major, that seems very ironic considering some lines of work are very repetitive. I, however, don’t think of it that way. I think of computer science as a limitless outcome. There are many ways a coder can create a project and semantic UI allows people to make endless outcomes. I have not tried any other UI frameworks, but so far, semantic UI has not disappointed me. I like the millions of ways you can create a web design and personalize it as your own through the different types in an element, the contents, and different variations.
Semantic UI is the first UI framework that I’ve had the pleasure of learning and using in my projects. So far I have learned how to configure menus, background photos, footers, grids, labels, icons, and much more. I can honestly say that I enjoyed learning semantic UI because it is similar to a shortcut to creating better web designs. There are definitely many aspects to the different types of elements, contents, and variations included in semantic UI, but it is worth it to understand how to implement all of them. I feel like if we only knew to use CSS and raw html, designing wouldn’t be as fantastic as it could be. You would have to take care of padding, placing of icons, coloring of labels, positioning of images, alignment, etc. all in the CSS, whereas you can fix that with a single word in semantic UI. I do admit that there are some things in semantic UI that takes me a while to figure out a little tweak. For the majority of the time, it is more liberating rather than frustrating.
Comparing CSS and semantic UI with the little experience I have with them, I would say they are both crucial. I don’t know if I could choose between the two because I feel like certain jobs could possibly require CSS whereas a different project would work better with semantic UI. I think both have benefits because CSS and raw HTML are very simple and plain, and semantic UI is complicated but very useful. I prefer semantic UI because it looks more organized to the human eye rather than a lot of div sections. I may look back on this essay years from now and have a different view of UI frameworks. Right now, though, I think it’s fascinating to learn a new tool in the wide variety of computer science work.