Materialize
Materialize is a framework enabling developers to apply Google's Material Design guidelines to quickly develop websites that provide users with an intuitive interface and the functionality they are expecting.
- Based on Google's Material Design framework.
- Includes components needed to develop a mobile site that has a look and feel consistent with your full web site.
- There are ready-made, professional-looking themes available for purchase on the Materialize site, as well as several templates which you are able to download and use for free.
- By using Materialize, you can speed up your website development. There are many templates available on the site, and you can download and install a template in a matter of moments.
- Materialize helps your developers create user experience-focused web sites. Materialize's developers created a framework based on Google's Material Design principles to provide users with a familiar user experience.
- There is ample and detailed documentation on the Materialize site and there are examples that provide guidance for developers looking to create a website that is both user-friendly and well-performing.
- Although it is based on Google's Material Design framework, anything outside of the official Google framework implementation has the potential for becoming out-of-date.
- There are other Material Design-based solutions available that are more lightweight than Materialize. However, these other solutions may not provide the same breadth of available tools and templates as Materialize.
- Materialize was developed by four college students who "work on the project like it's our full time job." The lack of a full-time development team may result in lack of support for the long-term.
Google originally designed the Material Design framework to provide a consistent look and feel across all their web and mobile applications. The principles include guidelines around color usage, animations, responsiveness and motion. Materialize is a framework for applying the Material Design principles to your web site. By downloading and installing Materialize, you can enable your developers to create mobile and web pages that are intuitive and easy to use. Implementing Materialize in your website is a fairly simple process. There are two versions available via the website: The first is a pre-compiled version that should be used if you are unfamiliar with Sass. For the advanced user who has access to a Sass compiler and knows how to use it, there is also a version available containing the source SCSS files. If you prefer, you can also use CDN, or either the Npm or Bower package managers to install Materialize. Instructions for each is on the Materialize site. Simply extract the files you downloaded into the directory where your website is located, then link the files within your web pages, and you are up and running!
Alternatives to Materialize
Foundation
Bootstrap
JQuery UI
Polymer
Semantic UI
UIKit
HTML5 Boilerplate
Skeleton
Mini.css
Galaxy
Topcoat
Spectre.css
Dojo Toolkit
Angular Material
Element
