One of the most under-appreciated parts of a webpage is the overall look of the webpage. When you come across a good-looking webpage, you may quickly note how clean and organized it is, but rarely would spend more than 5 seconds appreciating the complexity that made the website look as nice as it does. But as soon as you come across a not-so-good looking website, you immediately notice all the “bad” parts- how things don’t line up perfectly, the lack of color and imagination, etc. It’s a perfect example of the statement “you don’t know what you have until you lose it”.
From the coder’s point of view, it may all seem pointless. If their website works, is readable, and its purpose is more for personal use and to make his/her work accessible for potential employers, why should they spend their precious time adding background colors and choosing the perfect font? They have better things to do during their time like actually coding programs. Well, it ends up, humans are the ones evaluating websites, and like it or not, humans judge. As harsh as that it, it’s true. One glance at a poorly designed website and the judging immediately starts: “This person lacks creativity”, “This person doesn’t care enough about his/her work to showcase it properly”, “This person honestly doesn’t know how to properly design a website, which is a mark against him/her”. Now, after a quick second, the evaluator may take a step back and realize there may be more to the story, such as “This person choose to spend more time coding than designing, which is fine if they are looking for a job in software development” or “This person just wanted to make his/her work more accessible during the interview process, so their web design is very minimal”. However, that initial thought of judgement will always be in the back of their mind.
Adding a bit of color and structure to your webpage takes only a couple hours of your time. Some people opt to shorten that time even more by using purely HTML/CSS. If the only things you are wanting to do is add color or change fonts, HTML and CSS will suffice. It takes only a few extra lines of code and accomplishes the purpose of making the webpage look a bit tidier. However, if you are really wanting to make the website look stellar in the most beneficial way possible in the long run, using a UI Framework is the way to go. UI Frameworks take a little bit of time and work to understand. Similar to coding languages, you have to understand what constitutes correct syntax and semantics. You must recognize how each line of code changes the visibility of the webpage, and that takes time.
Furthermore, certain UI Frameworks such as UI Semantics can be a bit confusing in their syntax. For example, say you want to center text on a page, both vertically and horizontally. You would think adding “center” to the class would do exactly that. However, it may only center it either vertically or horizontally, not both. You could use “padding”, but the amount that is padded changes with the width of the screen. These are small challenges that you will encounter in all UI Frameworks. But with practice comes perfection. Furthermore, similar to other coding languages, once you know how it works, it’s almost second nature to use it. Instead of spending hours grueling over tiny details trying to center text, it takes less than a minute and a few lines of code to center the text and add a background image. Within hours, your entire website is formatted and is visually appealing.
A final benefit of using a UI Framework is the ability to put it on your resume. Although a UI Framework may not be an integral part of the job you are applying for, it can be something that sets you apart from other applicants. It’s an extra bit of knowledge that can be extremely useful in certain situations and shows potential employers that you have a diverse understanding of computer science topics.