From what I have learned so far, a UI framework is a compilation of pre-built components and tools that make creating user interfaces simpler and easier for software and web design applications. It has provided me with reusable elements that keep my coding consistent and efficient because I am not doing everything from scratch. Unfortunately, my only experience is with Bootstrap, but its comprehensive library of UI elements and classes for styling texts, colors, and alignment has been very helpful because it doesn’t rely so heavily on CSS. I have definitely enjoyed the grid system that it provides because it makes it very easy to see what needs to be fixed and identify problems. I believe that I would definitely be interested in continuing to use Bootstrap with other projects in the future because of its ease of use and how well it does with keeping code very organized and efficient.
While working on my recreation of the Stardew Valley homepage, I definitely did not limit myself to Bootstrap. There were a lot of instances where I had just caved in and used a lengthy HTML and CSS coding style to complete the requirements. I believe it’s only because of my lack of practice and knowledge of all the Bootstrap frameworks and components, which resulted in not utilizing Bootstrap in its entirety. Since I found out that there are so many different ways to structure your code. I found that these web design activities were much more fun and understandable than JavaScript. I often found myself getting easily sidetracked when playing around with the fonts, navbars, footers, etc.
On the other hand, it has proven to be, in a way, more frustrating but easier at the same time. It doesn’t throw error messages that specify which lines of code are not allowing the program to run, which makes it difficult to pinpoint the errors in my code that doesn’t show the format that I want in the web design. Although the containers and grid system provided in Bootstrap allowed me to manually figure out what is overriding certain sections and what needs to be changed or deleted.
I don’t think there is any shame in utilizing Bootstrap along with basic HTML and CSS, I look forward to learning more about other UI frameworks in the process. I found that recreating already existing websites is very fun, and experimenting with all that Bootstrap has to offer is something that I will continue to work on, since I only feel as if I have just scratched the surface of web design and want to actually make interactive websites of my own.
Below, I have included my recreation of the Stardew Valley homepage. I wasn’t able to create a perfect recreation of the homepage, but I hope with more time and practice that I will be able to attempt to recreate it again.
https://github.com/kacykuni/stardewvalley