Don't Sweat the Semantics

04 Oct 2018

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Don’t Sweat the Semantics

Semantic UI is an incredibly interesting and useful tool for coding in HTML and using CSS. The ability to quickly create attractive and functional looking websites, albeit with some difficulty, is fairly intuitive once a user gets a hang of the Frameworks and gets used to looking up the aspects a person needs added to their website. My only issue with Semantic UI is the time we need to invest into learning the framework was quite short between learning about HTML and CSS. As much as three hours of videos should help someone to learn the basics of Semantic UI, the short time frame between introduction and actual use was a bit jarring as I still did not have as strong of a grasp on HTML and UI as I would have liked. Given more time and with consistent use of Semantic UI, the return on investment of the time and frustration spent on learning it should pay dividends.

While raw HTML and CSS can produce the same results as Semantic UI, the readability of Semantic UI is one of the most important benefits of UI frameworks for software engineering. Given more time, I can see how much easier it would be for someone with strong knowledge of Semantic UI to be able to troubleshoot problems. Having the ability to write out a string of words to implement helps to make it clearer what a programmer’s intention is with their site design. The difference between writing the line <div class=”ui centered black menu”> and trying to implement a menu normally is huge.

I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the combined units on HTML, CSS, and Semantic UI. It was a truly enlightening experience that gave me a new perspective on how involved web design is even for something as simple as implementing a background and a few dropdown menus.