Responsive Design Frameworks: Just Because You Can, Should You?

Responsive design is about building a website with a grid-based layout, images that resize and media queries, as described by Ethan Marcotte. After Marcotte defined the technique, responsive design frameworks began to emerge that incorporated these principles. Mostly based on CSS and JavaScript, many of these frameworks are open-source, free to download and quickly customizable.

Some of the most popular today are Bootstrap and Foundation, which we’ll focus on in this article.

As responsive design frameworks became popular, a big debate emerged: Why would a professional designer use a responsive design framework?

Internet debates rage on. Many declare that responsive design frameworks are awful, that only people who don’t know HTML and CSS would ever use such a thing. Here were the standard arguments against frameworks:

• A designer could write their own grid system, and they probably should if they know any HTML and CSS.
• Websites based on frameworks load slowly.
• All websites based on frameworks look the same.
• Bloat is common, whether due to the extra div tags, the 5000+ lines of CSS or the large JavaScript files.

While detractors complain vociferously, responsive design frameworks continue to grow in popularity. I suggest that these frameworks have positive aspects, even for the most experienced front-end Web developer, and I’ll outline these below.

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