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Comment by andersco | Hacker News Reader

How will these tools in fact enable a developer to ship a better design? As a developer with limited design skills, I find that the problem is not finding tools, but rather knowing how to use them, eg what font to choose, what color palette to pick etc.

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My strategy: use a known CSS framework like Bootstrap, then pick one of many themes and slap it on there, whatever looks good enough.

If the application works, hire someone with design skills. They can work on contract basis as well.

> My strategy: use a known CSS framework like Bootstrap,

Any suggestions for using Bootstrap or another CSS framework without using JavaScript? I'd like a pure CSS framework. Bootstrap looks good, but doesn't document what if any limitations will apply if not using their JS.

You can just skip the JS and almost all of Bootstrap's features will still work fine.

https://bulma.io has no js included.

+1 for Bulma. I usually do custom design for anything customer facing. But I've been very happy with Bulma for a couple of internal dashboards where design wasn't important.

That looks promising! The minified version looks a little larger than Bootstrap (200k vs 160k), but it looks impressive, and I'm much happier going with something that uses Flexbox.

I just started digging into Bulma, and ran into https://github.com/jgthms/bulma/issues/1836 . It turns out you shouldn't use Bulma if you actually want h1, h2, and similar semantic elements to do anything. The default Bulma styles make h1, h2, and various other elements all look identical to normal body text, unless they have Bulma CSS classes applied to them.

On top of that, it uses CSS classes for things like "this button is rounded" (https://bulma.io/documentation/elements/button/#styles) or "this tab bar has borders around its tab labels" (https://bulma.io/documentation/components/tabs/#styles).

The kind of CSS framework I expected was one that provides semantic classes for things like tab bars and similar, and then themes can decide things like "my tab bars should have borders around their tab labels". (And, as a side effect, the CSS would also be smaller, since it only needs a style for "tab bar", and not "tab bar without is-boxed" and "tab bar with is-boxed".)

Doesn't it clearly say what components use JS:

https://getbootstrap.com/docs/4.5/getting-started/introducti...

> what font to choose, what color palette to pick etc.

I don't think anyone but you will be able to give an exact response to this. After all, it depends on your product and how you want it to look.

Remember, when it comes to design there are no universal right answers.

Are you aware of colour theory, and how to effectively use the colour wheel?

The color wheel is great, but there are enough counter-examples that the original point stands -- design is inherently personal.

So is what programming language or framework to choose. Just because people have preference doesn't mean you can't learn the basics

Name a counter example

There are better answers than others. You guys just don’t know any of them because you can’t draw

I think the point is that it makes design more accessible. This is a great resource of tools for developers that want to at least attempt to make their creations look modern and professional. I've already found 2 sites in here that I plan to use.

If you struggle with knowing where to even start, then working with a designer is probably your best bet.

There are tools in the list that will help you pick decent font pairings, color palettes and much more...

Did you go to the link? I see links for picking font combinations and generating color schemes.

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