This. I wish more devs tried to utilize modern css and js directly instead of relying on frameworks.
I try to do this for my own projects but there's gravitational pull toward frameworks in companies.
I try to do this for my own projects but there's gravitational pull toward frameworks in companies.
Its all well and good saying that, as long as you do not value your time.
Personally, I would rather use a reasonably up-to-date framework such as Bootstrap 5 because Bootstrap has already taken care of the majority of those CSS hacks that are often required to make things look right on various browsers.
And frankly, why re-invent the wheel ? Most "utilize modern css and js directly instead of relying on frameworks" likely ends up looking like "a lot of boilerplate with a few customisations". So why not use Bootstrap for all the boilerplate and spend your time more productively by focusing on the customisations ?
P.S. JS is not a strict requirement for Bootstrap, it can be used CSS-only. But one added benefit of Bootstrap 5 in particular is they've removed the jQuery dependency.
Making any large front end application WITHOUT a framework or a view library is just a bad idea, even today. There is nothing in the DOM or spec-wise that is equivalent to the power of React or Vue, period.
When it comes to CSS, the situation is better. Flexbox, CSS grids, ... have made creating CSS layouts extremely easy. So CSS kind of successfully brought in a lot of things that were directly exploitable by front-end developers.
To this day, HTML and the DOM are JUST NOT RAD for complex UI, period. Web components have a few nice ideas but a lot of flaws (especially support on IOS). Whether you build your own framework or use someone else library, you will absolutely need something that sits on top of the DOM for large front-end applications.
So it's not by choice that most front-end devs have to rely on a framework. It's because the standards are not good enough.
> I try to do this for my own projects but there's gravitational pull toward frameworks in companies.
A simple example. you need a mechanism to manage the life cycle of event handlers on your page, if your app uses the history API. If you do so then you've already started writing your own framework.
Web components failed to address a lot of stuff developers use view libraries for. That's why it is not that popular.