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Comment by davidw | Hacker News Reader

I've been using Zurb Foundation for a recent contracting gig, and am pretty happy with it. Can anyone who is more into these things compare it, in a thoughtful way, to Twitter Bootstrap?

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I find foundation great for rapid prototyping, I can build a mockup in foundation in a few minutes and then iteratively improve on the design until it becomes a real product, as the name implies it's really a foundation to build on, it doesn't give you everything but it gives you 90% of what you need in a way that isn't restrictive.

Bootstrap gives you a lot more than foundation does, but I find it very restrictive, it's hard to make a bootstrap site not look like bootstrap (if anyone can point me to some counter examples I'd be interested). This is unsurprising since bootstrap was designed by twitter for a consistent look across their internal tools.

So my verdict is, for internal tools / quick hacks, use bootstrap. For mockups and real products, use foundation.

Bootstrap's styles are more polished and comprehensive than Foundation's. Foundation's CSS file is very well commented and half the size of Bootstrap's. Bootstrap's modals work with IE8, with Foundation's modal I get an error. Foundation's Orbit JS slideshow is easy to implement, but seems a little buggy in FF.

phpnode got it right - I'd be more inclined to use Bootstrap in cases for which I have no design, or a simple design with latitude for many elements. Client extranet, back-end utilities, etc.

I've used them both. A major advantage Foundation has was a responsive grid system, thought I've read that responsive grid for Bootstrap is in the works.

Zurb has several other fantastic tools as well.

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