Vue.js is one of the popular JavaScript frameworks with various optional tools that can be used to build user interfaces. Since its release in the year 2014, it has been showing constant growth. With nearly 80K GitHub stars, Vue.js is used by companies, such as Gitlab, Adobe, and others. One of the major reasons for Vue’s popularity is the wide use of components that it includes, making web development easier.
These components encourage reusability through modularity while keeping your user interface (UI) steady and consistent. This is why Vue.js, maintained by Evan You as an open-source project, has emerged as the major competitor for Angular and React.
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With a number of component libraries available, choosing the one that fits into your needs might get trickier. To help you build your next app faster, we have collated a list of some of the best Vue.js libraries below:
Element UI
Element UI originated in China and was developed by the same team of developers who created Mint UI. It is a desktop UI kit, suitable for both web and desktop apps. This would be one of the best libraries if you are planning to work on an Electron application.
Highlights:
- Supports all major modern browsers
- Well-documented
- Flat-UI elements
- Versions for React and Angular are available
- Translation-ready
- Homepage and documentation are available in English, Chinese, French and Spanish languages
- Allows theme customization and color customization
Mint UI
Based on the Babel JavaScript compiler, this Vue UI component library is light-weight. Since it is smaller in size, it is easier to use Mint UI in mobile apps. Also, it provides a wide range of CSS and JavaScript components for building mobile apps. Mint UI has more than 13K stars on GitHub.
Highlights:
- Documentation is available.
- Imports components and style sheets only when needed (liberates you from the apprehension of excessive file sizes).
- Component-based design.
- Mint UI handles animations using CSS3, which offers users a smooth and seamless motion even on mobile devices.
- It is light-weight; even when all components are imported – the compressed code would take approximately 30kb gzip space.
Vuetify
Vuetify is a semantic and reusable component library of Vue. It is based on Google’s Material design and offers you clean and reusable components, which help makes building apps easier.
Highlights:
- Supports all major modern web browsers.
- Vuetify combines the power of Vue, Material design and a massive library of well-crafted components for building apps and sites faster.
- Compatible with Vue CLI 3
- More than 100 components
- Responsive grid system
- Huge community support is available
Keen UI
Another Material Design-influenced library, Keen UI is light-weight and comes with an array of basic components that makes it easier to kickstart your projects. It has nearly 3.5K stars.
Highlights:
- Comes with an easy-to-use API
- Material-design influenced library
- Most useful features include: form inputs and reacting to use inputs (mouseovers and clicks)
Keen UI is an ideal choice when you are adding iterative features to an existing application.
Bootstrap-Vue
Bootstrap-Vue allows you to build responsive and mobile-ready projects for the web, using Vue.js and Bootstrap 4 framework, the front-end CSS library. You can utilize the power of Bootstrap within Vue.
Highlights:
- Readily available UI components
- Responsive grid system
- Library components are compatible with the WAI-ARIA guidelines of web accessibility
- Well-documented
- Strong community support
- More than 75 custom UI components
- Over 40 plugins
Quasar Framework
Developed with the motto: write the code once and simultaneously deploy it as a website, a mobile app or an electron app, Quasar Framework is an MIT-licensed, open-source Vue.js-based framework. It helps developers to create responsive websites or apps.
Highlights:
- The same authoritative source code for all platforms
- Progressive web apps
- Has more than 8K stars on GitHub
- Top-class, fast and responsive web components
- Implements best web development practices
VuePress
This is a static site generator based on Vue. This library offers a range of possibilities for your projects, such as automating the documentation process. Also, you can easily integrate it into your existing application. The documentation, as of now, does not cover SEO support. But it is expected to extend SEO support as well, sooner.
Highlights:
- Comes with the minimal setup: a Vue-powered theming system, plugin API and a default theme optimized for writing technical documentation
- The markdown-centered project structure helps writers focus on writing
- Use Vue components in markdown and develop custom themes with Vue
- Generates pre-rendered static HTML for each page and runs as a SPA when a page is loaded
AT-UI
AT-UI is a modular front-end UI framework. It helps in developing fast and powerful web interfaces. This light-weight framework supports most modern browsers.
Highlights:
- Light-weight
- Friendly API
- Flat UI components
- This library focuses on building desktop apps
Buefy
Buefy, with 3K stars, is a lightweight UI-component library, which is based on a CSS framework, Bulma, and Vue. Buefy weighs less than 100KB, with Bulma included.
Highlights:
- Open-source on GitHub
- Each component of Buefy library is responsive
- No internal dependency, hence it is light-weight
- Well-documented
- Supports Font Awesome and Material Design icons
- Semantic code output
- Reliable performance and usability
iView
iView is a high-quality UI toolkit based on Vue.js. An iView plugin is available that can be used with Vue CLI 3 for quickly building an iView-based project.
Highlights:
- iView plugin
- Starter kit: helps save time; if you prefer not to use it, there are other utilities available
- Use the babel-plugin-import to load components and reduce the size of files
- Huge community support is available
- iView provides a default theme and you can customize some basic aspects of the same
Vux
Another excellent Vue.JS component library available out there is Vux. Thousands of web developers from all over the globe incorporate the use of Vux. Developers who are planning to settle for the Vux framework should note that it is designed based on web pack and WeChat’s WeUI.
One of the major downfalls of the Vux document library is that a major portion of its documentation is in Chinese. However, some parts of the documentation have been translated into English. Vue will surely come in handy if you are planning to build mobile apps at a rapid pace.
KeenUI
Keen is another popular lightweight Vue.JS component library. This component library is designed based on the Material Design of Google. Developers who are selecting Keen should know that all the components in the library require JavaScript. This means that Typography styles and grid systems will be absent on Keen.
The basic elements and other components that are available with Keen will enable you to easily complete web app projects. If you are planning to add new iterative features to existing web applications, then it is best to choose Keen.
Wrapping up
The above-mentioned list of Vue UI component libraries offers a range of functionalities as discussed. Are you looking for a complete package of solutions, then Quasar might be a good option, while if you are looking for a plug-and-play solution for your existing projects, then Vuetify or Keen UI might be the best. If you want to check out more Vue.js libraries, please click here.