Why is Material Design one of the Best React UI Library?

 

 

The material design must be a familiar design language if you are into mobile or web application development. Material language is a popular design language developed by Google in 2014. There are certain interesting aspects about Material design- it is inspired by the physical landscape around you like the materials, how they reflect light and cast shadows. Material design is reimagining the mediums of paper and ink.

With the components available in the Material UI library, your React web or mobile application development becomes a cakewalk with the easily available Material design elements. How is Material UI with React going to help your mobile and web application development projects? Let’s discuss.

What is Material UI?

Material UI is a robust library that facilitates the import and utilization of different components to create a user interface in your React applications. With Material design language, the developers need not develop anything from the scratch and can save a considerable amount of time.

The widgets available in Material UI are based on the principles of Google for building user interfaces. It is the best tool that developers can rely on to build visually appealing applications. 

How to use the Material UI library in your React application?

The Material user interface is made up of material design elements. The Material. UI components are displayed to the user with a multitude of courses. The navigation bar in the app includes the title of the application, a search field for entering text and doing a quick search of courses, and a responsive grid that includes the course results.

How to set up the React project?

As already mentioned, the main goal of Material UI is to incorporate its library and use its components in the React application. 

For this, you need to install npm in your system. The npm can be used to download and install the different dependencies for your application. You will also need a code editor and Visual Studio code before starting. 

The steps involved are:

1. Navigate your desired folder and create a React project. 
2. Install the Material UI to access the various functionalities or components.
3. Eliminate the unnecessary elements and delete the codes in the div tag inside the app.js file.
4. Import your Material UI components into your project.

1. Create React project

Now let us start with the first step, which is setting up the React project. For this use create-react-app script in the following manner: 

$ npx create-react-app react-material-UI

The create-react app can be executed using the npx command (part of the Node Package Manager) and you need not download it and install it in the first place. 

Once the installation is complete, open the folder in the code editor and then type npm start to start launching the development server. The default React application can be viewed by navigating to http://localhost:3000/ in your browser.

2. Install the Material UI

Once this is done, you will have a new project directory react-material-UI available. Then you have to change into the newly created project folder and you will find the React starter project.

3. Install Material UI library and dependencies

Installing dependencies is the next step to assume. For accessing different functionalities and components, you must ensure the following steps are followed:

• Type npm install @material-ui/core in the terminal and click Enter.
• Run npm install @material-ui/icons for using Material UI icons in your project.
• Confirm that the dependencies have been installed by checking in the package.json 

 

We install the JavaScript library for accessing the backend of the contentful JavaScript language using the command: 

$ npm install contentful

Now you have to find out whether everything is working fine by starting the development web server using the command: 

$ npm start

Then a browser opens up with a start page of the corresponding React application. You will be able to view the ‘Welcome to React’ output page in the browser.

4. Application of Material UI components

Import the Material UI components in your project. Once the browser is refreshed, a button with the ‘press me’ message will be available. Since this button and other components are not styled properly, you can use props to style those. Text widgets can also be imported and variants can be used to define how the text widgets should appear. You will also have the option of creating an independent component and importing it to another file.

Material Ui widgets also include AppBar, Toolbar, and Typography in which Typography helps in highlighting the items appearing in the toolbar. 

Now the created components should be converted into app.js files. Add <Header> in the div tag for using the widget.

What are the advantages of Material UI?

• Appealing design: Sophisticated theming features enable you to either use Google’s Material Design or create your design for starting your projects.
• Customizable: Choose any styles you want or tweak your components into any form you want by leveraging the powerful components of Material UI.
• Documentation Support: More than 2000 open-source contributors experienced in the field have created support through strong documentation for the developers.
• Accessibility: Material components are great for every type of mobile and web application and can be easily accessed by any audience irrespective of their size.

Why use Material design?

Material Design is an effective tool that is not limited to a set of guidelines, but an entire design ecosystem. If you have a potential design in hand, Material UI supplies you with a set of rules on how to handle it. Material Design helps you solve complex use cases with comprehensive design systems. Developers can handle any structure if they have support and documentation as strong as Material Design, many modern design systems lack such provisions!

Apart from comprehensiveness, Material UI is also considered a fairly flexible design library. The designer will have the authority to exercise the specifics of implementing a particular design. Material UI has other granular advantages like skeuomorphism which means that it will be apart from the flat design and makes it far more intuitive to users. Material UI’s feedback is haptic, has subtle animations, and similar things are built in the guidelines. With its simplified sense of physics, interactions become more intuitive.

Material Design was meant for Android apps and has mobile-first sensibility. It enables animations in designs for user feedback as well as for hinting at how different features work. Earlier, Material Design supported light and bright-themed apps which opposed the aesthetics of certain apps. As a result of this, it started offering dark theme options for making your apps more appealing visually.

Endnote: Why Material UI is one of the Best UI Library for Rea

For apps built on Android platforms, Material design is the easiest choice. Google is proceeding with widespread adoption and therefore any app based on Material Design is a strong choice and is going to give a feel like the Native apps. 

If you extend your thoughts beside the Android platform, the design systems are maturing at a rapid pace and it will only continue the trend in the coming years. Designers and mobile or web application companies should familiarize themselves with the guidelines of the Material Design for easily designing using Material Design, and when other systems can be better aligned.