I chose to write this post on Material UI for a very simple reason - I am new to software development and knew absolutely nothing about it. But while I didn't know what the Material UI library was or was used for, I had heard that it has grown in popularity over the years in tandem with React, and as a newcomer to the field I think it is best to get my feet wet by studying the languages and frameworks that are mainstays (for now, anyway) in the industry. So, without further ado, I will jump right in to where Material UI came from, what it is and why it is such a useful tool in front end development.
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Material UI (MUI) is an open source user interface library that you can use in front end development with React. It was designed with Google's Material Design in 2014 and as such inherits the design concepts developed by Google software engineers to make front end development both easier and faster since developers do not need to build each part of their UIs from the ground up. The Material UI library gives you access to React components that are made with web design best practices in mind, such as common spacing and typography conventions, but are also highly customizable. Source code for components is readily available to make design changes as you see fit. Let's take a look at several primary MUI features and component types.
The features offered by MUI are centered around the core Material Design concept of Material Theming. Material Theming is the idea that we can customize things like typography, color palette, iconography and other elements specific to design needs. The MUI library gives access to Material Design color palettes that include shading of elements in primary and secondary color schemes. MUI also provides a React component object for typography that can be used anywhere in the user interface. Additionally, iconography is provided to add specification to typical user actions. The icons are available in SVG (Scalable Vector Graphic) format that is much cleaner than its raster counterpart. Components include things like navbars, sidebars, buttons, and checkboxes. All of these are animated to reflect different states to provide more nuanced user interactions.
There are also many other components that are available to fill any web application need, but the best feature is the idea that being able to easily import these objects directly into code makes life easier for developers. As languages and frameworks evolve, the common thread is an increase in elegance and modular application, which saves time, effort and provides the flexibility to focus more on the end user experience and less on the nitty gritty of how our application is running. In this regard MUI excels, and to many developers it just makes sense to keep building off of the efforts of those who walked so we could run.
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