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jgthms/bulma
Modern CSS framework based on Flexbox
Bulma is a CSS-only framework built on Flexbox that gives you a grid, form controls, navbars, cards, modals, and the usual UI primitives without pulling in any JavaScript. It's aimed at developers who want a clean starting point and plan to handle interactivity themselves or through a framework-specific wrapper. At 50k stars it's battle-tested, and the Sass source makes it genuinely customizable.
The zero-JavaScript stance is an actual design decision, not laziness — it means you can drop Bulma into Vue, React, Svelte, or plain HTML without fighting a bundled jQuery or Alpine dependency. The Sass variable system is thorough: colors, spacing, typography, and per-component overrides are all exposed, so theming doesn't require overriding specificity wars. The column system handles responsive layouts with readable modifier classes (is-half, is-one-third, is-offset-2) that are easier to scan in HTML than utility-class soup. Dark mode support landed properly with CSS custom properties, not a bolt-on theme swap.
No JavaScript means you own all the interactive behavior: dropdowns, modals, and navbars render but don't open or close without your own event wiring. That's fine if you know it going in, but it bites people who expect a working navbar toggle out of the box. The framework is also showing its age slightly — Tailwind has shifted expectations toward utility-first, and Bulma's component-centric class names can feel verbose when you want one-off tweaks. The docs site is built with Jekyll and the repo still references Bower and Travis CI, which signals that the maintenance pace has slowed; the last push was March 2026 but the changelog gaps are long. There's also no first-party React or Vue package — you're relying on third-party wrappers of varying quality and activity.