Spectre.css: The Ultimate Responsive CSS Framework

By Jake Rocheleau. in Toolkit. Updated on April 6, 2023.

If you wanna dive into flexbox layouts then now is the best time to start. Modern browsers are finally accepting flexbox properties and more developers are getting into the action.

But, why start from scratch when you can build on top of reusable code? Spectre.css is one of the best frameworks to start using if you’re new to flexbox.

This free open-source framework comes pre-built with a functioning grid system and common flexbox properties. It relies on Gulp for compiling and running CSS on the fly, from any computer.

flexbox grid

It also uses LESS instead of Sass, which can make Spectre and a terrific choice for all LESS users.

One download from npm comes with everything you need: CSS icons, mixins, variables, and pretty much anything else you would expect from a typical CSS framework.

All code is fully semantic and supports all HTML text elements, even the newer ones like <time>. Text styles also support East-Asian fonts with languages such as Chinese, Japanese, and Korean.

east asian fonts support

You can find tons of examples on the “Elements” page which lists design samples for text, buttons, tables, icons, and web forms (among other things).

Spectre also comes with tons of components that can save you hours of time spent coding from scratch. Dynamic features, such as pop-overs and dropdown menus, are super easy to add to any layout, with just a few lines of code.

This framework is still pretty new and it’s always undergoing changes. At the time of this writing, Spectre is in v0.2 and has plenty of experimental features you can try.

But, the primary components, page elements, and grids are fully functional and ready for a live production site. Spectre is one of the best CSS frameworks running on Less with flexbox grids.

To learn more and get started, visit the documentation page covering installation & setup.

You can also download a copy of the code right from GitHub which also has a small section for documentation. And, if you’d like to share your thoughts you can tweet the official account @spectrecss.