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Comment by usaphp | Hacker News Reader

I see a lot of people here and on GitHub project page complaining about compatibility with older versions of bootstrap. I don't get it - if your project is already working on older version of bootstrap - why even bother updating it, I mean it's only CSS code, it's not like it will bring you any speed improvements or something...I think it's neither bad or good thing that new version of bootstrap less and less compatible with older versions, this way at least we can get things like flexbox and drop support for older browsers for our new projects, without sacrificing it just for a sake of compatibility. From my experience it takes more time and issues from upgrading cars library compared to just keep using the older version.

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> I mean it's only CSS code, it's not like it will bring you any speed improvements or something

Most people who use bootstrap3 use the JavaScript also.

I suspect the worry is in 2 years (or however long they are bug fixing bootstrap3), newer browsers will start to break on bootstrap3, and you will have a complex way forward.

What bootstrap4 is doing is good, but it also can cause pain for users of bootstrap3.

> newer browsers will start to break on bootstrap3

Is that a common thing for browsers to break on older, previously compatible CSS?

No, this fear seems totally unfounded.

Are there any cases of browsers breaking on older web standards? The only things I can think of that ever broke are plugins (Java, Flash) and vendor-specific extensions (e.g. lots of IE quirks).

<blink> element that was deprecated by browsers maybe. But that was non standard to begin with.

Probably only things experimental, non spec are in danger, but it's safe to think css is very future proof compared other languages designed for layouts.

I think chrome and safari made a bit of a mess with the rounded corners before it was standardized. One of them dropped the browser prefix and ended changing their implementation I think. My memory is very hazy though.

As has been repeated many times here. Bootstrap has javascript as well as CSS.

So same question then -- previously compatible javascript breaking in newer browsers is a thing? Are there some common examples of this (e.g. not just edge cases).

This is not relevant. We are considering the interaction between our code and the library. If the library has breaking changes to its api our code will no long work with it when the library needs to be updated to the new version and our site will break until our code is changed...

> We are considering the interaction between our code and the library.

Ah. The comment I replied to was not about this, but about bootstrap 3 breaking in newer browsers.

Fair enough. Your question makes sense then. The trouble is without security updates there is bound to be some exploit that will go un-patched so when support for bootstrap 3 finishes we will have to upgrade to 4 whether we like it or not.

Please don't spread false information, that's not how CSS works.

Bootstrap isn't just CSS: http://getbootstrap.com/javascript/

The fear is not that but that new features of Bootstrap will not be available to legacy users without major upgrades.

This. Nots sure why this would be hard to understand. If you have a long running project you now have few choices none of which are good. Keep using Bootstrap 3 for older work and use Bootstrap 4 for newer feature and make things inconsistent. Restyle/rewrite everything or keep using Bootstrap 3 and not have any of newer feature or UI pattern everyone takes for granted.

The only thing that could break Bootstrap 3 is browsers deprecating ASI and it's not on the roadmap of any major browser vendors.

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