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Comment by runarberg | Hacker News Reader

This is funny. I was thinking that Bootstrap should be suffering the same fate as jquery. That is, it’s relevance should be decreasing as web technology catches on.

I see no reason for using a third party layout system now that CSS has `display: flex;` and `display: grid;`. As for modals and menus, HTML has `<dialog>` and `<details>`. And for reusable components, we have custom elements, that you can either implement your self (not that hard) or pull from a library (using javascript modules).

Really the only reason I see anyone using CSS frameworks like bootstrap is for quick prototyping or because that is what they know and don’t bother picking up the new standards (which is ironically where jquery was a few years ago).

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If you actually try to do this yourself, you’ll learn why Bootstrap is popular. You’ll spend plenty of time making everything consistent across browsers, responsive, visually consistent, accessible (a legal requirement for most of us), etc. If you’re working on a big project with a dedicated team, that approach can give you quite a lot but there are a ton of projects which prefer to spend their time on the core product.

That’s a legitimate decision responding to their environment – you might disagree because you have different goals and resource levels but it’s wortb understanding why not everyone makes the same call.

> If you actually try to do this yourself,

I do frequently. There are many things in life that are hard and cross-browser CSS is not among them.

In the past I have found things like Bootstrap and jQuery to be more of a frustration than a benefit by introducing cross-browser differences in their attempt to help. At the same time they don't fix the cross browser differences that really impact layout, such as differences in font rendering.

But you have to admit that this takes an inordinate amount of time. Some folks would prefer to have Bootstrap handle the CSS while focusing on the core product.

No, writing CSS is pretty fast and straight forward. I spend far more time wading through ever changing business requirements and adjusting the JavaScript UI to compensate for those changes.

I guess it's easier if you do it frequently. I hardly ever touch CSS and for me, cross-browser compatibility is certainly one of the harder things. Bootstrap makes that much easier.

And jquery support often isn't necessary at the moment. It's required for some functionality, but many simpler web pages will work with a slim version of the CSS without any JS. Makes it very light-weight and still easy to set up.

100% agree with you. Especially now that almost all browsers are up to scratch, cross browser isn't a problem anymore. If some of these guys had to work with IE5/6 they would probably quit the industry.

Bootstrap provides an easily customizable (through SASS/LESS variables) base for a web project and the components are very useful. You can even pick/choose components now to keep it more barebones if you wish. It's also very easy to learn.

All the utility classes are useful too.

Why waste time creating all those components manually?

Also as you say it's still great for prototyping and internal applications that don't need bespoke styles.

That’s the way I use it already without jquery.

It’s just nice clean flexible sass to start from.

I prefer a 24 col grid as well which takes about 4 lines of sass.

Bootstrap is still super useful if you need something to look "pretty good", and want to build it fast. It's great for internal tools, protoypes, personal use, or even B2B software that just needs a functional design.

If you're building Facebook, yeah maybe it's not so useful.

So long as native web controls are look so awful, we need something like bootstrap

The layout support in Bootstrap is nice, but the baseline design language is more important

I think bootstrap looks worse than native web controls so I don't see it as a necessity like you say.

Are there any good frameworks of just stylized components? In my experience building Bootstrap / Bulma without their not-grid grids and layout systems breaks all the component styles or makes them act really wonky. Like trying to grid-align or flex-basis a Bulma or Bootstrap btn can get all kinds of weird stuff going on.

This sounds like the frontend equivalent of, "Docker is irrelevant because the kernel already supports cgroups and namespaces".

Or the Dropbox debut on HN, or the iPod debut on slashdot. Get off my lawn! ;-)

It is more like "Stop using Flash for video players, use the browser's native support instead"

dialog doesn't work by default in Edge, Firefox, or Safari. I don't think it's ready yet.

My reason for using bootstrap is that it looks better than any UI I design from scratch.

Having to write all those components from scratch would be a real pain in the neck, and they'd look very basic. I don't use bootstrap, but I at least use something like bulma so I have a professional-looking starting point.

Have you seen all the CSS for simple stuff like a button and for other handy components? I don't want to write all that just to make a pretty button unless your job is doing only HTML/CSS.

Bootstrap sets a solid foundation for enterprise projects, where there are often many disparate projects, many developers, many deadlines, more concern with function vs. style/brand.

"because that is what they know and don’t bother picking up the new standards"

That's just an unnecessary comment and plain wrong.

Well, if you want to build something that has animations and feels like a native app (e.g. PWA), you will probably skip bootstrap (and take something like framework7 [1]). But if you just want to build a plain old server rendered website bootstrap is still very useful as a reliable default theme for your HTML documents.

Nevertheless, recently I tried spectre.css [2] and liked it a lot better than bootstrap as it doesn't feel so heavy (don't know how it performs in terms of browser compatibility).

[1]: https://framework7.io

[2]: https://picturepan2.github.io/spectre/

Depends entirely on the application.

If your application has many basic views, you'll be wasting time writing out CSS grid properties for a basic responsive layout.

I mean, at some point you'll recognize you're reinventing the wheel and just pull in a CSS grid from a framework.

This applies to basically any components that has been battle tested in Bootstrap.

Indeed. Some years ago I was working on a project where I decided one day to rip Bootstrap out and reimplement everything that Bootstrap did with my own CSS. In the end I ended up pretty much just recreating Bootstrap, and after a few months it had become an unmaintainable mess.

I'm not saying that everyone should use Bootstrap, or even CSS frameworks in general, but this idea that we should avoid them because don't 100% require them is madness. The simple reality is that they save a hell of a lot of time that can then be invested in things that'll have a more material improvement for the end user.

Designing design systems is hard.

dialog is not supported in either Edge or Safari, it's not exactly drop-in though

Neither was `document.querySelector` or `Element.prototype.closest` a few years back. It didn’t stop people from abandoning jquery in favor of the native APIs and just polyfilling the browers that were lacking the support.

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