Bootstrap v4.4

Looks like a pretty minor update compared to previous releases. But if I recall correctly Bootstrap 4.5 or 5.0 is going to be a big one where the form elements are styled directly without needing a bunch of boilerplate classes.

It's almost 10 years old but Bootstrap is still my favorite. It is simple, familiar, stable & independent. The downside is that there haven't been much innovation in term of UI on the web since then...

Is anybody on HN starting new projects with bootstrap anymore? I mostly hear about Bulma and Tailwind.

After working with Tailwind, I’m very happy to not go back to any other traditional CSS framework.

The value of Bootstrap is within teams where CSS knowledge nor the uniqueness of your site is not the top prio. But if you want to build a personal (in the sense of unique) looking site with modern tooling, Tailwind is an awesome choice.

What all these frameworks are trying to achieve is standardisation of UI, so that people get a familiar set of controls across applications and platforms (and for developers too!). But we have so many standards now! (Queue relevant xkcd).

I think this is where browser companies (Mozilla perhaps?) could be doing a lot more. Instead of adding endless new features to CSS and Javascript - which only give us more options to create even more standards - why not work on a standard UI library that ships with the browser? ActiveX tried this, but it was mostly limited to Windows and it died with IE. Java Applets tried this but security. Flash was great while it lasted, but security, and it's mostly gone now anyway.

I think we have learnt enough about how people use the web, and how we develop for the web, to begin a concerted effort in standardising web UI once and for all. I want a standard set of widgets that ship with the browser, that I can theme, but that behave predictably, that don't require importing of CSS and JS, and that do not require insane levels of layout logic to do what was achieved on windowed desktop environments decades ago.