Bootstrap 5 Beta 1
blog.getbootstrap.com
blog.getbootstrap.com
But Bootstrap has eased a lot of pain for a lot of developers like me and made a lot of bad websites look very good easily.
I greatly applaud everyone associated with this project esp Mark Otto and Jacob for this amazing thing they have given to the web and their non-stop efforts to make it better and better.
You can easily override the defaults with SCSS variables and customize it to look however you want.
Most sites look similar now anyway.
For most of your target audience, this is a feature, not a bug. The exception is if you're targeting designers or web devs, of course.
People like seeing somewhat familiar designs. They know where to look for things. They know how to navigate. It provides a sense of trust because it looks vaguely like other professional brands they already trust.
Bootstrap has been amazing for accelerating web design across the industry. Sure, there are plenty of examples of better custom designs, but at what cost? Not all of us have extra budget to pay a team of designers and web devs to create the perfect custom design for our website.
I hate those stupid apps that use custom interfaces and custom buttons and whatnot. And for what? "Branding"?
Somehow f.lux gets a pass from me here but it's on thin ice ;)
I used to prefer Zurb‘s foundation because I liked their defaults better, specially regarding tyopgraphy, but boy they ruined that framework.
They don’t really make websites based on them entirely not look like bootstrap sites, but there’s a decent array of choices and variation for many kinds of projects.
My major criticism in the past was the difficulty of migration, but that seems to be better addressed in this version. (I have not yet tried to migrate, though).
Keep up the great work Bootstrap team!
EDIT: Several commenters have clearly not noticed that I said "Bootstrap JS", and not "Bootstrap". I still use Bootstrap (since v2), just not their Javascript.
It helps lower the amount of technology I use in my stack.
From my experience maintaining frontend technology is not as simple as backend.
I've come to the conclusion that data is the most important thing, so my concentration is mostly on getting the database right then build out with a backend rendering framework. So the presentation is not as important in the initial phases and bootstrap is good enough.
Spoiler alert, there rarely is a need.
- Bootstrap - Jquery - Handlebars
should be enough for many small to medium sized applications
It's not widely appreciated that you can take subsets of Bootstrap, individual components for example, or its typography system, to use in non-Bootstrap scenarios.
This is an acid test this project aces, easily. Bootstrap is the first place I look when I'm missing something in another project.
Loved Bootstrap back in the day. Not sure I see the point anymore though.
That's interesting. What do you use in your projects now? Tailwind? Or maybe just plain old CSS?
The reason I'm asking is because I've used or evaluated dozens of CSS frameworks and React component libraries, including custom solutions developed by the companies I've worked for, and none of these solutions are as well-tested at Bootstrap. And one example of the issues I've encountered with these other solutions is bugs relating to keyboard navigation (e.g., Ant Design and Semantic UI were two of the worst offenders the last time I evaluated them).
For many developers nowadays who grew up with touch-based UIs and can't touch type, keyboard navigation might seem like an odd thing to focus on. But I've found that checking if CSS frameworks and React component libraries fully support keyboard navigation is a quick way to evaluate them, like how David Lee Roth evaluated concert promoters by asking them to remove brown M&Ms.
And if the teams that made Ant Design, Semantic UI, etc. can't adequately test their components, how capable is the average developer of creating their own well-tested CSS framework?
In general, my philosophy on components is: Don't reinvent the wheel.
Whenever possible, I try to extend stock components rather than create something new. If you use a select instead of making some react-based div-popper thing, accessibility is included. It can be tougher to tweak them to look the way you want, but you don't have to worry as much about what a screen-reader is going to do with it, etc.
Totally agree about how bad some sites are with regards to accessibility.
data-bs-toggle="dropdown"
That's some ... cuteness ;)
https://getbootstrap.com/docs/5.0/getting-started/browsers-d...
Also Bootstrap 3 to 4 have had patterns of dropping support of IE versions.
Bootstrap 4.5 starter kit [1]: 74kb, DOMContentLoaded after 180 ms
Bootstrap 5.0 starter kit [2]: 57kb, DOMContentLoaded after 160 ms
[1] https://getbootstrap.com/docs/4.5/examples/starter-template/
[2] https://getbootstrap.com/docs/5.0/examples/starter-template/
The problem with the internet isn't clickbait and hyperbole, it's that it's changed our attention spans.
"In a 2001 study [1] two scholars in Canada showed that comprehension declines as the number of hyperlinks in a document increase. Why? Because whenever a link appears, your brain has to at least make the choice not to click, which in itself is distracting."
This had me thinking if a dead simple button at the end of an article "Enable links" would have a positive effect on link heavy articles (Wikipedia type) or not. Something like a conscious action of "okay, now I'm ready to explore this further". Or, better yet, a browser add-on that will detect just the content of an article and disable its links by default. Obviously, with an enable button close by.
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[0] https://www.gwern.net/docs/culture/2010-dobelli.pdf
[1] Nicholas Carr: The Web Shatters Focus, Rewires Brains, Wired, May 2010
Fair point, though.
Why would anyone believe Twitter would have a good release schedule with bootstrap 5 knowing how they has no stable supported version of bootstrap for a long time between 3 and 4.