Please stop using Twitter Bootstrap | Hacker News Reader

Please stop using Twitter Bootstrap

notes.unwieldy.net

15 pointsendtwist13 comments

>Let’s be honest: a great many of us are tired of seeing the same old Twitter Bootstrap theme again and again. Black header, giant hero, rounded blue buttons, Helvetica Neue.Yes, you can customize the header to be a different color, maybe re-color some of the buttons, use a different font. Ultimately, however, that doesn’t change anything—it still looks like Bootstrap.

Well, your blog still looks like a me-too minimal one column, design, like another 50,000,000 blogs out there (half of them on Tumblr), but you don't see me complaining, do you?

I was thinking the other day how annoyingly common the one column minimal design has become. Half the time it sucks in terms of user experience because a bunch of these themes are designed as if a visitor isn't going to be interested in reading more articles or getting some background info on the author. And since they all look the same you won't even realize that you visited a particular author's site before.

"And not just the same general layout, but the exact same components."

Funny how on the desktop designers demand HIG compliance and standard UI widgets, while on the web they want us to get all Kai's Power Tools on every button and widget.

Kai's Power Tools made me cringe. Thanks for digging up old painful memories.

I'd say the difference is two-fold. First, desktop applications generally still have unique icons and branding. Second, desktop applications have much more freedom as to how they combine the elements. Usually you can tell which application it is from a distance, because the layout has been designed to suit the app's specific needs and functions. The OS chrome itself is meant to be invisible, in favor of what makes it unique.

For example, Firefox, Safari and Chrome all look identifiably different on OS X, despite all implementing the same overall style.

Twitter bootstrap isn't just a CSS style, it's a rigid layout and UI pattern. The author is decrying the use where bootstrap is the only kind of design being done. In that case, people typically haven't considered what layout they want to use or which elements to emphasize and how. They just go with the standard 960 grid and its simple divisions, regardless of how much content there is, and take something that's meant to be invisible and emphasize it visibly by not adding anything new.

While bootstrap gives the appearance of being well designed, often the content inside it fails to live up to that promise.

> It has a time and a place, but you wouldn’t use Times New Roman on your startup’s website, would you?

Only because I have a thing about using serif fonts in html, otherwise it might well be one of my fallbacks.

And besides, arguing that people should put more effort into restyling Bootstrap is different than arguing they should abandon it altogether. In terms of providing a framework for layouts, I think it does its job quite well, and that users will probably intuitively understand a Bootstrap site because they've encountered them a hundred times before. This in turn gives your site an implied sense of stability and trustworthiness since it "looks like twitter/etc etc."

Yes, the Bootstrap components are obvious and the internet is starting to look like Bootstrap. I totally agree, I can tell in a glance whether a site is Bootstrapped or not... it's everywhere. And I also agree that this makes the experience seem less personalized, the product ends up feeling like all of the others once you make the connection, etc. (but in the end, I think this might mostly be designers / developers).

But he notes that it's 100% customizable and says "most people do not bother". That's the real problem. As long as you bother with that, you can't tell it's Bootstrapped (http://diehlgroup.com/) and his whole argument collapses. It's not JUST a design package for developers. It's also a basic reset and browser-compatibility package, taking away so many headaches and days and days of work.

To me, the best argument against Bootstrap is purely the weight. But even then, I can strip it down to only components I need, literally even it's just one file of LESS mixins (which is what I pretty much end up doing).

Interesting and true, though. Shits taking over.

Aren't all native desktop apps effectively "bootstrap" and doesn't that consistency convey a level of affordance that only comes with standardization/popularization?

Are you going to ask iOS developers to stop using the Master-Detail Application, Tabbed Application, Cards-based Application or Page-based Application templates next?

Hate on it all you want because you think it is boring and generic, but at least acknowledge that it provides value, especially in circumstances when the alternative is an interface created by someone who likely lacks the chops to create a well-designed coherent interface.

The problem here is that before Bootstrap, the only way for a non-designer to get something decent was to hire a designer. Now thanks to Bootstrap there's a whole new middle-ground of gets-the-job-done design that doesn't suck but is also very, very generic.

I still think on the whole we're better off than before because in most cases Bootstrap replaces things that were even uglier.

It's just a little disappointing sometimes when you see a company that clearly has the means to develop its own identity and design settle for generic Bootstrap.

The only people who feel this way are the ultra-early adopters. Assuming most sites aren't meant for that audience, I don't think it's actually worth worrying about in the process of getting an early iteration out the door. Sure, as a site/app scales it should think more about branding but early on it's more likely a net benefit to have the kind of UX clarity that Bootstrap provides for most web users.

As a developer, I find using bootstrap to lay out a project before a designers hand's touches the project really nice. It gives the project a much better look then I would normally put effort into doing and allows the designer flexibility to quickly and easily style it.

As a designer, would you rather take spaggetti html code from a developer or one compliant already with a framework like bootstrap to start working off?

Sorry, but F design. Wikipedia, Google search, HN, Craigslist - they're essential - they are real value - and they're not winning any design contests.

instead of complaining, sum up some alternatives.

And wrapbootstrap or bootstrap themes? :-)

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