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Comment by mddw | Hacker News Reader

Now bootstrap is important, yesterday it was the 360 grid, tomorrow it'll be another hype bandwagon.

First, Bootstrap did not standardize anything. It's a biased perspective to think so : most websites and most developpers don't even know about bootstrap. And those who know about it do not necessarily agree with it (per exemple I hate their JS coding style.)

Second, the myth about "changing your design without touching HTML". Sure, there're some cases where it's possible, but by experience it won't happen. Never. Sadly (or not), a redesign is always coupled with some HTML changes. Bootstrap does not change anything.

So, I think Bootstrap is far less important than, say, Wordpress was. It's a cool tool, useful for a "design dumb" like me to pull a quick demo without a true designer, but in the end it makes boring websites with boring code. It's also a overhyped tool, which won't survive (along with the whole stupid OOCSS thing.)

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I read it in another way.

It isn't important in and of itself, but that the documentation is more important than the framework itself because as the developer is writing a list for a project, they will write the list in the same way; they will write the dropdown in the same way, rather than spending time copying and pasting and trying to figure out someone else's code and doing it slightly wrong and putting another class into the CSS, so that you have to change every dropdown by hand if requirements change.

That said, I've seen at least one project where people still just made it up as they went along, even though the framework was there. Sometimes, I think people just don't read. :)

Also the fact that since the CSS is the same for every site, design decisions gets pushed to the HTML. Bootstrap is not very semantic.

It's easy to think that Bootstrap has revolutionized HTML, since the startup community often lives in an echo chamber. The sites we visit and the sites we make use Bootstrap, but let's take a moment to check in with reality here. Has there been a sweeping movement to use standardized markup for content? No. Is there really even a reason to? No. Like mddw said, is this (realistically) even possible? No. And finally, does this article have ANY substance or evidence behind it? No.

Well said. It's a useful tool. But does not standardize HTML.

HTML standardizes HTML.

What do you consider stupid about OOCSS? It has some valid techniques for dealing with CSS bloat in large web applications. At a certain size, semantic CSS starts to buckle under its own weight. I was able to reduce a ~20,000 line CSS file to ~5,000 by identifying some common UI patterns and changing the markup to use presentational classes.

it's not a myth. just look at CSS Zen Garden - http://www.csszengarden.com/

if bootstrap markup becomes the lingua franca for common UI patterns, that's a plus in my opinion. no need to reinvent the wheel for something like a set of tabs.

Which is a (cool but) fake website. I've never seen a redesign keeping HTML code. Even when the code is very good and the separation well done.

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