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Comment by sergiotapia | Hacker News Reader

I don't know about you "leet hacker pros" but I do know that using bootstrap 3 helped me make my site[1] completely responsive - with ease the like of which the world has never seen the like of which[2]. If you are using bootstrap for it's color choices you're doing it wrong.

What I do is have bootstrap.css vanilla loaded, then I load a bootstrap_overrides.css.scss where I override styles/colors/looknfeel. Make bootstrap my own, you know?

[1] - http://smitecamp.com/

[2] - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxVivkXUfdU&t=25

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I just use the Responsive Skeleton framework: http://www.getskeleton.com/ which is basically a grid system with some media queries. Then I can build whatever I want on top of that.

Saves time, overwriting a bunch of code and I can use it with whatever I want - Less, SASS, MYTH, etc.

Plus the code is about 200% cleaner.

You can compile Bootstrap yourself from LESS or SASS, pushing your own values into the Bootstrap variables (and ideally sharing this configuration with your custom styles). In the process you can choose not to include some Bootstrap components, reducing it's weight significantly. It's NOT a lightweight framework.

I know I can do this, but I don't because I prefer to just download the boostrap latest vanilla, and override as needed. That way every time there is a new version I don't have to do mental gymnastics on what variables are new or renamed.

I get your point, but at the same time your argument is an odd one to make.

At least the SASS-port of Bootstrap declares it's variables as defaults - meaning they would not be set if they were set earlier (in your configuration). This makes upgrading the gem (or plain source files) rather simple. But sure, you might have to check if anything was renamed or added.

But with overriding you do not only create redundant, unnecessary styles (and bytes), but if you now upgrade your bootstrap files as you suggest, you also have to change your overrides - which depending on the amount of changes you did will be significantly more work (and 'mental gymnastics') - if changes were introduced.

So you gain very little (less setup effort) but lose quite a lot.

I maintain a fork, sometimes a PITA but never a surprise!

Your sites require all of the imported stylesheets[1]? I usually import only around half of the bootstrap-sass stylesheets[2].

[1] https://github.com/twbs/bootstrap/tree/master/less

[2] https://github.com/twbs/bootstrap-sass/tree/master/vendor/as...

You can download bootstrap, modify their variables and compile it yourself. That way you don't have load more than one files and have rules that will never get used.

I wish they made this more prominent vs pointing most people to the "download" button which throws everything in there

You can even customize it on their server if you aren't comfortable doing it yourself: http://getbootstrap.com/customize/

> If you are using bootstrap for it's color choices you're doing it wrong.

I don't agree. I've launched several semi-successful sites where I've used Bootstrap solely because of the looks. Why exactly is that wrong?

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