Use Bootstrap, Nobody will Notice | Hacker News Reader

Use Bootstrap, Nobody will Notice

strapfork.com

100 pointscharlieirish40 comments

Title is wrong. Now you cannot use the advertised product. This is fairly deceptive. My first thought was "Oh great, people are starting to spam HN."

I'm sorry about the misunderstanding. About the spam... I'm the creator of the app and don't know the person who submitted. I'm not running an affiliate program either.

I thank the submitter, tho :)

Aside, could you answer this: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/21436380/how-to-create-pa... ?

I agree that it is completely deceptive that it is titled "Now you can use..." and then you must sign up your email to join the waiting list for the beta.

Ridiculous. At least change the HN title.

Would it be unfair to describe this as a GUI for the LESS variables associated with Bootstrap? Nice and simple idea, but if the cost really is $50, that might be a little steep - any designer worth their pencil should be able to work with a big list of variables just as easily (if not more easily) than a point-and-click interface.

Obviously just conjecture at the moment, though...

A designer worth their pencil might need longer than worth 50$ to get to an initial mix of good look.

If it's somehow wysiwyg it might also speed up things a bit.

True, but you're going to need that designer to work on that initial mix whether it's with this software or something they're much more experienced with (probably Adobe CS) - unless the UI for this is radically better than the mockup tools that pro designers use, the marginal utility of outputting LESS variables probably won't add value, and might make things more complicated by introducing an additional tool into the pipeline.

I have different use cases in mind:

- A designer that don't know/don't want to write css. She can keep her design process and use Strapfork to create the css components.

- A designer that likes the workflow that Strapfork proposes (UI is part of the brand -> design components | design UI with mockups. Mix both in directly inHTML and have the final design in the browser, no need of photoshop).

- A backender that just want to customise bootstrap easy and fast.

This is great for MVPs where you can't afford a designer.

Why do products that don't actually exist hit the front page?

On the off-chance this is a serious question;

As a developer, I want to know if my ideas are going to fly, so when a post for a non-existent product hits HN front page I know there's at least some interest.

As a prospective user I want a chance to influence development. When a post hits front-page I get a chance to check out the idea before it is set in stone.

As a HN reader I want to see what others are thinking about and doing. It's inspiring.

If anyone is interested in this you might also want to consider http://pixelkit.com/

Beautiful UI!

Is it really worth $50 to avoid assholes here to criticize your site because they use bootstrap?

I guess it depends on your needs. I think $50 is reasonable for the advantage of appearing unique and/or simulating the presence of an actual designer within your team.

Among the sites the average person uses every day, are the odds really that high that they'll encounter more than one with bootstrap?

Yeah, I think it is. Personally, I'll just taylor it myself. But if I didn't have the capability, I'd say it's worth $50, sure. I think paying some amount of money to avoid assholes will often be a good investment.

And honestly, if you can get more focused feedback early on and avoid pointless forum rants about bootstrap, that's probably worth it even beyond the emotional benefit to avoiding assholes.

What is the issue with people noticing that you use bootstrap?

If your customers are mostly designers who get snooty about that kind of thing, you run some risk. Otherwise, most people probably have no idea at all what it is, as long as it looks and works ok.

Differentiation is never a bad thing. A basic bootstrap layout connotes a project in beginning phases typically. For example, Coinbase began with bootstrap to get a product out quickly but moved on once they realized that for people to trust them with large sums of money/bitcoin, they had to appear more established and professional.

http://www.coinbase.com

When I see a website using default bootstrap styles I think it's fleeting and not worth of my time and money.

When I see a website using default bootstrap styles, I give the service/product a test run and see why the reason I came to the site originally was a viable thing for me to continue. If not I don't waste anymore time or money.

But hey, you're choice to spend your time and money on anything you want, and if something is usable but not exactly custom pretty, your choice to not use it.

With the number of free "theme" sites around, I think $50 is a bit steep. However, the idea is awesome and I'd love to try it out.

How does this differ from Jetstrap? [0]

[0] https://jetstrap.com/

I think Jetstrap is for building sites with bootstrap components, this is for styling the components.

Jetstrap is much more like a layout/markup creator, with drag and drop interface. Strapfork is a customiser for the Bootstrap components, meaning that you can add styles to them. It generates css and documentation, but you still have to write your markup.

I should make that more easy to understand.

I actually wouldn't mind a 'bookmarklet' type app that lets you change bootstrap's less variables and updates your own actual pages in real time. Similar to what FontFriend or SubtlePatterns have. It'd be useful for coming up with an initial theme before tweaking it later.

Our desktop app Pinegrow Web Designer (http://pinegrow.com) lets you open a webpage and play with its layout and styling, among other things (main use is to compose the layout like you would in Jetstrap for example and then to also style the page). At the moment Less variables work only in site stylesheet. Giving you the access to Less variables for Bootstrap is in development pipeline.

Was hoping to actually see how this works - is there any way to get into the private beta?

Looks interesting, I wanted to put my email in but then got a popup for captcha which was almost impossible to get right, I gave up after the 4th time. Good luck though.

Ouch, that's bad news... I used the dafult setup for tinyletter. Didn't expect that to happen. Anywaay, you can send me an email to jackjackbach at gmail, if you are still interested.

Thanks you for reporting :)

Looks interesting. Hope to get early access. Disagree with not wanting to let on that you use the greatest and most popular front-end framework in the world. Be proud!

"Style your very own User Interface with Strapfork's easy-to-use Visual Editor."

Definitely interested in exploring. Is there a demo/video to check out ?

This could easily just be a Javascrip app, built in a weekend, using a more complete toolset of CSS generators and button creators, for free.

intrigued to see what you come up with..as we speak I am building a visual UI builder for our dev product and bootstrap is the basis...your screenshots look pretty so far :)

How much will it cost?

Hey, I'm not sure yet. I was thinking about something around $50. Maybe more maybe less. What do you think?

I think people are inclined pay more if they can see 'live' demo's. Signed up to see ho it will go.

$50 is reasonable only in relation to how awesome the app is. Only have the fluff on your page to determine that now.

That said, I am interested in learning more and signed up. I don't always have access to a "designer" and this seems like a good idea.

Looks fantastic, hope to see this soon

Reply on news.ycombinator.com