
Ask HN: Do you trust a company with a website built with Twitter Bootstrap? - fargo
Today I found myself doing further research about a service I was about to subscribe just because they were using bootstrap. I am wondering, what could be the psychological effect to a developer&#x2F; designer regarding using a service using a website built with twitter bootstrap? Would you provide your card details with the same ease you would on a different website?
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jmduke
Personally, I make certain assumptions of a site using Bootstrap, all of which
revolve around product maturity: if a site has identifiable Bootstrap design,
then I assume they haven't been old enough/profitable enough to afford a new
coat of paint.

That being said, unless you're creating a service specifically for picky
designers/developers, it doesn't matter. 99.8% of the Internet has no idea
what Bootstrap is.

(ps: the folks who first made Bootstrap worked at Twitter, but Twitter let
them take the ownership of the product with them as they left.)

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meerita
So, Twitter isn't mature at all with that initial argument. Bootstrap powers
many parts from Twitter, the maturity argument doesn't apply because of the
use of a framework.

To be honest with you, I think the only valid argument in here would be design
taste: "that project is using mostly the standard bootstrap design,they don't
invest in x yet" and that would be a valid just in half. The truth is there is
a lot of projects that, even with different code, they all look the same with
little variantions. In the end, it doesn't matter the skeleton, what it
matters, imho, it's the service they offer.

~~~
dictum
And the quality of the service they offer is greatly shaped by their design.

Of course Twitter uses Bootstrap—it was made by/for Twitter. However,
Bootstrap's defaults are based on Twitter's brand guidelines. That's part of
the problem: with Bootstrap 1 and 2 basically every website made with
Bootstrap looked a lot like Twitter. Bootstrap 3 alleviates that by
encouraging customization and shipping with a flat appearance, but sites made
with Bootstrap are still very similar to each other—developers don't customize
it, and don't try to change some of Bootstrap's easily recognizable
idiosyncrasies.

It reminds me of 2004/2005 when every web app was more or less trying to copy
the aesthetics of 37signals apps.

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wikwocket
Are you serious? Isn't this like asking whether you would trust the coffee
from a coffee shop because they had a sign on the door printed in Papyrus or
Comic Sans? Good or bad design decisions aside, who cares? What could that
possibly have to do with the coffee?

There are endless websites with terrible web designs that provide valuable,
reliable services. And there are endless more websites with good-looking,
hand-built designs that offer no service of value and, could have their
(plain-text) password database cracked tomorrow and disappear off the net
forever.

Even if you are going to judge an entire company by the web framework it
chooses to use, Bootstrap could be a good sign, as they are at least tech-
savvy enough to know what that is, as opposed to using the default Wordpress
theme!

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meerita
"Sacrilege!"

Unless you're a code auditor, where you have time to spend looking and
analyzing the code, there's no reason to not trust anyone who didn't code the
website from 0. Bootstrap as well other frameworks are just that: a
conjunction of best practices and some other modules that proven to work well
across several browsers and devices.

We can argue speediness and all the yada-yada, but in the end, pro developers
repeat the same things even missing one bigs when do all from 0. Using
frameworks is a way to avoid those mistakes and, to have a development line
well documented. You still can extend, trim the framework as you want.

Think other professions never distrust anyone because he's using that library,
that gem, that framework. In the end everyone has limited time to execute
work, so if other programers enjoy those libraries why the frontend ones
don't?

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kape
In some cases you won't even recognize Bootstrap. For example YC-company
[https://kippt.com/](https://kippt.com/) uses Bootstrap, but wouldn't guess it
without knowing it.

Anyway, I think Bootstrap default theme (or slightly modified, but
recognizable) is alright for young products targeted to "normal" people who
have no idea about Bootstrap. I think it matters more for developers and
designers and products targeted for them should invest in creating custom
theme.

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kennethtilton
Where's the beef? If it is a Web design company, web prefab is an issue
because that's their beef. If the company sells something else and the site
looks/works great, I would only give them credit for saving time/money/energy
by using prefab.

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Misiek
Twitter Bootstrap is the best CSS framework but you mean rather a website with
a default theme. There are a lot of themes and templates of Twitter Bootstrap
that don't look like Bootstrap, for example on wrapbootstrap.com.

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sreenadh
Twitter Bootstrap is a CSS framework which makes site presentable. If the
intent of the site is not design innovation, why bother. Personally for me, I
am allergic to CSS and so bootstrap is great for developers like me.

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mschuster91
I don't care with which tech stack a website was built. The _really_
interesting thing for a quick check is more: does the website use SSL for
sensitive data?

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ancarda
>Would you provide your card details with the same ease you would on a
different website?

The only thing I'd look for would be EV SSL. No "green bar", no credit card.

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dangrossman
That's a bit over the top. Virtually the only sites with an EV certificate are
financial institutions. If that was your standard, you wouldn't be comfortable
shopping with Amazon or Wal-Mart.

~~~
ancarda
I make an exception for Amazon as they are a big, known site. I mean "shady
site I've never seen before". I'll see if it has EV SSL. If it doesn't, it
depends how badly I want the item it's selling. Most stuff can be bought on
Amazon.

By the way, some non-financial websites use EV SSL, such as Twitter. I don't
see why Amazon can't get a cert.

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hnriot
developer/ designers don't pay for web services anyway :) It's only the rest
of the population that pay for things. Said developer/ designers find open
source alternatives.

Who cares what tech stack a web app is written with. It's like saying you wont
pay for services that use rails, prototype instead or jquery, or a color
palette you don't like.

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olgeni
It depends if they also run some random version of Linux.

