

Ask HN: Your opinion of Bootstrap - Sealy

Reading the other HN posts about boostrap there seems to be a divide in the community that I struggle to understand.<p>Some love it (https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;twitter&#x2F;bootstrap 52k stars!), others hate it. Reading these posts does nothing in helping me decide whether my next projects should use it.<p>Whats the current consensus of bootstrap among the HN community?
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meerita
6 years ago, in a pizza restaurante with many developers on Barcelona I said
we needed a Bootstrap project. I said we needed this as a foundation to
develop things without to deal the countless hours of fixing vendor stuff,
calculating things and such. Everyone looked at me annoyed.

I remember one guy said to me "that's for gays". "A developer must do all from
0 or he will not learn". And also "I don't need that kind of help".

6 years later I created over these years around 5 HTML/CSS frameworks using
the same patterns, maybe changing the classes names to avoid propietarie code
jealousy and all the yada yada. I did what Bootstrap is, over and over again.

Now I use Bootstrap when I start a new project. I know Bootstrap like if I've
made it. I have no regrets of this. The framework is friendly named, it's well
documented, maybe it's a bit over designed (I have to kill buttons styles over
and over) but in the end it's a solid foundation of semantic HTML with cool
LESS stylesheets.

We can argue many things about frameworks, but in the end, HTML and CSS are
piece of cake languages and anyone who's working seriously and know the
problems of code maintenance know well the pains of not having a good code
foundation, a good documentation and a fixed process to make something and not
making a big spaghetti code ball.

I've been in projects with CSS files that defined at least 4 layout grids. I'm
so happy not dealing that again.

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declandewet
I've loved Bootstrap since 2011 - it's well established, it fulfills it's
purpose and adds some extra niceties on top. Lately though; I've started to
appreciate semantic HTML.

I'm not a purist, but I definitely don't want to be seeing '.grid-x' style
class names in my markup. Markup is meant to explain the content, not the
presentation. That's one reason.

Here's another: While it is presumably simple to just use their LESS mixins to
achieve a more semantic and customized site, Bootstrap's main target market is
not those who use preprocessors - their call to action is a download button
for the .zip of the compiled CSS, so that developers who don't necessarily use
CSS preprocessors still have access to the tools.

This gives Bootstrap a competitive edge of some sort, as more developers can
easily get started using it. As a result of this decision, though - those
developers have to resort to overwriting the actual CSS to customize anything,
and even then, there are still traces of the Bootstrap default styles left
over, making it very easy to spot a Bootstrap website. Due to the project's
popularity - a lot of these websites end up looking remarkably similar to each
other.

If I'm working on a huge project, I will use a different kind of CSS framework
(my favourite one at the moment is
[http://roots.cx/axis](http://roots.cx/axis) in combination with
[http://jeetframework.com](http://jeetframework.com)). If it's a quick
hackathon project, a mockup/wireframe or simply just a weekend project for fun
or learning, then I'd use Bootstrap.

~~~
shanellem
I have to agree. I couldn't have said it better.

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vhf
Bootstrap's initial intention was both not to lose time with webdesign when
building _back office_ applications and to have a consistant design in _back
office_ applications.

This is the reason why I think it's a great tool for any back office need, but
not so great for front.

To me, Bootstrap feels like it's supposed to be used as-is. I love Bootstrap,
it saves be a lot of time. But when I need a framework for front, I much
prefer Foundation, which was meant to facilitate designing websites for Zurb's
clients.

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workhere-io
Be sure to check out alternatives such as Foundation
([http://foundation.zurb.com](http://foundation.zurb.com)).

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27182818284
From my view it had a very large impact. Every new project I see, regardless
of the background of the people, it bootstrapped with Bootstrap.

In addition, sites like Wrapbootstrap make it very cheap to get away from the
default look.

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1123581321
I don't know if there is any consensus. I think that mastering it will improve
the average developer's CSS skills and taste. After that, a developer should
be creating custom builds of Bootstrap and only using it where it is needed.
No one should ever use it as the front of a website unless they are committed
to completely reskinning it.

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pushkargaikwad
As SteveJalim below said, don't bother asking, just do it :) I personally love
bootstrap as I am not a great designer and can save lot of time, which is my
main priority since I am building a one man company. If this means, having a
site similar to thousands other with same buttons and login pages, I can live
with it.

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stevejalim
> Reading these posts does nothing in helping me decide whether my next
> projects should use it.

No snark intended, but asking HN probably isn't going to give you a useful
answer anyway. Why not just build something simple/disposable with it? It's
more about bootstrap + you than bootstrap + random HNers

~~~
Sealy
Sure, I appreciate the advice. I was considering switching the front end of my
site over to bootstrap for compatibility and to save time (its custom
css/jqueryui at the moment). Maybe I'll create a clone of it in bootstrap and
see how it goes before making a decision.

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horyd
I find it great for prototyping. Once things start to get more detailed though
I start writing more of my own CSS to fine-tune things.

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andrewhillman
I dig bootstrap but hate when sites use that blue focus on text fields.

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rfnslyr
I've seen _so_ many sites that are just the bootstrap template, vanilla CSS.
It looks terribly ugly. I mean it's alright if you're prototyping, you don't
want to waste time coding boring ole html and css if your focus is entirely on
something else.

I hate it when people use it lazily. I love it when people customize it and
truly make it beautiful to a point where you can't tell its bootstrap, which
is the entire point seeing as its a framework.

