
Why we love Twitter Bootstrap and why you should too - alanmeaney
http://taskmessenger.com/blog/index.php/why-we-love-twitter-bootstrap-and-why-you-should-too/
======
joedev
"Ignore advanced web developers complaining about ‘not another Bootstrap
website’" I agree. It's your customers that matter. And unless you're building
a product for advanced web developers, pleasing them should be no matter to
you.

I've shown Bootstrap sites to non-developers and the response is usually that
the sites look nice. Never has it been "ug. boostrap?".

~~~
michaelbuckbee
We run the resource page listed in the article [1] and as a result of that it
is quite possible I've looked at more sites built with Bootstrap than even the
creators.

From this I've really found two things:

One, I think there is some massive confirmation bias at work. If a site
customizes Bootstrap and it looks nice nobody credits it as a 'Bootstrap
Looking' site, so as a result it is only when the defaults are used that
people really pick up on it.

Second, the alternative to a site built with Bootstrap is typically not a
beautiful custom designed front end, but a pretty rough looking unstyled,
inconsistent mess.

Bootstrap is the new baseline for what a website should look like, it should
be customized, it can be improved but there is now zero excuse for it looking
worse.

1 - [http://www.bootstraphero.com/the-big-badass-list-of-
twitter-...](http://www.bootstraphero.com/the-big-badass-list-of-twitter-
bootstrap-resources)

~~~
MaysonL
Re: bootstraphero.com

Ugh. Really. Hate the fonts (Mainly the bold condensed ones). Hate the color
scheme(Yellow text on a grey-green background? Seriously? It actually looks
reasonable with the colors inverted[cmd-option-control-8 on OSX]). Slow to
load, at least the first time. And socialist realism posters have very bad
connotations, no matter how hiply ironic you find them.

~~~
coderdude
Is this how you talk to people? You could have stated the same opinions
without intentionally being offensive.

------
yesimahuman
Obviously I love bootstrap otherwise I wouldn't be building Jetstrap. But
really, bootstrap is an extremely solid framework, and you can do a ton of
customizations to make it look completely non-default (for example, our
designer built our company site in a day with bootstrap+jetstrap which looks
completely customized: <http://drifty.co/>).

You will implement the same structures if you don't use it, so you might as
well take advantage of the framework and invest in a nice custom design.

~~~
webwanderings
I'm not a professional but wanted to look into bootstrap for a while. Your
Jetstrap finally made me get on the bandwagon and I was able to look at the
potential in a single day no less!. Thanks.

I think it would be even better if you were to showcase some example websites
on your landing page. I'd wish to see what others are building with Jetstrap.

~~~
yesimahuman
Sure, great idea. We are working on gallery/community stuff. Lots to do, very
exciting :)

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exodust
> "You are not a crusader for artistic and unique web design"

Thanks for reminding me of what you have no business reminding me of.

Yet another article telling me what I am, what I should and shouldn't do.

The flip side is that HTML and CSS is not rocket science. It's rewarding and
valuable to build your own sites.

If your code is "untidy at best" I would recommend you find another job where
you skills don't amount to "untidy". Good luck.

~~~
alanmeaney
I love building sites too and I find it even more rewarding building on top of
Bootstrap.

While it's not rocket science some of us enjoy a little help. Don't take my
word as gospel, it's just an opinion.

I don't do this for a living yet but hopefully one day soon...

~~~
exodust
Fair enough. I guess I've read a few articles lately such as "stop using
carousels", "do this, do that"... and your article tipped me over the edge!

If you can make a living making websites with bootstrap, that's great. Many of
your clients won't even know you copied and pasted, then spent the rest of the
day playing Crysis.

All these templates and frameworks however, should be tools in your shed that
you choose to use or not depending on the build requirements. Relying on one
tool is risky, and may prevent your skills improving in web dev in general.

------
Zombieball
Some great CDN hosted (for free) sources for twitter bootstrap files to help
new users get going:

<http://hostedbootstrap.com/> <http://www.bootstrapcdn.com>
<http://cdnjs.com/>

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arvidjanson
Not trying to be rude, but you might wanna take a second look at the frontpage
of Task Messenger – not the greatest advert for Bootstrap :)

<http://i.imgur.com/7H0dGnI.png?1>

Safari 6 on OSX by the way.

------
deservingend
What's always surprised me is people taking the compiled CSS and working
directly off of that.

I thought the whole point was that since it's LESS, you can change things up
really easily.

~~~
dolphenstein
Easy until you try to upgrade.

~~~
lowboy
It makes the upgrade process easier if you stick to only making changes in
their variables.less file[0], or even better creating a copy of it and
including that instead in bootstrap.less. Heck, you can even just create your
own top-level myproject.less file and copy over the includes you need using
bootstrap.less[1] as a template.

[0]:
[https://github.com/twitter/bootstrap/blob/master/less/variab...](https://github.com/twitter/bootstrap/blob/master/less/variables.less)

[1]:
[https://github.com/twitter/bootstrap/blob/master/less/bootst...](https://github.com/twitter/bootstrap/blob/master/less/bootstrap.less)

~~~
deservingend
Just import bootstrap.less into your own project's main less file and go from
there.

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wololo_
They're awesome. It's just that their JS gives me cancer.

~~~
michaelbuckbee
Too many jQuery plugins?

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richo
Aaaand they're down.

~~~
alanmeaney
Sorry richo, trying to fix now :(

~~~
alanmeaney
Winding a 10 day old baby and keeping a site up while on the front page of
Hacker News isn't easy.

Can anyone help me keep it up?

~~~
gsharma
Looks like Wordpress. If it is, use this
<http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-super-cache/>

Edit: Also would recommend using Cloudflare.

~~~
alanmeaney
Thanks, yes it's Wordpress. I've installed that and removed the couple of
images which seems to be helping.

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alxndr
Did anyone else first see this <http://i.imgur.com/kglXUKw.png> or this
<http://i.imgur.com/KxRY9Vo.png> and immediately laugh out loud like I did?

~~~
alanmeaney
lol, glad you got a laugh :)

------
bluetidepro
Anyone have a mirror? Seems to be down for me.

------
trungonnews
Can I use bootstrap without jQuery?

~~~
camus
Yes, you can use just the CSS, but all the scripts are tied to jquery ,since
they are jquery plugins.

Regarding bootstrap , i'm a designer, and i dont mind people using it. The
heck i used it myself.

It doesnt turn server guys them into ergonomists nor usuability specialists ,
but they know that their code will render well on all the browsers with
virtually no test. I prefer people using bootstrap sites to coders that try to
come up with their own design and just cant...

Now i design webapps and sites that need to stand out more than the basic
bootstrap look but bootstrap can be a tool to work upon too.

Of course there will be a bootstrap backlash like there is a jquery backlash
from javascript "purists". But these purists tend to forget what was web
development before jquery or before boostrap ...

~~~
trungonnews
Thanks. I'm using YUI in my app right now. Adding jQuery along with Bootstrap
is a huge overhead for me.

