1. So you've matched a number of good features that Bootstrap has, but you seem to be missing:
- Responsive grid control based on browser size (.col-md, -sm, -xsm, -lg)
- Nestable grids (apparently)
- Fluid container
- Offsetting columns
- Column ordering
- Subheading/secondary heading text
- Lead body copy
- Text alignment classes
- Blockquote styling
- List styling (no discs, inline)
- Description elements (dl/dt/dd)
- Code/pre formatting
- Various table styles
- Responsive tables
And that's just going halfway down Bootstrap's css documentation page without touching any of the 20 or so css components or the the 12 or so js modules that Bootstrap provides. You personally might not need even 90% of them, but you cannot make the claim that Min has anywhere near the features of Bootstrap. It's disingenuous. I wouldn't make the claim for YUI's Pure[0], and it's a similarly-scoped framework. In fact, that's one of the selling points to a minimal framework - it isn't "bloated".
2. That's because that example page requires jQuery, just like many other sites require jQuery. I've used Bootstrap several times as just a CSS framework, and it works well. You obviously can't use any js modules, as all of them depend on jQ, but none of the pure-css modules do.
3. I have built custom versions of Bootstrap, so yes I would do it. I'd wager most people wouldn't, but I don't know if I see that as a fault of Bootstrap's. I applaud you encouraging modularity, and I wish that more people would go that route with Bootstrap.
Normalize is intended to give consistent results across browsers. If you've accounted for all of the discrepancies between browsers, then that's great! I'd wager that there are some cases that you haven't caught.
I understand where you're coming from wrt. monolithic frameworks, and I do wish more people would take the time to slim down their libraries. Hell, I wrote a grunt plugin[1] that looks at a site's outputted js and determines a minimal build of Lo-Dash[2], and it's only 10kB gzipped.
When I said that Min was near feature parity with Bootstrap, I was referring to the percent of use cases covered (which, in my mind, is the more important metric.) Min covers the vast majority of use cases that I've seen Bootstrap used for. Min also doesn't include CSS classes for offsetting or text alignment, as this is fairly trivial. That said, Min will soon be exactly at feature parity of Bootstrap (soon is relative; it will be by the release of Min v2.0)
Regarding jQuery, it's needed for the responsive navbar and navbar dropdowns, two fairly common use cases. It's also included in most Bootstrap sites, even if it's not used for anything else. (This is based on a quick survey of Bootstrap Expo.)
Unfortunately, from my informal survey of websites using Min, most seem to use the entire framework. That said, this makes some sense since they only save a maximum of ~700 bytes by picking and choosing, but for other projects (like Bootstrap) it makes less sense.
I'll take a closer look at normalize.css later this weekend. Thanks for the advice about a 12-column grid.
- Responsive grid control based on browser size (.col-md, -sm, -xsm, -lg)
- Nestable grids (apparently)
- Fluid container
- Offsetting columns
- Column ordering
- Subheading/secondary heading text
- Lead body copy
- Text alignment classes
- Blockquote styling
- List styling (no discs, inline)
- Description elements (dl/dt/dd)
- Code/pre formatting
- Various table styles
- Responsive tables
And that's just going halfway down Bootstrap's css documentation page without touching any of the 20 or so css components or the the 12 or so js modules that Bootstrap provides. You personally might not need even 90% of them, but you cannot make the claim that Min has anywhere near the features of Bootstrap. It's disingenuous. I wouldn't make the claim for YUI's Pure[0], and it's a similarly-scoped framework. In fact, that's one of the selling points to a minimal framework - it isn't "bloated".
2. That's because that example page requires jQuery, just like many other sites require jQuery. I've used Bootstrap several times as just a CSS framework, and it works well. You obviously can't use any js modules, as all of them depend on jQ, but none of the pure-css modules do.
3. I have built custom versions of Bootstrap, so yes I would do it. I'd wager most people wouldn't, but I don't know if I see that as a fault of Bootstrap's. I applaud you encouraging modularity, and I wish that more people would go that route with Bootstrap.
Normalize is intended to give consistent results across browsers. If you've accounted for all of the discrepancies between browsers, then that's great! I'd wager that there are some cases that you haven't caught.
I understand where you're coming from wrt. monolithic frameworks, and I do wish more people would take the time to slim down their libraries. Hell, I wrote a grunt plugin[1] that looks at a site's outputted js and determines a minimal build of Lo-Dash[2], and it's only 10kB gzipped.
[0]: http://purecss.io/
[1]: https://github.com/jjt/grunt-lodash-autobuild
[2]: http://lodash.com/