Bootstrap

BOOTSTRAP

Bootstrap is a free and open-source CSS framework directed at responsive,mobile-first front-end web development. It contains CSS– and (optionally) Javascript-based design templates for typography, forms, buttons, navigation, and other interface components.

USAGE of Bootstrap

1.      First of all, Bootstrap is the most popular framework for creating layouts. Here are some additional reasons to use Bootstrap:

• Bootstrap’s responsive CSS adjusts to phones, tablets, and desktops
• Mobile-first styles are part of the framework

2. Bootstrap has a big community and friendly support. For resources visit:

• Check out the Bootstrap Blog.
• You can chat with Bootstrappers with IRC in the irc.freenode.net server, in the ##bootstrap channel.
• Have a look at what people are doing with Bootstrap at the Bootstrap Expo.

3. Bootstrap is easy to set up and create a working layout in less than an hour

They have a basic template available at http://getbootstrap.com/getting-started/#template and also a set of examples for different needs (http://getbootstrap.com/getting-started/#examples). You can just download the bootstrap repository, go to docs/examples folder, copy/paste the example you need and work on it.

4. You don’t need to know HTML and CSS well to use bootstrap, it’s a plus if you’re a backend developer and need to do some UI changes.

5. It’s fully customizable, I can choose which components I’d like to use and use variables file to get do even more color and behavior customization.

6. When you update the version of Bootstrap, you won’t see tons of errors because their core team cares about backwards compatibility.

Pros & Cons of Bootstrap

The Advantages of Bootstrap Development are:

1. Fewer Cross browser bugs
2. A consistent framework that supports major of all browsers and CSS compatibility fixes
3. Lightweight and customizable
4. Responsive structures and styles

The Disadvantages of Bootstrap are:

1. There will be requirement of lots of style overrides or rewriting files that can thus lead to a lot of time spent on designing and coding the website.
2. You would have to go the extra mile while creating a design otherwise all the websites will look the same if you don’t do heavy customization.
3. Styles are verbose and can lead to lots of output in HTML which is not needed.
4. Non-compliant HTML.

Best Bootstrap Alternatives

1. Foundation

The most advanced responsive front-end framework in the world. Quickly create prototypes and production code for sites that work on any kind of device. Foundation is a family of frontend frameworks that make it easy to build responsive websites, apps and emails for any device.

It’s one of the most comprehensive frontend frameworks, being even more thorough than Bootstrap. Everything you need to set up your apps you will find in a Foundation framework: a responsive mobile-first layout system, JS plugins, customization, a grid system, typography, UI components, utility classes, etc.

2. Bulma

Bulma is is a CSS framework heavily inspired by Bootstrap and based on the modern Flexible Box Module, usually referred to as flexbox.

This Framework contains all the most common frontend elements you can find on Bootstrap (minus the JS plugins): mobile-first responsive layout, normalized CSS, customizable theme, basic typography, helper CSS classes, common UI components such as menus, modals, breadcrumbs, cards, among other things.

3. Tailwind CSS

Tailwind CSS is a highly-customizable, low-level CSS framework built entirely around the concept of utility classes, which Bootstrap also provides out-of-the-box. With utility classes, you can mix and match CSS properties anywhere without necessarily resorting to inline styles.

4. HTML5 Boilerplate

HTML5 Boilerplate is not a framework but an HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript frontend template, born out of a combined knowledge of 100s of developers. It is used to design any kind of web page and helps you build fast, robust, and adaptable web apps or sites.

Basically it comes with all the necessary building blocks in a vanilla frontend bundle to design a simple or complex website, such as CSS helper classes, default print styles, Normalize.css, Modernizr, jQuery.

5. Material UI

Material UI is a React UI framework, based on the Material Design system by Google. At its core, Material UI is a collection of React-based components with the Material Design concepts applied upon them. The underlying premise is that every single UI element in your application is a React component, even the building blocks (containers, layouts…). Every customization is done in a JS environment, even the styling, using the approach of CSS-in-JS, very common in React apps.