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>but for devs who are better at backend and lost when it comes to frontend/design, it can be a huge time (and money) saver. This is a large part of why I am/wa

>but for devs who are better at backend and lost when it comes to frontend/design, it can be a huge time (and money) saver. This is a large part of why I am/was so confused about the purpose of these things. That describes me exactly, and everyone keeps saying I am exactly who bootstrap and friends are made for. Yet I see no purpose or value to it at all. I guess the answer really is "if you don't want to or can't design your site, just use twitters design". It was just hard to believe that's really all there is to it given how much attention is paid to something so trivial.

account_taken 14y ago
"no purpose or value to it", really? For those who want to get a site up with good defaults, typography, and widgets, Bootstrap is a huge timesaver. If you have a better framework for those of us who "can't design" then point us in the right direction.
- papsosouid 14y ago
  As I said: >I guess the answer really is "if you don't want to or can't design your site, just use twitters design" That is what you are describing, so go right ahead and use boostrap. I was just trying to figure out if there was something more to it, given that it calls itself a "framework" and minor releases of it get posted here for some reason. Those things made me think perhaps I was missing something, and it wasn't just "here's a copy of our design you can use".
  - amitvaria 14y ago
    So another way to look at it is having re-usable components that you can choose to include/exclude as needed. Then use LESS to customize, tweak, extend those components as needed to create the custom design you need. https://wrapbootstrap.com/ https://wrapbootstrap.com/ has some examples of work done in this area.
  - numbsafari 14y ago
    I think that answers your question to "how is this a framework" and "what is the value in this?" For many startups who want to get a site up quickly and have it look good and work well on a large number of sites, using something like bootstrap as the basis for their site design is a huge win. In your previous posts you keep mentioning "designers", plural. What if started your own firm and didn't have money for "designers", plural, but wanted a site that looked good? Code all that CSS bugger yourself and test it across all those browser versions and different display sizes? Or would you maybe look for a solid, easily customized solution that is built around design and coding best practices and that is tested by an active community? Do you code your own OS kernel and device drivers as well? What's a good value for the ratio between your base font size and the lineheight you use? Hmm? A decent approximation is already used in the LESS code for bootstrap. How do you implement a clean grid system that works across browsers and resolutions? How many grid implementations have you tested? Implemented? How reliable are they? How well do they work? Are you hand coding your CSS? Bootstrap is probably what helped most of the people on HN realize the value of CSS preprocessors such as LESS. Instead of spending a load of time optimizing common UI experiences across lots of browsers, or hiring a consulting designer who will probably reuse the code he's already written and charge you a chunk of change, you can instead use bootstrap. And when there is a point release you will find that they often included lots of little optimizations that make the overall CSS work better and across more browsers. Frameworks provide templates and take care of the boilerplate for you. Bootstrap isn't any different from any other framework in that regard.
    - papsosouid 14y ago
      >In your previous posts you keep mentioning "designers", plural Yeah, one at a time. I've been doing it for 16 years, I have worked with dozens of designers over that time. I don't have some sort of stable of dozens of designers to choose from or anything. >Or would you maybe look for a solid, easily customized solution that is built around design and coding best practices and that is tested by an active community? Bootstrap is not built around best practices at all, it actively forces you into anti-patterns that best practice is to avoid. >Do you code your own OS kernel and device drivers as well? If I were being paid to develop an OS, I certainly would. >How do you implement a clean grid system that works across browsers and resolutions? I don't. Grids are entirely unnecessary, and are bad web design. All my sites work fine across browsers, across devices, across resolutions and DPIs, with javascript disabled/unsupported, in screen readers, etc. Note that I've never seen a boostrap site that accomplishes that. Most break on trivial, obvious stuff. >Are you hand coding your CSS? Our SCSS, yes. >or hiring a consulting designer who will probably reuse the code he's already written Bingo! Where are all these people coming from that haven't already solved this problem a decade ago? >you can instead use bootstrap This is all that anyone needed to say. Everyone insisted on trying to fight about this, instead of simply giving me an honest answer: "its just a default design you can use in case you didn't already have one". Given that the answer is so simple, it is amazing how many people just wanted to fight about bootstrap for no reason.
egeozcan 14y ago
You can customize it, there are even generators. It gives you a cross-browser grid and a lot of goodies. It is maintained and tested across nearly every device. A huge help, if you ask me.
wilfra 14y ago
"Yet I see no purpose or value to it at all" Did you visit that link? If you don't see the "purpose or value" in having all of that functionality instantly just by adding CSS classes, I don't know what to tell you. Another huge perk is the responsive design. Bootstrap looks great on any device out of the box.
- papsosouid 14y ago
  Yes, I visited the link. And I saw twitters web design. Like I said. I already get styles by adding classes, or even better, without having to spam up my markup with pointless classes. That is how CSS works. You seem to be suggesting that my choices are use twitter's CSS, or don't use CSS at all. The benefit you describe comes from CSS, not bootstrap. Responsive design is the norm, not a "huge perk" of boostrap. Basically, if I were to use bootstrap the process appears to be the following: 1. Destroy my templates by filling them with tons of garbage containers and pointless class attributes. 2. Our mockups now look like twitter. 3. The actual design gets done, and we have to go back and remove all crap we had to put in for boostrap to begin with. Which part of that is supposed to appeal to me? Or is the intent to actually ship sites to customers looking like twitter and having horrible markup?
  - wilfra 14y ago
    I'm not sure why you keep saying 'looks like Twitter'. Bootstrap was originally created by Twitter, it wasn't created to make every site look like Twitter - nor does it do that. As for your other comments, you seem to have a far greater knowledge and skill level dealing with CSS than you let on. That's great for you, it must make doing frontend work a breeze - and maybe you don't need Bootstrap. Not everybody is so experienced though - and for them, Bootstrap can make life much simpler.
    - papsosouid 14y ago
      "Looks like twitter" is just shorter than "looks like every bootstrap website on the internet". My CSS knowledge and skill is very low, I'd rate myself a 2 or a 3 out of 10. I tend to leave the design work to the designers whenever I can. I certainly agree that a default stylesheet is quick and easy, I just didn't realize that's all boostrap is. Now I know the answer to the question everyone keeps asking me ("why aren't you using bootstrap") is "because I already have a default stylesheet". Previously my answer was "I don't know what I am supposed to do with it or why".
aantix 14y ago
>something so trivial. Getting the layout, typography and stylized components working correctly across all browsers is a tedious, tedious task. Delegating to a framework that has an implementation that has resolved these browser idiosyncrasies is a huge win.

account_taken 14y ago

"no purpose or value to it", really? For those who want to get a site up with good defaults, typography, and widgets, Bootstrap is a huge timesaver. If you have a better framework for those of us who "can't design" then point us in the right direction.

papsosouid 14y ago
As I said: >I guess the answer really is "if you don't want to or can't design your site, just use twitters design" That is what you are describing, so go right ahead and use boostrap. I was just trying to figure out if there was something more to it, given that it calls itself a "framework" and minor releases of it get posted here for some reason. Those things made me think perhaps I was missing something, and it wasn't just "here's a copy of our design you can use".
- amitvaria 14y ago
  So another way to look at it is having re-usable components that you can choose to include/exclude as needed. Then use LESS to customize, tweak, extend those components as needed to create the custom design you need. https://wrapbootstrap.com/ https://wrapbootstrap.com/ has some examples of work done in this area.
- numbsafari 14y ago
  I think that answers your question to "how is this a framework" and "what is the value in this?" For many startups who want to get a site up quickly and have it look good and work well on a large number of sites, using something like bootstrap as the basis for their site design is a huge win. In your previous posts you keep mentioning "designers", plural. What if started your own firm and didn't have money for "designers", plural, but wanted a site that looked good? Code all that CSS bugger yourself and test it across all those browser versions and different display sizes? Or would you maybe look for a solid, easily customized solution that is built around design and coding best practices and that is tested by an active community? Do you code your own OS kernel and device drivers as well? What's a good value for the ratio between your base font size and the lineheight you use? Hmm? A decent approximation is already used in the LESS code for bootstrap. How do you implement a clean grid system that works across browsers and resolutions? How many grid implementations have you tested? Implemented? How reliable are they? How well do they work? Are you hand coding your CSS? Bootstrap is probably what helped most of the people on HN realize the value of CSS preprocessors such as LESS. Instead of spending a load of time optimizing common UI experiences across lots of browsers, or hiring a consulting designer who will probably reuse the code he's already written and charge you a chunk of change, you can instead use bootstrap. And when there is a point release you will find that they often included lots of little optimizations that make the overall CSS work better and across more browsers. Frameworks provide templates and take care of the boilerplate for you. Bootstrap isn't any different from any other framework in that regard.
  - papsosouid 14y ago
    >In your previous posts you keep mentioning "designers", plural Yeah, one at a time. I've been doing it for 16 years, I have worked with dozens of designers over that time. I don't have some sort of stable of dozens of designers to choose from or anything. >Or would you maybe look for a solid, easily customized solution that is built around design and coding best practices and that is tested by an active community? Bootstrap is not built around best practices at all, it actively forces you into anti-patterns that best practice is to avoid. >Do you code your own OS kernel and device drivers as well? If I were being paid to develop an OS, I certainly would. >How do you implement a clean grid system that works across browsers and resolutions? I don't. Grids are entirely unnecessary, and are bad web design. All my sites work fine across browsers, across devices, across resolutions and DPIs, with javascript disabled/unsupported, in screen readers, etc. Note that I've never seen a boostrap site that accomplishes that. Most break on trivial, obvious stuff. >Are you hand coding your CSS? Our SCSS, yes. >or hiring a consulting designer who will probably reuse the code he's already written Bingo! Where are all these people coming from that haven't already solved this problem a decade ago? >you can instead use bootstrap This is all that anyone needed to say. Everyone insisted on trying to fight about this, instead of simply giving me an honest answer: "its just a default design you can use in case you didn't already have one". Given that the answer is so simple, it is amazing how many people just wanted to fight about bootstrap for no reason.

egeozcan 14y ago

You can customize it, there are even generators. It gives you a cross-browser grid and a lot of goodies. It is maintained and tested across nearly every device. A huge help, if you ask me.

wilfra 14y ago

"Yet I see no purpose or value to it at all" Did you visit that link? If you don't see the "purpose or value" in having all of that functionality instantly just by adding CSS classes, I don't know what to tell you. Another huge perk is the responsive design. Bootstrap looks great on any device out of the box.

papsosouid 14y ago
Yes, I visited the link. And I saw twitters web design. Like I said. I already get styles by adding classes, or even better, without having to spam up my markup with pointless classes. That is how CSS works. You seem to be suggesting that my choices are use twitter's CSS, or don't use CSS at all. The benefit you describe comes from CSS, not bootstrap. Responsive design is the norm, not a "huge perk" of boostrap. Basically, if I were to use bootstrap the process appears to be the following: 1. Destroy my templates by filling them with tons of garbage containers and pointless class attributes. 2. Our mockups now look like twitter. 3. The actual design gets done, and we have to go back and remove all crap we had to put in for boostrap to begin with. Which part of that is supposed to appeal to me? Or is the intent to actually ship sites to customers looking like twitter and having horrible markup?
- wilfra 14y ago
  I'm not sure why you keep saying 'looks like Twitter'. Bootstrap was originally created by Twitter, it wasn't created to make every site look like Twitter - nor does it do that. As for your other comments, you seem to have a far greater knowledge and skill level dealing with CSS than you let on. That's great for you, it must make doing frontend work a breeze - and maybe you don't need Bootstrap. Not everybody is so experienced though - and for them, Bootstrap can make life much simpler.
  - papsosouid 14y ago
    "Looks like twitter" is just shorter than "looks like every bootstrap website on the internet". My CSS knowledge and skill is very low, I'd rate myself a 2 or a 3 out of 10. I tend to leave the design work to the designers whenever I can. I certainly agree that a default stylesheet is quick and easy, I just didn't realize that's all boostrap is. Now I know the answer to the question everyone keeps asking me ("why aren't you using bootstrap") is "because I already have a default stylesheet". Previously my answer was "I don't know what I am supposed to do with it or why".

aantix 14y ago

>something so trivial. Getting the layout, typography and stylized components working correctly across all browsers is a tedious, tedious task. Delegating to a framework that has an implementation that has resolved these browser idiosyncrasies is a huge win.