I have to use Bootstrap at work and I’m really not a fan. It’s somehow more work than writing CSS from scratch.
I don’t do much frontend work these days, but years ago, it felt like the defining feature of Bootstrap was the 12-column layout. Sure, it had fun buttons and other components, but the ability to trivially define multi-column layout without ripping your hair out was its raison d’être.
Now that we have flexbox, I’m not sure anyone needs Bootstrap.
It also has lots of UI widgets like collapsing elements, modals and alerts. Sure, you could code all these by hand, but why bother?
Mainly because I already understand CSS and HTML and having to learn their way of doing things is extra work and overhead.
We have better alternatives today as well and still I see people choosing Bootstrap and violently cringe.
All the elements you mentioned are natove HTML elements that don’t need any library.
many native elements either do not function like people want or cannot be styled the same
Can you elaborate? Give some examples?
Yes but it wasn’t always the case. Bootstrap used to be very helpful when grids, modals, accordions and so on were not standard.
What’s a native HTML element that mimics Bootstraps Collapse?
details and summary?
I was going to list a whole bunch of things the DETAILS tag doesn’t allow, but it seems that none of these issues actually appear. So either it has evolved since I’ve looked at it last time or I was stupid.
Either way, thanks for talking back.
I had to look it up myself - so I learned about it too!
I’m a huge fan of bootstrap and I feel that writing CSS from scratch is much harder.
I’m glad someone does! I don’t like disliking it.
give yourself a treat every time you use it
And ring a bell
“… I don’t like disliking it.” You and I have very different life experiences.
There’s a lot of things I detest - bananas, generic medieval fantasy settings, reality TV. My life isn’t better for disliking them, it’s just the unfortunate reality of my character.
Agreed. My life is also not better for disliking things, but I really LIKE disliking those things.
I’m kind of surprised to see its name. Was fairly widespread back in angular/backbone days – I kind of assumed all the useful stuff from it got adopted natively as I haven’t really heard any frontend teams I’ve worked with over the recent years mention it.
I used it a little in a recent project, but I’m mostly a backend dev and am new to front end. When I Googlef how to make stuff pretty or improve UI, a lot of results were still related to Bootstrap, probably because it was so ubiquitous for so many years.
i found it pretty good to work with after i mastered the classes
helps a lot on those big boring internal panel projects
saves you quite a lot of time and effort of writing all the stuff yourself.
I honestly just find the extra layers to make it harder for me to know what my code is doing. I’d rather set proper CSS margin-bottom than mb-1. Having to learn the Bootstrap way of doing things when I already know the traditional way mostly feels like a waste of my time. It’s not, but it’s hard to stay engaged when I can already do a thing in a more standardised way.
Kind of like a site I’ve been stripping the jQuery out of. You don’t need that to show/hide a couple of form fields, FFS. Or the special JS library for doing pop overs. Come on, there’s three fields on the entire website that use them, just use HTML5 popovers.
I imagine Bootstrap is probably more useful for stuff where more complex layouts are needed, or when a site needs to be more responsive to different browser shapes (as in desktop vs. various mobile form factors).
Well, just copy shit other people made with minimal changes. Problem solved.
I can use Bootstrap, much like I can write CSS, I just don’t think it’s a good use of my time.
My Tailwind gang is awfully quiet today 😅
it’s either love it or hate it situation.
For the record, I love tailwind.
I’ll be your data point on the other side of the record: Tailwind is the worst thing to happen to the web.
