I think it may be a good occasion to ask the probably stupid question - Why is bootstrap so popular on hackernews?
As far as I am concerned, it seems to be just another CMS. But posts about it make the frontpage almost everyday seemingly. I'm a newb, so if I don't see something obvious, just tell me what to google.
Bootstrap isn't a CMS. It does nothing to manage content but is instead a visual framework of HTML, CSS, and JS. It's essentially a good baseline of nice looking defaults.
It's popular because design is hard. Seriously hard. And the skills required to code up a cool web application do not often overlap with the skills required to make a site that isn't hideous to look at.
Bootstrap allows you to have a permanent check on the "design site" in your list of things to do for launch.
Not only does it look great out of the box, but it's also a great starting point for real designs (hence the name "bootstrap"). http://builtwithbootstrap.com/
The reason it's so popular is because hackers/engineers that populate this forum are often great at building functional web apps, but they often look like very amateur, however, using some very simple bootstrap it's possible to turn that same app into something that's attractive. Bootstrap is just heavy enough to be useful and light enough to be simple to use. Give it a try, you'll likely see why so many people love it.
Basically this. It allows someone (like me) to create something that looks decent even though my natural talents only bring me up to Geocities level of design.
I basically think Bootstrap is cool, but let me play devil's advocate because a couple things bother me about it.
At this point in its adoption curve, using Bootstrap is amateur. It says I have no idea how to style a webpage. Yes, it makes things look "attractive", but because it so popular, using Bootstrap on a website creates a site with no identity because it looks identical to the 100,000 other sites that use it.
Aside from creating designs with no soul, Bootstrap enforces a model where people without design expertise are supposed to be somehow be good enough at design to utilize these UI components effectively.
If you are not good enough to design a website, what makes you good enough to understand the appropriate time to use a component or when not to?
Hacker News itself has a very hand rolled UI and it works great. If it got Bootstrapped it would be a drastic step backwards. It just isn't the right solution for a lot of sites. It's design overkill.
Again, I think Bootstrap is cool, but I would never use it. I don't consider myself a designer, but I'm not okay with working on things that look like everyone else. Simple + handrolled > Bootstrap.
> Bootstrap enforces a model where people without design expertise are supposed to be somehow be good enough at design to utilize these UI components effectively.
There's nothing that can save you from having bad taste. However, given good taste and not-so-great artistry, Bootstrap is a web developer's best friend, specially if you're looking for contract work or launching your v1 app. And even with bad taste, there are sufficient examples out there to steal, err, get inspiration from.
> I'm not okay with working on things that look like everyone else does.
You're suffering from selection bias as an HN reader visiting other hackers' websites and such who have heard of Bootstrap. The greater extent of the world has not seen Bootstrap, and if they have, isn't it better for them to experience something decent looking?
> Simple and handrolled > Bootstrap.
If you have the chops sure, but a good number of hackers do not have taste, and less have the artistic talent.
Think about sites like Hacker News or Craigslist. They are arguably not very "tasty" designs, but they are simple and they work.
That's an important point to digest. Just because something looks nice doesn't mean it's effective. It may be the opposite.
Sure, the website looks "nice", I guess, but is that the goal? Or is the goal of the site to get sign ups, generate referrals, make money, etc?
When you're done plugging in Bootstrap, does the design serve your goals? Or does it just look nice? Have you saved time or merely punted the design farther down the road?
Again, I'm playing Devil's advocate because I do see the value in Bootstrap. I just rarely hear any contrary opinions on Bootstrap and it's important to understand (or at least discuss) the trade offs in using a canned design.
I couldn't design a site like Hacker News, not in my wildest dreams. It's the essence of a site with everything supliferous taken away and that takes talent that I just don't have. It's less about "looking nice" and more about "ok can people who aren't me actually use this site?
Bootstrap really helps with stuff like that because it does a lot of heavy lifting for you (styled content, scaffolding, themed buttons, etc) and allows you to fiddle with that stuff to get the effect that you want while still making everything line up.
Now make no mistake about it people can still design awesome sites with nothing and people can definitely design terrible sites with bootstrap it's just that the bar for terrible is a little harder to reach if someone is holding your hand.
Also with regards to the whole "everything looks canned" I think that's largely a part of being on a site where bootstrap is very popular. I know I used a lot of bootstrap sites before I knew what it was and I was none the wiser but now that I used it too I see it everywhere.
Think of bootstrap as a base, an alternative to the reset.css that everybody used to use. You can use as much or as little of it as possible. Everything that you haven't explicitly styled gets a sane default.
It also can be used as a specification for markup. The markup required for Bootstrap's form-horizontal is kind of ugly, but if everybody uses it than it becomes much easier to move form CSS from one project to another.
> At this point in its adoption curve, using Bootstrap is amateur. It says I have no idea how to style a webpage.
Similar to how, if I go to a website and I notice it's using Apache or nginx, I write them off as not having any idea how to write a web server, and that's something I look for from an application or service provider.
Facebook and Twitter could be said to lack identify, too. Google's page of search results and ads. Couple of columns, ads, navigation. People understand it. The consumer is already educated. I dunno :)
Much like the common definition of "bootstrapping" for entrepreneurs, which HN is targeted at, it provides programmers a way to bootstrap the look and feel of a product. It may not be a long term solution but it offers a quick, easy, and decent looking solution to getting a product out the door.
The difference between bootstrap and a CMS is that bootstrap doesn't mess with any wysiwyg interface bullshit. It's just a pre-fabricated way to architect your html, css, and javascript, and the default styling makes things look very professional.
I think you have that absolutely backwards. The difference between Bootstrap and a CMS is that a CMS is an application. Bootstrap is purely a sort of standard UI toolkit for the web.
A pre-requisite for being a CMS is managing content (Content Management System). Bootstrap has no content-managing facilities; It is purely a presentational (CSS, some JS) library with some well thought out defaults.
ie: you could still use Bootstrap to style a WordPress site.
I think "backwards" is the wrong word. I'd say "uninformed" would be closer to the point.
CMSs manage your content usually through a database, and most of them provide a way to display that content in a structured format. See Wordpress and Drupal. WYSIWYG is not a necessary part of a CMS.
Bootstrap is a (mostly) css library to help provide a better front end development experience for a web site/app. It can be used with the front-facing portion of a CMS or any other kind of site.
