Great, Another Bootstrap Site
drawar.com
Great, Another Bootstrap Site
1–10 of 119 posts
Re: Great, Another Bootstrap Site
#2I now use Twitter Bootstrap as the starting point for all my projects, but not in the way many folk are.
The LESS files are a goldmine for me. Pre-made mixins, cross-browser support, responsive media queries, color functions
For me the LESS is being underplayed while the "default" style CSS is being overused.
Re: Great, Another Bootstrap Site
#3OTOH, you end up with stuff like this without it ;)
Re: Great, Another Bootstrap Site
#4Tweaking variables.less is enough to make the site look unique. Someone should write a pseudo-random variables.less generator.
Re: Great, Another Bootstrap Site
#5The sad part of this is that it's so easy to make your Bootstrap site look a little different, even for non-designers.
I'm sure the idea here is "oh, I'm just making a quick MVP, or even a pre-MVP, or a weekend project, and Bootstrap makes the design super easy!" But if you're not going to change it at all, you might as well stick with browser defaults and not include a stylesheet at all - at this point, uncustomized Boostrap looks just as tacky as a site that was black serif text on a white background with blue and purple links.
It's easy to fix, and it's fun. Just take an hour to experiment - your site deserves it. Change up the fonts! Get a nice header font, especially if you're using a big "Hero" badge. Look at the Google Web Font gallery for some inspiration. Get some unique colors - different shades for different elements, build a nice visual hierarchy.
Drop the top nav bar, unless you're doing docs or something that could actually use it. It looks a bit tacky, especially "position: fixed", when it's unnecessary.
Now, on the other hand, you don't have to change everything. Leave the button gradients as they are, the grid system isn't exactly going to stick out, etc. You just need the overall look of your site to be unique - individual elements don't matter as much. http://www.savng.com/ is built with Bootstrap, but you couldn't tell it unless you really were looking (and thus noticed the "Add a deal" button and the pill navs at the bottom).
Just be a bit different. It's easy, and rewarding.
Re: Great, Another Bootstrap Site
#6Bootstrap gives us a sane, standard look and feel for the web, which is a good thing. The design community generally doesn't like the idea of standards because they are a creative community, and there is no more damning phrase in the creative communities of the modern era than "unoriginal". But unoriginal is exactly what most people want with most of their web applications: they want to know how to work the things instinctively and not learn another UI for this or that task.
As a small example: with bootstrap, buttons look the same, so users instinctively recognize them without additional mental effort. Developers can focus on developing applications that are functional and usable, rather than tweaking CSS to make things "look right".
I think bootstrap, and the non-coercive standardization of web applications it is fostering, is one of the most important developments of 2011-2012.
I do think means there will be less need for straight-up aesthetic designers, with UX and information architecture becoming more important.
Re: Great, Another Bootstrap Site
#7Why value uniqueness over simplicity, cleanliness, and learn-ability? When the Mac came out, the primary selling point of the interface was that every application could share a common way of doing things and present it's capabilities to the user.
Bootstrap provides some of this for web applications. I'm not trying to keep my users from being "bored"; I'm trying to give them a simple approachable application where they can get stuff done. A gratuitous re-design serves only the ego of the designer.
Re: Great, Another Bootstrap Site
#8The sad part of this is that it's so easy to make your Bootstrap site look a little different, even for non-designers. I'm sure the idea here is "oh, I'm just making a quick MVP, or even a pre-MVP, or a weekend project, and Bootstrap makes the design super easy!" But if you're not going to change it at all , you might as well stick with browser defaults and not include a stylesheet at all - at this point, uncustomize…
I think the point that an uncustomized Bootstrap looking just as tacky as a plain html site is only true for people who hang around on HN or similar sites and so see many different sites using Bootstrap. For your average Joe on the internet, a Bootstrap-ped site will look much more professional and less tacky than a plain html site. So depending on your target audience, there might not be much motivation to spend any time customizing your site.
Re: Great, Another Bootstrap Site
#9/all day long I have been thinking this but never expressing it because it's clear it would trigger a swarm of disagreement which is all valid but also so not the point, but I'm so glad someone else wrote it so thanks/
So thank you sir. I will bury my Bootstrap dislike deep, deep down where noone can detect it. At least I get to vent my jQuery dislike nowadays.
Re: Great, Another Bootstrap Site
#10Effort is a finite resource. If I am a team of one, and I need to roll a website for my new widget, I have two choices: I can route effort away from further development/refinement of my widget to "design" a proper website, or I can use Bootstrap and conserve that effort to spend on my core product, widgets.
That's a tough decision. I'm not sure there's a "correct" answer. I think it depends on what you value, and what you believe your target user will value: a better product, or a better website.