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The Ruby on Rails Tutorial, now with Twitter's Bootstrap

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Re: The Ruby on Rails Tutorial, now with Twitter's Bootstrap

#41
post #25

Developers moaning about Bootstrap have fallen into the common trap of seeing apps through developers' eyes. Please consider that: 1. Almost no one in the world has heard of Bootstrap. Though it's captured our mindshare as developers, most of our users will not know nor care if the app is Bootstrap or not. 2. The vast majority of web apps still will not be Bootstrap apps. Basically none of the general public will say…

I regularly read HN, and I like to think I'm generally aware of web development stuff, and I hadn't even heard of Bootstrap until the for/against argument blew up on HN over the last few days.

If I haven't heard of it, none of my friends have. Out of the hundreds of people I know, I'd imagine possibly one of them has heard of Bootstrap.

Unless your startup target is web developers, nobody will have any clue what you're using as your UI kit, but they'll be pleased when things are where they normally are.

Re: The Ruby on Rails Tutorial, now with Twitter's Bootstrap

#42

I think this tutorial is a treasure. It's a great introduction to the entire rails ecosystem, including TDD, git, heroku, and the like. I went through the 3.0 version a while ago, but so slowly (as in, a chapter every couple of weeks) that I forgot a lot of it. To those like myself, working through this in your off hours, I recommend keeping Anki (or equivalent) open and adding notes as you go.

I am proud to say it mentions my Ruby on Rails installation guide for Ubuntu and Mint here: http://ruby.railstutorial.org/ruby-on-rails-tutorial-book?ve... (the guide itself is here http://www.mirceagoia.com/2011/11/ruby-on-rails-installation... ).

I actually used it when I was getting going with Rails. Trying to install rails on Windows was a nightmare. Your tutorial was so easy to follow and was invaluable right after I had switched over to Mint from Mandriva.

Re: The Ruby on Rails Tutorial, now with Twitter's Bootstrap

#43
post #7

"Due to popular demand," Wait? What??

The previous thread on the new version of this tutorial had a few commenters (and votes) on updating it to use Bootstrap.

fair enough, but I still question why a tutorial needs to be rewritten to make use of a different CSS framework. Are there that many people forking this tutorial that they want something cleaner to work with? I just don't get it.

Re: The Ruby on Rails Tutorial, now with Twitter's Bootstrap

#45
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The previous thread on the new version of this tutorial had a few commenters (and votes) on updating it to use Bootstrap.

fair enough, but I still question why a tutorial needs to be rewritten to make use of a different CSS framework. Are there that many people forking this tutorial that they want something cleaner to work with? I just don't get it.

I think the term re-written is a bit over-the-top. I've gone through to chapter 10 of the tutorial, and the focus is largely on rails/ruby.

Blueprint did not factor a great deal in the original version and, honestly, Bootstrap is probably more relevant at this point.

Re: The Ruby on Rails Tutorial, now with Twitter's Bootstrap

#46
Michael Hartl's book stands out because he keeps it current, a challenge given fast-evolving Rails development practices.

Last year I set out to create a set of example apps to bridge the gap between Michael Hartl's excellent tutorial and the piecemeal advice found on experts' blogs and Stack Overflow. The example apps are accompanied by tutorials (walkthroughs, really, not as thorough or informative as Hartl's book) and show how to set up a Rails app with authentication libraries (either Devise or OmniAuth), RSpec, Cucumber, and popular options such as MongoDB or Haml. Each has a companion application template that serves to generate a starter app. Like Michael Hartl, my contributors and I have seen increasing interest in Twitter Bootstrap and recently updated the app templates to offer a choice of front-end frameworks, including Zurb Foundation and Twitter Bootstrap (either Less or Sass versions). It seems Twitter Bootstrap for the front end is catching on -- fast -- for the same reasons Rails has succeeded on the back end: convention over configuration and a well-crafted implementation of commonly-used functionality.

Here are the RailsApps example apps, now with Twitter Bootstrap: http://railsapps.github.com/

Re: The Ruby on Rails Tutorial, now with Twitter's Bootstrap

#47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am proud to say it mentions my Ruby on Rails installation guide for Ubuntu and Mint here: http://ruby.railstutorial.org/ruby-on-rails-tutorial-book?ve... (the guide itself is here http://www.mirceagoia.com/2011/11/ruby-on-rails-installation... ).

I actually used it when I was getting going with Rails. Trying to install rails on Windows was a nightmare. Your tutorial was so easy to follow and was invaluable right after I had switched over to Mint from Mandriva.

Thank you very much for using it. I had my share of frustrations installing RoR on Linux so I am glad my tutorial is helping others.

Re: The Ruby on Rails Tutorial, now with Twitter's Bootstrap

#48

I think this tutorial is a treasure. It's a great introduction to the entire rails ecosystem, including TDD, git, heroku, and the like. I went through the 3.0 version a while ago, but so slowly (as in, a chapter every couple of weeks) that I forgot a lot of it. To those like myself, working through this in your off hours, I recommend keeping Anki (or equivalent) open and adding notes as you go.

I agree, I had the same problem: I started reading it some months ago but not with the right attitude to do everything, complete it etc.. and then I stopped (not because of lacks in the tutorial but because of me). Now i'm attending Coursera's Saas Class and I'm sort of forced to do stuff in order to complete homeworks (so i started using git, registered on github and heroku etc..) I think that after the course I'll come back to this new version of the tutorial, Thanks Michael!

Re: The Ruby on Rails Tutorial, now with Twitter's Bootstrap

#49
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The previous thread on the new version of this tutorial had a few commenters (and votes) on updating it to use Bootstrap.

fair enough, but I still question why a tutorial needs to be rewritten to make use of a different CSS framework. Are there that many people forking this tutorial that they want something cleaner to work with? I just don't get it.

The full "rewrite" took less than two weeks, and much of that was redoing screenshots and mockups (easy, dull work).

The motivation for the change was to please readers. Happy readers make for a happy author. Among other things, happy readers buy ebooks and screencasts. For a free online book, the Rails Tutorial makes a surprising amount of money. I'd like to keep that record going with the 2nd edition.

Re: The Ruby on Rails Tutorial, now with Twitter's Bootstrap

#50
I just finished this tutorial yesterday actually. I personally don't care so much about the web design aspect as much as the RoR logic and techniques. Are there any major things in the new version in that department that I should be aware of? Edit: I loved the tutorial by the way - thank you so much for putting the time and effort in to writing it.
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