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Bootstrap 2.2.0 released

blog.getbootstrap.com

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Re: Bootstrap 2.2.0 released

#61

Post by jiggy2011 »

papsosouid wrote: post #46

I'm mainly a backend guy but do some frontend work from time to time. I keep seeing all this talk about a dozen different CSS "frameworks", and I just don't get it. Can someone explain to me what the purpose of these things is? Bootstrap's site for example doesn't even try to tell me what I would want it for, it just says I want it "because its for nerds" (do I have to dress in faux-nerd chic and live in the valley t…

What's wrong with grids? Everything I have read about design seems to advocate laying things out in the fashion.

The nice thing about bootstrap is it enables things like having say, 2 columns at the top of the page then 3 columns underneath then finally going to a single column for the footer very easily.

Doing these things in manual CSS if you don't know about all the various browser quirks and tricks can be a pain.

Re: Bootstrap 2.2.0 released

#62

Post by wilfra »

papsosouid wrote: post #56
wilfra wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://twitter.github.com/bootstrap/components.html Have a look at that. If you want to quickly and easily add these kinds of elements to your site, bootstrap is amazing. All you do is use the proper class names and bam you got buttons, tooltips, alerts, progress bars etc etc etc. If making those things is second nature to you then you probably don't need it - but for devs who are better at backend and lost when it c…

>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 de…

"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.

Re: Bootstrap 2.2.0 released

#63

Post by papsosouid »

wilfra wrote: post #62
papsosouid wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 de…

"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.

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?

Re: Bootstrap 2.2.0 released

#64

Post by papsosouid »

account_taken wrote: post #59
papsosouid wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 de…

"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.

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".

Re: Bootstrap 2.2.0 released

#65

Post by papsosouid »

jiggy2011 wrote: post #61
papsosouid wrote: post #46

I'm mainly a backend guy but do some frontend work from time to time. I keep seeing all this talk about a dozen different CSS "frameworks", and I just don't get it. Can someone explain to me what the purpose of these things is? Bootstrap's site for example doesn't even try to tell me what I would want it for, it just says I want it "because its for nerds" (do I have to dress in faux-nerd chic and live in the valley t…

What's wrong with grids? Everything I have read about design seems to advocate laying things out in the fashion. The nice thing about bootstrap is it enables things like having say, 2 columns at the top of the page then 3 columns underneath then finally going to a single column for the footer very easily. Doing these things in manual CSS if you don't know about all the various browser quirks and tricks can be a pain.

Grids are fundamentally the exact opposite of good design. They are a cludge to make it easier to lay things out the way you want, but do so by tightly coupling content and presentation. I see it advocated too, but not by design gurus, by people who want to just have it work and don't care about doing things correctly or having reusable, modular components.

Re: Bootstrap 2.2.0 released

#68

Post by fatbird »

papsosouid wrote: post #46

I'm mainly a backend guy but do some frontend work from time to time. I keep seeing all this talk about a dozen different CSS "frameworks", and I just don't get it. Can someone explain to me what the purpose of these things is? Bootstrap's site for example doesn't even try to tell me what I would want it for, it just says I want it "because its for nerds" (do I have to dress in faux-nerd chic and live in the valley t…

What you seem to be missing is that implementing complex designs means spending a lot of time dealing with cross-browser issues and platform-specific minutiae. Using these frameworks saves a lot of time, if the affordances you accept by using them are okay for you. Yes, it is a lot of boilerplate CSS. "Boilerplate" just means the boring stuff that's the same every time and is appropriately abstracted away in a framework. Your complaint about bootstrap not cascading properly is non-sensical. It's verbose in comparison to a custom job that's perfectly tailored to the situation; that's another tradeoff.

I've read your responses below and you're weirdly contemptuous of these frameworks. It's like saying "sure you can use Rails, if you're not competent enough to write your own app code, but then you'd be doing it wrong anyway." Devs make choices; engineering is frequently about tradeoffs. If you sound needlessly critical, work on your tone.

Re: Bootstrap 2.2.0 released

#69

Post by fatbird »

papsosouid wrote: post #65
jiggy2011 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's wrong with grids? Everything I have read about design seems to advocate laying things out in the fashion. The nice thing about bootstrap is it enables things like having say, 2 columns at the top of the page then 3 columns underneath then finally going to a single column for the footer very easily. Doing these things in manual CSS if you don't know about all the various browser quirks and tricks can be a pain.

Grids are fundamentally the exact opposite of good design. They are a cludge to make it easier to lay things out the way you want, but do so by tightly coupling content and presentation. I see it advocated too, but not by design gurus, by people who want to just have it work and don't care about doing things correctly or having reusable, modular components.

Grids are fundamentally the exact opposite of good design.

From a software perspective, perhaps. From an aesthetic design perspective, grids are a common tool used widely outside of web based design.

by tightly coupling content and presentation.

CSS has always been a hack that disallows completely or properly separating content and presentation, except in toy cases. Thus, frameworks like Bootstrap.

Re: Bootstrap 2.2.0 released

#70

Post by papsosouid »

fatbird wrote: post #69
papsosouid wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Grids are fundamentally the exact opposite of good design. They are a cludge to make it easier to lay things out the way you want, but do so by tightly coupling content and presentation. I see it advocated too, but not by design gurus, by people who want to just have it work and don't care about doing things correctly or having reusable, modular components.

Grids are fundamentally the exact opposite of good design. From a software perspective, perhaps. From an aesthetic design perspective, grids are a common tool used widely outside of web based design. by tightly coupling content and presentation. CSS has always been a hack that disallows completely or properly separating content and presentation, except in toy cases. Thus, frameworks like Bootstrap.

>From an aesthetic design perspective, grids are a common tool used widely outside of web based design.

Yes, we're not in 1996 anymore. We're beyond the "lets pretend the web is print" phase finally. That means separation of content and presentation matters.

>CSS has always been a hack that disallows completely or properly separating content and presentation

What? People (deliberately?) not understanding how to use CSS correctly certainly caused problems like that. And I'm certainly open to blaming much of that on the design of CSS. But it by no means disallowed it separating content and presentation, that is the entire point of it. Stop littering your markup with classes and you can get the benefits of that separation.

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