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Flatstrap - Bootstrap with no rounded corners, gradients or drop shadows

littlesparkvt.com

61–70 of 85 posts

Re: Flatstrap - Bootstrap with no rounded corners, gradients or drop shadows

#61

Metro UI does have gradients and drop shadows, though they are very subtle. If you are good at design, you wouldn't need to start from Bootstrap. If you are not so good at design, Bootstrap is a great framework, but using flat, all-square UI elements can cause some problems, you may be unaware of. If you use Flatstrap, your tags, labels and buttons will all look the same. If, in the spirit of flatness, you'd also rem…

> If you are good at design, you wouldn't need to start from Bootstrap. If you are not so good at design, Bootstrap is a great framework,

Just to nitpick, even if you're 'good' at design, Bootstrap is nice if you just don't want to spend the time for a prototype or small project, and also want to be able to drop-in different themes easily to test them out (ie, Bootswatch).

> using flat, all-square UI elements can cause some problems, you may be unaware of.

Remember that, in "true" Metro, all titles and elements are clickable, so the concept of affordance and discoverability is almost moot - its mere existence signals that it can be clicked on.

This is a a paradigm shift from what we've been using all our lives, so naturally people will need to adjust to it a bit, but I don't think it's fundamentally different from adjusting to clicking on rounded rectangles with dark edges instead of pressing a physical button.

Re: Flatstrap - Bootstrap with no rounded corners, gradients or drop shadows

#62
post #26

With all due respect, changing a few settings in 1 or 2 LESS files is now a top #2 story on HN? One of three things are happening as approach the end of the world... 1) Slow news day 2) What quantifies a hacker is being grossly influenced by what has quantified a startup the last few funding cycles. 3) Get off my lawn.

Meh, like I said I was going to do this tonight myself, now I don't have to. HN saved me some work and I think that's worth an upvote.

Enjoy!

Re: Flatstrap - Bootstrap with no rounded corners, gradients or drop shadows

#65

Metro UI does have gradients and drop shadows, though they are very subtle. If you are good at design, you wouldn't need to start from Bootstrap. If you are not so good at design, Bootstrap is a great framework, but using flat, all-square UI elements can cause some problems, you may be unaware of. If you use Flatstrap, your tags, labels and buttons will all look the same. If, in the spirit of flatness, you'd also rem…

> If you are good at design, you wouldn't need to start from Bootstrap.

I completely disagree with this statement. Bootstrap has nothing to do with design - it's all about structure.

The responsive grid layout is great. With some good planning, you can get desktop and mobile optimized versions of your site with much less effort than a custom framework. As a bonus, you also get a great deal of Javascript UI elements for free. And the fact that all of these elements are unified and tested across browsers is a huge time-saver, too.

If you do know what you are doing design-wise, the LESS stylesheets are well-structured. You can do something as simple as changing the base color of your links to diving in to completely customize the look of your app.

As for Flatstrap, it's great to see an alternative base design to the Bootstrap framework.

Re: Flatstrap - Bootstrap with no rounded corners, gradients or drop shadows

#66
post #46
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Comments like this annoy me. Open source zealots are always rambling on about how you can just "fork it and do what you want!" - and then when someone actually does , watch the pitchforks come out.

I'm not an open source zealot. I like open source, and I promote open source, but I also prefer when people try not to ride on other people's shoulders.

By their very nature, all open source licenses are variations of "Ride on my shoulders!"

Re: Flatstrap - Bootstrap with no rounded corners, gradients or drop shadows

#69

I really, really, really hate this flatshit design trend. Not so much by the way it looks –or works– but because of the sense of superiority of their proponents. I hate that it is being touted as some kind of movement that is liberating us from the evilness of skeumorphism. It's bullshit. A good designer should put the user experience above his own snobbish idealisms. Function over form.

Don't understand the downvotes, that's exactly what's going on. I alluded to this upthread; this aesthetic is more about Microsoft attempting minimalism to look trendy than than it is about usability, which is why qualified UX folk have been blasting it.

Re: Flatstrap - Bootstrap with no rounded corners, gradients or drop shadows

#70
post #65

Metro UI does have gradients and drop shadows, though they are very subtle. If you are good at design, you wouldn't need to start from Bootstrap. If you are not so good at design, Bootstrap is a great framework, but using flat, all-square UI elements can cause some problems, you may be unaware of. If you use Flatstrap, your tags, labels and buttons will all look the same. If, in the spirit of flatness, you'd also rem…

> If you are good at design, you wouldn't need to start from Bootstrap. I completely disagree with this statement. Bootstrap has nothing to do with design - it's all about structure. The responsive grid layout is great. With some good planning, you can get desktop and mobile optimized versions of your site with much less effort than a custom framework. As a bonus, you also get a great deal of Javascript UI elements f…

I agree completely that Bootstrap can be a timesaver. For designers and non-designers alike.

The point I tried to make was that, if you depend for design on Bootstrap UI, if you need it to produce nice looking pages, then just flattening everything may cause problems: You would have removed unified and user-tested elements of design.

For content: a fun, distantly related, story from 1981: http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&s...

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