Great, Another Bootstrap Site • Hacker News Board

Re: Great, Another Bootstrap Site

#31

Post by swang » Wed, Mar 07, 2012, 5:08 PM UTC

mindcrime wrote: post #22

mgrovr wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Bingo, give this man (or woman, or whatever) a cookie. Not everybody is like us, scouring the internet all day long for new startups and clicking every interesting link that shows up on HN. The average Joe off the street has probably seen 2 bootstrap based sites in his life, and has no idea what bootstrap is, and couldn't care less that a site he's using looks nearly identical to 3000 other sites that he'll most like…

That is the way the Internet works.

1. Product, hardware or software, gains the hearts and minds of hackers everywhere. 2. Backlash.

Re: Great, Another Bootstrap Site

#32

Post by cleanshakeapp » Wed, Mar 07, 2012, 5:08 PM UTC

bradleyland wrote: post #10

Effort 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 wha…

I agree. I think you can use bootstrap as a starting point then move on from there. It just helps things look nice while you allocate resources elsewhere for the time being.

Re: Great, Another Bootstrap Site

#33

Post by nirvdrum » Wed, Mar 07, 2012, 5:08 PM UTC

kingsidharth wrote: post #20

carsongross wrote: post #6

Bootstrap 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 in…

> Bootstrap gives us a sane, standard look and feel for the web, which is a good thing. NO. It is NOT a good thing. When it comes to visual design, things are supposed to look different. Twitter is meant to look different than Facebook and facebook should not look like Amazon. That's how you create mind-space . Bootstrap kills that - they all just look the same. I can't remember name of one site that was made with Bo…

Do you get confused when you run native apps on your Mac? Like, you can't recall which app does which because they all use native controls with a standard L & F? If you do, this is a usability concern I've not heard of and would love more research into. Most usability studies focus on how effectively one can perform a task in an app, not how quickly one can recollect which application performs which function for them, so it may just not be well-studied.

Re: Great, Another Bootstrap Site

#34

Post by chadhietala » Wed, Mar 07, 2012, 5:10 PM UTC

We recently have been working on http://www.wanttechnologies.com which uses bootstrap. But you can't really tell. Only really used the "scaffolding" and buttons.

Re: Great, Another Bootstrap Site

#35

Post by jonknee » Wed, Mar 07, 2012, 5:11 PM UTC

kingsidharth wrote: post #20

carsongross wrote: post #6

Bootstrap 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 in…

> Bootstrap gives us a sane, standard look and feel for the web, which is a good thing. NO. It is NOT a good thing. When it comes to visual design, things are supposed to look different. Twitter is meant to look different than Facebook and facebook should not look like Amazon. That's how you create mind-space . Bootstrap kills that - they all just look the same. I can't remember name of one site that was made with Bo…

And yet Facebook, Twitter and Google all have a nearly identical top bar (sorry, Facebook's is blue). They have billions of page views to analyze and have all come to the same conclusion.

> NO. It is NOT a good thing. When it comes to visual design, things are supposed to look different. Twitter is meant to look different than Facebook and facebook should not look like Amazon. That's how you create mind-space . Bootstrap kills that - they all just look the same.

It depends on your goal. If you want to make an application that people use all day, having a unique UI is probably not a win. If you used Netscape back in the day you can use Chrome today and not have trouble. Consistency itself can be beautiful.

If you're making a marketing site, then your designer can go wild (as long as everything is being tested for effectiveness).

Re: Great, Another Bootstrap Site

#36

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Mar 07, 2012, 5:12 PM UTC

kingsidharth wrote: post #20

carsongross wrote: post #6

Bootstrap 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 in…

> Bootstrap gives us a sane, standard look and feel for the web, which is a good thing. NO. It is NOT a good thing. When it comes to visual design, things are supposed to look different. Twitter is meant to look different than Facebook and facebook should not look like Amazon. That's how you create mind-space . Bootstrap kills that - they all just look the same. I can't remember name of one site that was made with Bo…

[deleted]

Re: Great, Another Bootstrap Site

#37

Post by cleanshakeapp » Wed, Mar 07, 2012, 5:12 PM UTC

kingsidharth wrote: post #20

carsongross wrote: post #6

Bootstrap 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 in…

> Bootstrap gives us a sane, standard look and feel for the web, which is a good thing. NO. It is NOT a good thing. When it comes to visual design, things are supposed to look different. Twitter is meant to look different than Facebook and facebook should not look like Amazon. That's how you create mind-space . Bootstrap kills that - they all just look the same. I can't remember name of one site that was made with Bo…

Are you a web designer? Because some folks (yours truly included) don't have great design sense, so putting up a bootstrap site is much better than the alternative 2003 geo-cities look that is just as easy to create. When it comes to the lesser of two evils, i'd choose "less" and bootstrap.

Re: Great, Another Bootstrap Site

#38

Post by funkah » Wed, Mar 07, 2012, 5:13 PM UTC

kingsidharth wrote: post #20

carsongross wrote: post #6

Bootstrap 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 in…

> Bootstrap gives us a sane, standard look and feel for the web, which is a good thing. NO. It is NOT a good thing. When it comes to visual design, things are supposed to look different. Twitter is meant to look different than Facebook and facebook should not look like Amazon. That's how you create mind-space . Bootstrap kills that - they all just look the same. I can't remember name of one site that was made with Bo…

Bootstrap is not for Amazon or Facebook. We're talking about websites for wrestling events in the UK -- literally one of the sites in the gallery that the author links to -- and other such things that really do not need to present any sort of ground-breaking, or even interesting, visual design.

Re: Great, Another Bootstrap Site

#39

Post by nirvdrum » Wed, Mar 07, 2012, 5:15 PM UTC

I think the author hits on a good point that he may just be too polite to really call out. A lot of developers get annoyed when designers use some framework to make building web pages simpler and then say they can build sites. This just seems to be the opposite reaction: devs using design frameworks to bang out their sites. Both should be lauded for making it simpler for people to get basic work done. Neither should be confused with what a serious professional can accomplish. When that happens, things get really weird. I personally believe the rash of web designers calling themselves Rails devs really screwed with the Boston area Ruby/Rails market.

Re: Great, Another Bootstrap Site

#40

Post by gregorymichael » Wed, Mar 07, 2012, 5:17 PM UTC

Bootstrap looks tired to us, the Hacker News crowd, who are into startups and see new ones everyday. The rest of the population, the actual market of these startups, isn't seeing this high concentration, and has no idea what Twitter Bootstrap is.