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Great, Another Bootstrap Site

drawar.com

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Re: Great, Another Bootstrap Site

#91

Post by pbreit »

avolcano wrote: post #5

The 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…

> it's so easy to make your Bootstrap site look a little different

I think the problem is that it's not very easy. And that's why you see so little variation (combined with a certain amount of laziness, of course). Editing the CSS directly is pretty much impossible for mere mortals. And of you're not familiar with LESS and compiling styles, you're going to have trouble.

Re: Great, Another Bootstrap Site

#92

Post by chlee »

avolcano wrote: post #5

The 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…

Hey! I am the owner/creator/customer support/janitor/one-man-wrecking-crew of Savng.com.

I am pleasantly surprised to see it mentioned as a good example of Bootstrap based sites. On a unrelated note, I am not sure how you found it since I have really advertised it yet :o

To echo the same sentiment as avolcano, Bootstrap can be easily modified both via Less or CSS. And this is coming from someone who has rudimentary knowledge in both. A little change here and there can go a long way in differentiating your site from all the other bootstrap clone.

Here are a few low hanging fruits:

1) Colors -- Change the color of the top nav bar, links, text, and etc, as color has a tremendous affect on the look and feel of your site.

2) Font - Changing fonts is easy with Google Web Fonts and font hosting services like Typekit. Like color, it also affects the look and your feel of your site.

3) Laytout - Experiment and try different layouts, 1 column, 2 column, 3 columns and etc. Look at various sites within the same niche (and outside of your niche) for inspirations.

Here are some great resources that I've used in making my site:

1. Google Web Fonts

2. Typekit

3. Site Inspire

4. Siiimple

5. Grid Based

6. Minimal Exhibit

7. Design seeds enclosed (this is a godsend if you don't have a back ground in color theory like me)

8. Little Big Details

Re: Great, Another Bootstrap Site

#93

Post by GB_001 »

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…

As a web programmer I understand where you're coming from, but as a UX designer I whole heartedly disagree.

Bootstrap is a wonderful tool for getting your app out there without having to do much on a design level. But I believe that websites with a distinct look and easy UI that reflects their functionality is way better than a monotonous string of websites with no distinction between their design.

For instance Twitter's design is beautifully streamlined for it's functionality, which is to show a constant flow of micro-information. As opposed to HN's listed threads which show link based data. These designs even though they differ seem "natural" based on their functionality and require little to no mental effort.

Good UX does not require mental effort.

Furthermore, a unique look is how others identify sites. It's Twitter's UI looked exactly like Facebook's, more would have trouble distinguishing the two. This would hurt the site's capability to make an impression in the user's memory.

With no distinction between websites, how will the casual user remember you?

Re: Great, Another Bootstrap Site

#94

Post by vinothgopi »

quellhorst wrote: post #19

Great, another person bitching about seeing bootstrap sites... I love the look of bootstrap sites. Having identical looking sites beats the shitty design most of these sites would have had before bootstrap.

It comes down to the same issues that I have with templates of tumblr,posterous and wp. They all look the same. I think bootstrap should be used as a way to jumpstart the design process and not built a WHOLE website using the components bootstrap provides.

When I see that grey-black gradient nav bar i go "Haizz yet another bootstrap site."

Re: Great, Another Bootstrap Site

#95

Post by vinothgopi »

smokinn wrote: post #28
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…

This. If you're actually building a product to sell people it behooves you to put some effort into deviating from the base styles. On the other hand if you're like me and use it every so often for a one-off project that you have no plan on monetizing then why not? I don't particularly care about the UI look and feel, I just don't want it to look awful which it would if I were to design it myself. Bootstrap gives me a…

I have a slightly different view. I prefer to spend time designing a unique/good looking website but I do not like to waste my time creating my own buttons, text boxes etc. Modern design styles leans towards a 3D css button and nice large curve text boxes. Just grab them from bootstrap and use the grid for the layouts. Do everything else on your own.

Re: Great, Another Bootstrap Site

#97

Post by alecperkins »

joering2 wrote: post #75
rndmize wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find this and the parent to be flawed. Door, knobs and so on come in a wide variety of shapes, materials and colors; and so do buttons (open an explorer or finder window - almost every means of interacting with these relies on a button, and they vary widely in appearance.) The argument this blog post makes isn't that there's a problem with standards, but that a lot of people are using bootstrap without any modifica…

I found your opinion to be flawed, IMHO. While most knobs looks similar, you always can see before even touching whether this knob is a rotating one or just press a handle. Furthermore, I have never seen a door with a knob to be placed 10 inches from the ceiling (or the floor), something that would definitely be considered "original" and "nonstandard".

There's a difference between unique style, and unique function. It's possible to have a unique style while still taking advantage of existing affordances. The visual style has to work with the affordance for it to be useful, but they aren't in lock-step.

For example, both a button with a gradient simulating a curved surface with top-down lighting, and a button with flat color but a drop shadow indicate they are to be pressed. But, both can have a very different visual impact.

The same is true of knobs, switches, push bars, and so on. It's possible to vary the style without straying from the established affordances present. The article's point about Bootstrap is that people are given a factory for making different color doors and windows, but not bothering to change the colors despite the ease of doing so that the framework provides. The result being that the houses are all starting to look kind of dull.

Re: Great, Another Bootstrap Site

#98

Post by FreshCode »

typicalrunt wrote: post #13
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…

+1 to this. When I talk to other designers and inevitably get into arguments with them about standards, I try to get them to see it from a consumer's point of view for non-IT products. There are a lot of non-IT products that have the same design: doors to houses, door knobs, rear-view mirrors, tires. The list goes on. While it's fun to see a new design to a Web site/app, even as a techie I sometimes struggle with usi…

Standards !== Aesthetics.

Re: Great, Another Bootstrap Site

#99

Post by FreshCode »

va_coder wrote: post #18

I think this post is ridiculous. You know how many great law firms have website themes from the 90s? How many great restaurants have that crappy flash intro? Lots of them and I'm still going to use their service regardless. "How depressing is it to go through this gallery of sites built with Bootstrap?" How depressing is it to go to some site that's been hyped up, see a great design, and then see no compelling produc…

We would both prefer to use a great product with a crappy website than a crappy product with a great website, but I think the standard has shifted from, "Do you have a website?" up to "How does your website design look compared to your competitor?"

And I think that's a good thing.

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