Bootstrap is a CSS framework that helps you prototype your ideas and create an entire website with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
Since Twitter first released it in 2011, Bootstrap has been a popular choice among web developers. According to builtwith.com, it’s used on more than 21 million websites. So clearly, many developers believe it’s a good choice for their projects.
But is Bootstrap right for my project?
Let’s take a look at some of its pros and cons to help you decide.
Advantages of Bootstrap
You’ve probably already experienced the frustration of opening a web page on your smartphone and realizing that it’s only designed for large screens.
What normally happens here is that the user leaves the website and never comes back.
It’s important to create responsive pages to prevent this from happening!
One reason Bootstrap is so popular with front-end developers is that it uses a mobile-first approach, meaning that its grid and components are designed with small screens in mind, ensuring that they’re displayed correctly by default. Let’s take a look at some other advantages Bootstrap provides.
1. Reduced Development Time
Bootstrap is useful when you want to develop prototypes for your websites and web applications quickly. It lets you focus on the main function and structure of the website without having to worry about browser compatibility.
All you need to get started with Bootstrap 5 is a link to the framework’s minified CSS file (i.e., the smallest file possible) in your HTML document and basic knowledge of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. There are several ways of including Bootstrap in your project, but the quickest and easiest of these is to link to the minified CSS file hosted on BootstrapCDN.
To use Bootstrap this way, you’ll need to add this line to the <head> section of your HTML file:
<link href="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/bootstrap@5.0.2/dist/css/bootstrap.min.css" rel="stylesheet" integrity="sha384-EVSTQN3/azprG1Anm3QDgpJLIm9Nao0Yz1ztcQTwFspd3yD65VohhpuuCOmLASjC" crossorigin="anonymous">Make sure you add it before the other CSS files so that your styles override Bootstrap’s default styles.
Certain components of Bootstrap use JavaScript (JS), particularly the Popper.js library and the Bootstrap JavaScript library. To make sure everything works as expected, you can use the bundle version to import the library. To do this, add this line of code at the bottom of your page, just before the closing </body> tag:
<!-- Bootstrap JS bundle →
<script src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/bootstrap@5.0.2/dist/js/bootstrap.bundle.min.js" integrity="sha384-MrcW6ZMFYlzcLA8Nl+NtUVF0sA7MsXsP1UyJoMp4YLEuNSfAP+JcXn/tWtIaxVXM" crossorigin="anonymous"></script>2. A Large and Active Community
Because Bootstrap is so popular, there are many resources and media available. Since it was published in 2011 under an open-source license, more than 1000 people have contributed to the initial project. The creator and maintainer of the project, Mark Otto, is now the senior design director at GitHub (owned by Microsoft), so it has the support of important web organizations such as Fox News, MeteorJS, and Apple Maps Connect.
As a popular open-source project, Bootstrap has an active and useful online community, with many discussions available to help you find solutions to your problems, or advise how best to use the framework. For example, Stack Overflow (a well-known community site where developers swap tips and advice) contains more than 100,000 questions with Bootstrap-related tags such as “twitter-bootstrap” or “bootstrap-5."
3. Highly Customizable
There are many personalized themes you can use to help you make your website unique. As well as those available on the Bootstrap website, it’s quick and easy to search for ones from other providers.
As Bootstrap is open source and customizable, you can create a theme from scratch, or make changes to others.
Disadvantages of Bootstrap
1. Similarity
The fact that Bootstrap is easy to use can be a drawback if you’re using the default theme and colors. You might come across the one you’ve chosen on other websites.
As with all front-end frameworks, you should customize it by adding components or styles if you want the design of your website to be unique.
2. Learning curve
Like all other frameworks, Bootstrap requires a bit of effort to learn how to use it. But since you have this course to help you get started, that shouldn’t be a problem! 😁
Let’s Recap!
Bootstrap helps developers save time.
Bootstrap has a large and active community and allows a high level of customization of designs.
However, you might find your theme on other websites if you don’t customize it. Learning to use Bootstrap also requires a certain amount of effort.
Now you’ve seen the pros and cons of using Bootstrap for your projects, you’re ready to learn to use the framework to create responsive layouts.
