Jonatan Soto wrote:
Would be anyone interested in convert the existing frontend themes into
Bootstrap http://twitter.github.io/bootstrap/?
The idea is to create a theme from scratch that will replace the current
default and multiplex themes.
[snip]
While I think having more modern front-end themes would be great, let me
play devil's advocate...
Why Bootstrap?
Why not Zurb Foundation (http://foundation.zurb.com/), HTML5 Boilerplate
(http://html5boilerplate.com/) or some other starting point? Or as
Scott Kellum argued on the Compass list (on January 8), use a
combination of components such as Susy, Sassy-buttons, Color-Schemer,
and Modular-Scale.
Bootstrap is an easy way of getting a lot of functionality, but it's
arguable overused. It's fast becoming to HTML5 frameworks what Times
Roman is to web fonts. If you want your web shop to look like everyone
else's web shop, it's a great choice. If you want to differentiate
yourself in the market, use something else.
Plus, many Bootstrap-based themes just throw the whole bloated framework
at the browser, regardless of which pieces they use, slowing page loads
and wasting mobile bandwidth allocations. But Bootstrap is built on
LESS, so you can choose which chunks of CSS and JavaScript should be
included in your site's copy of Bootstrap, as well as using variables
and mixins to get more consistent CSS styling.
LESS is based on JavaScript, which practically requires you to install
Node.js to use it. Zurb Foundation is based on SASS, which is written
in Ruby. It looks like SASS will run on JRuby on the JVM.
To summarize:
- Bootstrap is just one of several great HTML5 frameworks
- You can get the same effects using straight CSS3 and JavaScript, or
smaller projects for areas like responsive design, button styling, text
spacing, etc.
- Bootstrap is overused
- Bootstrap is frequently ineptly used, penalizing the end user
- A major reason to use Bootstrap is to use LESS and other languages
that abstract CSS and JavaScript
- Bootstrap may not be the best framework for a Java-based project
I hope this helps.
Regards,
Richard Siddall
