Bootstrap by Twitter, or how I got to double my rate

[Ensign Steve]

You guys, guess what, I get to do another website. This is probably my punishment from Jesus because on NYE this guy I just met was pushing on me pretty hard to do a website for his church and I had to finally shut him down with a "you couldn't afford me."

So anyway, this semester in addition to developing this course thing I get to do the website for the project. Yay.

It's from scratch so I googled around for css tools and discovered this gem, Bootstrap, from Twitter which is probably old news but I just found it and it's a lifesaver, thus the point of this thread calling attention to it.

All I used was the one stylesheet and this template and to me it's like a generic web 2.0 wrapper to put around my plain content. This represents about 5 minutes work:

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I'll flesh it out and tart it up with the university's colors, but 99% of the stuff I hate to do is already done. Frickin' awesome.

[Ensign Steve]

Since I've been using it, I see it everywhere!

Pinterest, this thing, this other thing.

There's a whole site for sites built with bootstrap (meta-ironically built with bootstrap itself), but I also keep finding them in the wild.

Here's mine, but it's pretty sparse so far. We're not open for business yet, so we don't have much to say other than promoting the fact that we exist.

[Goliath]

Remember, sometimes it's okay to do things old school.

[Ensign Steve]

That's awesome! I saw a website once (an official website for a state agency in GA, no less) that put the entire layout in a single image file and used an image map for the links. No accessibility issues there, I'm sure!

[Ensign Steve]

Ha! So my professor goes, "Why don't you do web development? You could make a lot of money," and I'm like, "uh, because I really don't enjoy it," and he goes, "Oh, too bad. You're really good at it."



It's like, I expect that kind of thing from people who don't know anything about CS, but I feel like he just told me I should be a transcriptionist because I type so fast or something. I told him that, too. heh

[Miisa]

I, OTOH, love doing it, but have the talent and creativity of a lazy toad.

[Ensign Steve]

Oh, that too! Don't get me wrong, I love doing it for fun, it's just the clients I hate.

[seebs]

This thread helped a lot when a consulty guy who's taking over a thing I was working on referred to "bootstrapping" some parts, and it's this.

Looks awesome.

[Janet]

I'm trying to decide if this is a big enough thing to buy a book on it for the library. Is it worth it?

[Ensign Steve]

I mean, I think it's a pretty powerful tool. I don't even use all of it (like the compiling with LESS, or whatever) and just the style sheet alone is totally powerful as far as the grid and menus, button, alerts, what have you. The grid especially is amazing for laying out elements.

Do you know CSS? Cuz this is just like a generic CSS style sheet with all kinds of bells and whistles done for you already. For me I think it's just easier to use and alter one that's already made instead of trying to design one out from scratch, and I could never make it look half good or cohesive on its own. Which is exactly what this is for.

And it's free, wtf is that about? It's like twitter already had this beautiful design and they're like, here, use it I guess. If you're over the web 2.0 candy colors or gradients or rounded corners, you can edit it. For me I just wanted something pretty I could wrap around my content and not think about.

[Ensign Steve]

Oh, wait. I just understood your actual question. To that I have to say I have no idea. I don't learn this sort of thing from books, just by doing, which I think might be the case for a lot of Bootstrap's target audience, but then who am I to say? I also have no idea how many people actually use it. I never heard of it until I googled for that exact thing, but now I'll recommend it to anyone.

Do you have a specific book in mind?

[Janet]

I thought I'd seen one yesterday, but when I tried to find it again it looks like it wasn't on the same thing. It really didn't seem like something that would need a manual, which is why I wondered. No one reviews computer books for libraries anymore, the last blog stopped over a year ago, so I'm having to ask or guess for a lot of it.

[Ensign Steve]

Look upon my creation and fear me!

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It's so lame. I have done nothing for the last decade except try to educate myself out of web dev, and here I am suddenly enjoying it. I'm not even getting paid! What gives?

Here's what I like about it. The guy is so on the page with me. He's like, "I don't care how it looks, I just want to get the information out there." You should see his website, it's all circa 1994 with broken image links for bullets and shit. I'm dying to redo it for him.

So he gets that I'm not a content creator, and I do not want to be, which has been the biggest pain in my ass in the last few sites I have done. They're like "we should have a website, will you make us a website?" and I'm like "sure, where's your content?" and they're like "buh, you mean you don't do that part, too?" It's like, you're the one asking for the webpage, what the hell do you want to say to people?

Meanwhile, this guy is like "here's all the text, can you put some logos wherever?" and he's not like "why is that part orange?" or "can you make the buttons look like jolly ranchers that sparkle when you mouse over them? (no of course I have no idea what the buttons should actually do, I just need buttons!)"

Okay, except one thing, and this is my favorite part. You see that background image? That's actual data from one of his publications and he asked if I could figure out a way to work it in there just for looks like this. (I have no idea who they got to do it that year, and I do wonder if they got paid.) I'm like "uh, I'll see what I can do," but I am no graphic designer. So I just toss it in as a tiled background image and he fucking loves it. It was originally black, but he goes, "can you make it blue? like the ocean?"

I'm hopeful I will get to do some actual computer science in my grad school career at some point, though. Just kidding, seriously I am already supposed to present a poster at the above thing, so yay!

[livius drusus]

I'd buy that for five dollars.