Bootstrap Front-End Framework Getting Started Guide

Bootstrap is a popular front-end framework that makes it easy to build responsive and mobile-first websites and applications. It was first released in 2011 by Twitter.

Bootstrap is built on top of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, and it provides a set of pre-designed UI components and layouts that you can use to speed up your development process. These components include navigation bars, buttons, forms, and more.

To get started with Bootstrap, you'll need to include its CSS and JavaScript files in your project. You can do this by adding a few lines of code to your HTML file.

Bootstrap's grid system is a powerful tool that allows you to create responsive layouts that adapt to different screen sizes and devices. It's based on a 12-column grid that you can use to arrange your content in a flexible and modular way.

Bootstrap is a free and open source front end framework that makes it easier to code beautiful, fully responsive, and heavily interactive websites and web applications.

It was created in mid-2010 by Mark Otto and Jacob Thornton, two Twitter employees who were developing internal tools to maintain consistency and improve the efficiency of web development.

These internal tools were so useful that Mark and Jacob decided to make them available to the broader web development community, and in 2011, Bootstrap was born.

18.9% of all websites in the world use Bootstrap, according to W3Techs, which is a staggering number.

Bootstrap provides developers with a suite of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files that contain reusable page elements, styles, and interactions, making it much faster to build a website compared to designing and coding common UI elements from scratch.

Bootstrap is an HTML, CSS, and JS library that simplifies the development of informative web pages. It provides basic style definitions for all HTML elements, resulting in a uniform appearance across web browsers.

Bootstrap comes with several JavaScript components that don't require other libraries like jQuery. These components provide additional user interface elements such as dialog boxes, tooltips, progress bars, navigation drop-downs, and carousels.

The most prominent components of Bootstrap are its layout components, which affect an entire web page. These components implement a CSS Flexbox layout through defining rows and columns.

Here are the five predefined fixed widths for Bootstrap containers:

Bootstrap's pre-built components and templates make it easy to build different designs. It comes with a rich assortment of resources, including ready-made button styles and responsive breakpoints.

Bootstrap is an HTML, CSS, and JS library that simplifies the development of informative web pages. It provides basic style definitions for all HTML elements, resulting in a uniform appearance across web browsers.

Bootstrap offers a range of CSS classes for customizing the appearance of web page elements. For example, it includes light- and dark-colored tables, page headings, pull quotes, and highlighted text.

One of the key features of Bootstrap is its layout components, which affect the entire web page. The basic layout component is called "Container", and developers can choose between a fixed-width container and a fluid-width container.

Bootstrap's layout components implement a CSS Flexbox layout through defining rows and columns. This allows for a flexible and responsive design that adapts to different screen sizes.

Bootstrap is incredibly popular because it vastly improves the web development process. Its pre-built components and templates make it easy to create different designs, such as magazine-style blog layouts or dynamic dashboards.

Bootstrap's pre-built components include buttons, which can be customized with extra options or custom CSS. The framework also provides breakpoints based on common device and screen sizes, allowing developers to adapt a website design to different sizes.

Some of the key features of Bootstrap 5 include a new offcanvas menu component, the removal of jQuery dependence, and the rewriting of the grid system. These changes improve the framework's performance and flexibility.

Using Bootstrap can save developers a significant amount of time. With its pre-designed components, developers can quickly build a basic template and then add the necessary components. This limits the amount of custom CSS that needs to be written.

Bootstrap's components, such as buttons, are fundamental HTML elements that are styled with a base class and extended with modifier classes. This makes it easy to add common styles to elements without repeating CSS properties.

Here are some of the key benefits of using Bootstrap:

Bootstrap is widely recognized for its cross-browser compatibility, ensuring consistent rendering and functionality across various web browsers.

Each browser interprets HTML and CSS slightly differently, so as a developer you have to be prepared to manage those differences.

Websites built using Bootstrap will appear and work consistently on popular browsers such as Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Microsoft Edge, and Opera.

Bootstrap does not provide explicit support for more cutting-edge browsers such as Blink or Gecko, but it's expected to display and operate correctly in these browsers as well.

Using Bootstrap unfortunately doesn't completely negate the need to perform cross-browser testing of your website, especially with older browser versions.

Bootstrap 5 has some exciting new features that set it apart from its predecessor, Bootstrap 4. In fact, Bootstrap 5.3.0 was released in May 2023, chock-full of new features!

One of the most notable differences is the addition of Dark Mode, which is a major upgrade from Bootstrap 4. You'll also find more color flexibility in Bootstrap 5, allowing for even more customization options.

Here are some key differences between Bootstrap 5 and Bootstrap 4:

Bootstrap 5 also offers a range of grids, including XS-XXL, which is an upgrade from the XS-XL range in Bootstrap 4.

Building a responsive site is easier than ever with Bootstrap. Bootstrap offers a pre-built grid system that makes it easy to create an organized, flexible, and consistent layout for your entire website.

With Bootstrap, you can build a responsive website with little effort. Bootstrap comes with responsive styles, like containers and media queries, to ensure your site adjusts to the viewport. This means you don't have to worry about whether your visitors are using desktops, tablets, or mobile devices.

To ensure consistency across your site, use Bootstrap's default settings, utility classes, and component elements. This will help ensure the front end of your site looks consistent, even if multiple people are building it out.

Building a responsive site is a breeze with Bootstrap. You can create a responsive site with little effort, thanks to Bootstrap's pre-built grid system, which includes different media queries.

Bootstrap offers a pre-built grid system that makes it easier to create an organized, flexible, and consistent layout for your entire website. This grid system is fully responsive, ensuring that your website will adjust to the viewport.

With Bootstrap, you don't have to worry about whether your visitors are using desktops, tablets, or mobile devices. Bootstrap comes with responsive styles, like containers and media queries, to ensure your site adjusts to the viewport.

Building a responsive site is much easier using Bootstrap than doing so from scratch. You'll only need a basic knowledge of coding to get started.

Here are some key benefits of using Bootstrap for building a responsive site:

Bootstrap is a free and open-source front-end framework that makes it easier to code beautiful, fully responsive, and heavily interactive websites and web applications. It's a wise move to learn Bootstrap, as knowing how to utilize this framework is a valuable skill set for web developers of all stripes.

Building a responsive site requires attention to detail, especially when it comes to navigation. The navbar-nav subcomponent is a crucial tool for adding links to your navigation bar.

To use navbar-nav, you need to wrap the modifier class nav-link around the word you want to hyperlink. This is a straightforward process that can be done in a few simple steps.

You can change the default styling of Bootstrap CSS by creating a custom CSS file, such as main.css.

Adding custom CSS changes to a file like main.css is straightforward, and you can save it in the same folder as your Bootstrap files.

To override the default styles, simply add one line of code to the header of your index.html file. This will ensure that your custom CSS takes precedence.

The process of overriding default CSS styles works for both precompiled and source code versions of Bootstrap.

The toggler is a crucial element in navigation bars, especially on mobile devices. It's hidden on desktop screens but appears on mobile when the navigation bar content needs to be collapsed to fit the smaller screen.

The toggler button is typically placed on the right side of the mobile screen, with the brand name on the left. This design allows for a clean and organized layout.

You can define the navbar-toggler style to customize its appearance, and clicking on it will reveal the collapsed content. This is a great way to save space on mobile devices while still providing easy access to navigation options.

Alerts can be added to your site to provide important messages to visitors.

Bootstrap offers eight default colors for alert messages.

You can add an alert to indicate a visitor has successfully created an account, for example.

It will look like this on the front-end of your site.

If you've loaded the compiled JS onto your site, you can also add a dismiss button to let visitors close the alert once they've read it.

To change the default styling of Bootstrap CSS, create a file called main.css and add custom CSS changes. Save this file in the same folder as your Bootstrap CSS and JS files and index.html file.

You can add a line of code to the header of your index.html file to override the default styles. This line of code should be placed right below the code that loads Bootstrap CSS.

The structure of your index.html file should have the custom CSS file loaded before the Bootstrap CSS file. This ensures that your custom styles override the default styles in the index.html file.

You can use CSS selectors to apply unique style properties to HTML elements on your page. For example, you can use the class selector to target specific elements and make changes to their styles.

Customizing Bootstrap can be done using both the precompiled version and the source code version. If you have experience with SASS, you can directly edit the Bootstrap SASS source code.

A simple example of editing the precompiled Bootstrap is shown in Tania Rascia's layout. She added custom CSS to the custom.css file using CSS selectors and made several changes to her page's styles.

Bootstrap 5 introduces a fresh set of Sass variables, CSS variables, and utilities that enable developers to easily set colors, background colors, and border colors in their projects.

You can now choose from multiple color modes, giving you the flexibility to create your own unique themes or experiment with different color schemes to suit your style.

With the new color flexibility, you can customize colors, background colors, and border colors with ease, making it a great feature for designers and developers alike.

Bootstrap 5 also introduced multiple color modes, allowing you to create your own unique themes or experiment with different color schemes.

The source code version of Bootstrap is a great option if you want to change and customize the files any way you want.

This version requires you to have Autoprefixer and a SASS compiler, which makes the set-up process longer and more difficult.

The source code version includes the precompiled CSS, JS, and font assets as well as source files for the CSS, JS, and icon fonts respectively.

The structure of the source code folder includes a dist/ folder that contains everything listed in the precompiled section, a docs/ folder for Bootstrap documentation, a js/ folder for Bootstrap JS, and a scss/ folder for Bootstrap CSS.

You'll need to unzip the folder to see the structure, which can be a bit overwhelming at first.

The precompiled version is simpler and faster to use, but the source code version gives you more control and flexibility.