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Used everywhere

Most web pages nowadays are exciting documents that have animations, icons and divided sections that can pull the user in. But like most things, if the user has to think too much about it, your website can become tiring to figure out. Many websites nowadays use Bootstrap and so if you decide to go with a similar layout, it can be easier for the client to figure out and find exactly what you are selling. Standards for borders, spacing and text are all a welcome addition to any site where I want to quickly find information. Think about it; are you likely to buy a car with a steering wheel or one with controls similar to those of a F-14 fighter jet. In the right situation, driving your car like Maverick and Goose chasing down a MiG would be fun, but most of the time, we just need our cars to get us to work or school on time. For the normal day-to-day of things, a fighter jet or a funky, animated website may be too much of a hassle to actually figure out. Another bonus is that Bootstrap looks good on any device. You may not have 1000’s of options for personalizing your website, but if you want something on the fly that looks good on smartphones, tablets and computers, Bootstrap is a great solution. Vanilla CSS is great, and now with grid and flexbox, CSS is just as responsive as bootstrap, but for some reason whenever I use vanilla CSS, I always have issues with things looking centered or text being cut off. It hasn’t been an issue when using Bootstrap.

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You don’t have to reinvent the wheel to design a new tire

If you really want to make your full-stack site from scratch, for a newbie like myself at least, it’s easy to get lost in the sauce. Thousands of questions can come up while designing your website and it can be hard to see the forest for the trees. For me, it’s easier to copy a design than just come up with one off the top of my head. If your goal is to become a CSS designer, then I guess you can’t get much better than CSS, and nowadays there’s SASS and a whole slew of different things you can do with animations and such. However, if you are like me, building functional apps and getting experience with the backend is a major concern and at the moment, it’s more of a concern than using CSS to center the text inside a div. Although I really love pondering design ideas, sometimes I need to run the race and cross the finish line before I can contemplate every accent or curve in the track. Bootstrap allows me to see a more refined product in turn allowing me to delve deeper and dream bigger than I may have originally. If I can visualize the win, winning becomes a lot easier. Bootstrap allows you to have a pretty layout up and running fairly quickly so that you can forget about the design and get down to the nitty gritty.

Bootstrap and CSS work together

When I first started learning about how to change colors, fonts and so much else, CSS was like magic. But like any new toy, CSS can be easy to overdo. I felt like I was creating layouts that were overly colorful and with too many stylized fonts. The Bootstrap offerings are clean, simple and look good on any device. That being said, you can easily incorporate CSS into your Bootstrap project and override any class with a personalized CSS class. So, if you are looking for that special color or special font you can still do that.

Final Thoughts

I guess at the end of the day it comes down to what you are trying to do. Yes, I think CSS is immensely important when it comes to designing webpages. As I mentioned earlier, it’s what drew me to web development as a profession and what can draw users to your site. But if your goal is to build a full-stack app, spending days on the layout and getting your text boxes just right, might not be the best use of your time. Even though I admire and one day hope to emulate what some designers are doing to create engaging sites, there is a reason why many of the websites we use on a daily basis look the same - it’s easier to quickly find the information you are looking for. Will I always feel like this about Bootstrap? Probably not. There is so much new technology being created to simplify complex designs and do more than display content (React and Angular) that as soon as I begin learning about this technology, I’m sure that Bootstrap will be a thing of the past, but until then, if I need to spin something up real quick that is user friendly and functional, I’ll be turning to Bootstrap.

I used Bootstrap to design my profile page.