Bootstrap is a front-end for designing and . It contains– and -based design templates for , forms, buttons, navigation and other interface components, as well as optional extensions. Unlike many web frameworks, it concerns itself with only.
Bootstrap is the second most-starred project on , with over 95 thousand stars and more than 40 thousand forks.
Origin
Bootstrap, originally named Twitter Blueprint, was developed by Mark Otto and Jacob Thornton at as a framework to encourage consistency across internal tools. Before Bootstrap, various libraries were used for interface development, which led to inconsistencies and a high maintenance burden. According to Twitter developer Mark Otto:
“A super small group of developers and I got together to design and build a new internal tool and saw an opportunity to do something more. Through that process, we saw ourselves build something much more substantial than another internal tool. Months later, we ended up with an early version of Bootstrap as a way to document and share common design patterns and assets within the company.”
After a few months of development by a small group, many developers at Twitter began to contribute to the project as a part of Hack Week, a -style week for the Twitter development team. It was renamed from Twitter Blueprint to Bootstrap, and released as an open source project on August 19, 2011.It has continued to be maintained by Mark Otto, Jacob Thornton, and a small group of core developers, as well as a large community of contributors.
On January 31, 2012, Bootstrap 2 was announced. This release added the twelve-column grid layout and components, as well as changes to many of the existing components. The Bootstrap 3 release was announced on 19 August 2013, moving to a approach and using a .
On October 29, 2014, Mark Otto announced Bootstrap 4 was in development. The first alpha version of Bootstrap 4 was deployed on August 19, 2015.
Features
Bootstrap is compatible with the latest versions of the , , , , and browsers, although some of these browsers are not supported on all platforms.
Since version 2.0 it also supports . This means the layout of web pages adjusts dynamically, taking into account the characteristics of the device used (desktop, tablet, mobile phone).
Starting with version 3.0, Bootstrap adopted a philosophy, emphasizing responsive design by default.
The version 4.0 alpha release added and support.
Bootstrap is open source and available on GitHub. Developers are encouraged to participate in the project and make their own contributions to the platform.
Structure and function
Example of a webpage using Bootstrap framework rendered in
Bootstrap is modular and consists essentially of a series of that implement the various components of the toolkit. A stylesheet called bootstrap less includes the components stylesheets. Developers can adapt the Bootstrap file itself, selecting the components they wish to use in their project.
Adjustments are possible to a limited extent through a central configuration stylesheet. More profound changes are possible by the Less declarations.
The use of Less stylesheet language allows the use of variables, functions and operators, nested selectors, as well as so-called .
Since version 2.0, the configuration of Bootstrap also has a special “Customize” option in the documentation. Moreover, the developer chooses on a form the desired components and adjusts, if necessary, the values of various options to their needs. The subsequently generated package already includes the pre-built CSS style sheet.
As of Bootstrap 4, will be used for stylesheets instead of Less.
Grid system and responsive design comes standard with a 1170 pixel wide, grid layout. Alternatively, the developer can use a variable-width layout. For both cases, the toolkit has four variations to make use of different resolutions and types of devices: mobile phones, portrait and landscape, tablets and PCs with low and high resolution. Each variation adjusts the width of the columns.
Stylesheets
Bootstrap provides a set of stylesheets that provide basic style definitions for all key HTML components. These provide a uniform, modern appearance for formatting text, tables and form elements.
Re-usable components
In addition to the regular HTML elements, Bootstrap contains other commonly used interface elements. The components are implemented as CSS classes, which must be applied to certain HTML elements in a page.
JavaScript components
Bootstrap comes with several JavaScript components in the form of plugins. They provide additional user interface elements such as dialog boxes, tooltips, and carousels. They also extend the functionality of some existing interface elements, including for example an auto-complete function for input fields. In version 2.0, the following JavaScript plugins are supported: Modal, Dropdown, Scrollspy, Tab, Tooltip, Popover, Alert, Button, Collapse, Carousel and Typeahead
