After doing some research and having extensively used Bootstrap myself, it’s finally time for us to take a closer look at both the good and bad of this incredibly popular CSS framework.
The Good
- Documentation: Bootstrap has amazing documentation on each component. So if I want to update a project I worked on a few months ago that uses Bootstrap I know where to go to find documentation if I get stuck. Also, the more I use Bootstrap the more it is ingrained into my brain and the less time is spent searching the docs.
- jQuery Functionality: I often collect various jQuery plugins into a project to achieve the look and functionality I was looking for. Bootstrap contains a collection of jQuery components that you know are stable on modern browsers compatible and works with your jQuery version. Also, the styling matches all of the other components in the your project, which is a huge plus.
- Best Style Practices: Based upon my professional design experience with Bootstrap so far, I’ve learned a lot about graphic design. This mixture of knowledge worked to some degree but I know there are a lot of knowledge gaps. I hit my lack of understanding head-on when I first learned Bootstrap with all of the new terminology written for software engineers. After gradually learning more of it, I was able to gain a much better grasp of best practices for styling on websites, which was completely pioneered by Bootstrap’s framework.
The Bad
- Style Overrides: If you are not compiling the source CSS files, you will often find yourself using Chrome’s DevTools inspect tool to find the default style properties. You will then have to override these styles in a new stylesheet. This creates some code redundancy causing your site to load slower. The best approach is to compile your own version of Bootstrap with the source files because you can eliminate the redundancy and hide or delete any code your project is not using.
Admittedly, that’s the only con that I could come up with. As a whole, Bootstrap is pretty revolutionary in how it has reshaped CSS styling as we know it. I know that down the road I will continue using it for all website development, and I recommend you do the same.