Bootstrap Archives - The Site Slinger

Is Bootstrap the Right Choice for WordPress Theme Development?

Is WordPress theme development with Bootstrap still a valid option? Let’s find out.

When it comes to building a website, there are a few methods you can choose from. The first is the from-scratch approach, which involves hiring skilled developers to create a custom solution tailored to your needs. While effective, this method can be costly.

Alternatively, you can use a site builder that offers pre-designed templates and basic features. This allows you to get your site up and running quickly, but it may lack a professional look and feel.

But what if there was a way to combine the best of both worlds? Enter WordPress theme development with Bootstrap. Many companies are now choosing WordPress as their platform of choice and customizing their themes using Bootstrap.

In this post, we’ll explore whether WordPress theme development using Bootstrap 5 truly provides businesses with the value they desire.

Introducing Bootstrap: The Ultimate CSS Framework

What is Bootstrap?

For those unfamiliar with Bootstrap, it is a CSS framework designed to create responsive user interfaces. Initially developed by Twitter to streamline their back-end engineers’ workflow, Bootstrap’s source code was publicly released in 2011.

Today, Bootstrap reigns as the most popular CSS framework across the internet, with 165k stars on GitHub at the time of writing.

The magic of Bootstrap lies in its responsive capabilities. By providing a collection of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files, it simplifies site development through pre-defined CSS classes (built on Object-Oriented CSS).

Take, for instance, aligning an image using a native Bootstrap class:

<img class="img-fluid" src="example.jpg" alt="Example Image">

Bootstrap achieves flawless responsiveness by incorporating media queries that adapt to specific screen sizes. It effortlessly transforms WordPress themes into mobile-friendly layouts:

@media (max-width: 768px) {

 /* Styles for small screens */

}

 
@media (min-width: 769px) and (max-width: 1024px) {

 /* Styles for medium screens */

}

@media (min-width: 1025px) {

 /* Styles for large screens */

}

Furthermore, Bootstrap integrates a 12-column grid system built on top of flexbox (starting from Bootstrap 4), complete with predefined classes. Below is a code snippet that creates three equal columns across various screen sizes:

<div class="row">

 <div class="col-sm-4">

   <!-- Column 1 -->

 </div>

 <div class="col-sm-4">

   <!-- Column 2 -->

 </div>

 <div class="col-sm-4">

   <!-- Column 3 -->

 </div>

</div>

With Bootstrap, developers can effortlessly craft visually appealing and highly responsive websites.

The Key Advantages of Bootstrap for WordPress Theme Development

Bootstrap offers a range of benefits beyond its ability to create beautifully responsive websites. Here’s a quick overview of these advantages:

Bug-Free and Browser Compatible

Ensuring a website performs flawlessly across different browsers is crucial for any web developer. With traditional approaches, browser incompatibility can be a persistent issue. However, Bootstrap is a game-changer. Thanks to its extensive community of contributors, any reported issues are quickly addressed. This means websites built with Bootstrap render impeccably, regardless of the browser being used.

Efficient Web Development Process

Time is money, and Bootstrap understands that. By taking care of routine tasks like font handling, media queries, and layout, Bootstrap frees up valuable time for developers. This enables them to focus on building custom features without distractions.

Additionally, Bootstrap provides comprehensive documentation, ensuring developers have immediate access to answers and solutions on various forums.

Flexible Customization

One standout feature of Bootstrap is its flexibility. It’s like going shopping – you can choose the elements you need from the Bootstrap library and create a custom collection.

Furthermore, you can customize the standard Bootstrap library by modifying mixins and reassigning variables directly in the framework’s source code. This allows you to tailor Bootstrap to meet your project’s specific requirements. If you encounter any technical challenges along the way, the skilled front-end developers at the Site Slinger are always available to assist.

Seamless Integration, Minimal Plugins

Often, websites require numerous interactive features, leading developers to rely on various jQuery plugins. However, excessive plugin usage can lead to compatibility issues and version mismatches. The latest version of Bootstrap (starting from version 5) has transitioned completely to vanilla JavaScript, making integration with your site effortless and hassle-free.

Now that you understand the power of Bootstrap in speeding up and enhancing the web development process, the question remains: “Is Bootstrap suitable for WordPress Theme Development?”

WordPress Theme Development with Bootstrap: Is It Worth It?

WordPress is powerful and flexible. As the most popular content management system on the market, choosing WordPress for your site is a smart decision.

WordPress offers a wide range of free and paid ready-made themes that even beginners can easily install. If you have some knowledge of HTML and CSS, you can customize a theme to make it unique and stand out from the rest.

However, these cosmetic changes may not bring you the desired benefits. That’s why many site owners prefer to build a custom WordPress theme. A custom theme provides a truly unique interface with all the necessary features for your specific business.

Creating a one-of-a-kind theme can be a time-consuming process that requires knowledge and skill. Developers not only need to build the theme, but also test it for compatibility with different browsers and devices. This is where WordPress theme development with Bootstrap comes in handy.

While Bootstrap was not originally designed for creating WordPress themes, you can integrate it into your custom theme in several ways. For example, you can include links in your project files to retrieve Bootstrap’s compiled CSS and JavaScript from a CDN (Content Delivery Network).

Developing a WordPress theme with Bootstrap involves creating a specific project structure and following essential steps. However, we won’t delve into those details here.

What’s important is that once you have integrated Bootstrap and WordPress, you can leverage all the great features of the framework, including its built-in classes and the responsive grid system using flexbox. The result will be a theme that works perfectly across different browsers and devices.

In addition, there are many WordPress Bootstrap plugins available that can enhance the functionality of your site. For example, you can use a plugin to add a Bootstrap carousel or transform your navigation menu into a Twitter-style one. The possibilities are endless.

Does WordPress Theme Development With Bootstrap Come With Any Challenges?

While there are numerous benefits to using the Bootstrap framework for WordPress site owners, it does come with its own set of limitations. Here are some well-known challenges that you may encounter when using the CDN version of Bootstrap. However, by opting to work with source files, you can avoid these issues altogether.

Excessive Code Bloat

Bootstrap provides a wide range of classes for creating various web page components. However, this can become overwhelming as not every project requires all of the framework’s classes. Why burden your website with unnecessary code when you only need a select few?

Rigid Breakpoints

The framework employs predefined breakpoints in its media queries. Customizing these breakpoints to meet unique design requirements can be a labor-intensive task for developers. If you’re seeking a truly distinct design, be prepared for some unexpected hurdles.

Uniformity Among Themes

While easy WordPress theme development with Bootstrap is a boon, it also has its drawbacks. Due to its simplicity in installation and operation, Bootstrap has gained immense popularity, leading to a plethora of themes that appear strikingly similar. Many users opt for basic, functional themes without delving deeper to make them truly distinctive.

It’s important to note that these limitations should not discourage you from using Bootstrap. Seasoned developers, such as the front-end professionals at the Site Slinger, possess the necessary expertise to overcome these challenges effortlessly.

Wrapping Up

In conclusion, the Bootstrap CSS framework offers a wealth of benefits for WordPress theme development. Among its key advantages are browser compatibility, efficient web development processes, flexible customization options, and seamless integration with minimal plugins.

However, it’s equally important to recognize potential challenges such as code bloat, rigid breakpoints, and theme uniformity. Despite these challenges, the framework’s advantages far outweigh its limitations.

Bootstrap’s potential in enhancing and hastening the web development process, and its compatibility with WordPress makes it an invaluable resource for creating unique, responsive themes.

So what IS responsive web design, anyway?

With the world going mobile there’s no way around it: your site has to adapt to any and every device that’s out there. Think about it… How many devices have you used today? I can count checking my email on three already!

Don’t get lost in buzzwords, understand why/how responsive web design works.

In the past, the solution to differing device screens was to build an alternate version of your site, or even multiple apps optimized for the various mobile OS’s. However, these options often prove to be too costly in development and cumbersome to perform maintenance and updates. So what is today’s solution? Responsive web design!

Well, you ask… what IS responsive design? It’s one of those buzz words being thrown around a lot right now.

Responsive design allows for a single site to be designed and developed, yet performs effectively and beautifully across devices of varying screen sizes and orientations.

There are a few key features that allow this to work:

A flexible framework for content – the ‘grid’

The foundation of the responsive design, the grid provides easy content management across varying screen sizes through the repositioning of content areas or boxes.

Check out some great info on how to use the grid in design and download some basic templates here.

Responsive web design — Content moves based on screen size, but should still relay the same message in an aesthetically pleasing way. (Image courtesy of DezignMatterz)

Adaptable visual content

From images to backgrounds and graphical motifs, a solidly designed responsive site must be able to communicate your vision consistently, regardless of device and screen size. These elements of the page must be able to move around and make sense from a user perspective and still effectively tell the user what you’re saying/selling.

Check out some great examples of sites that do this here.

The ability to respond to devices

Generally done via ‘media queries,’ a responsive site must determine the best display configuration and adapt in an instant to changes in screen orientation and size. This should be done in such a way that the user doesn’t notice the site changing.

Check out some great examples of this here.

The Site Slinger understands the need to develop websites in a cost-effective, multi-platform manner. We love coding PSD to responsive design! You shouldn’t spend all of your resources managing updates or site variations across a seemingly infinite sea of different mobile devices. That’s why we build effective, high-value, responsive sites, giving you the ability to deliver content consistently and reliably to all visitors, whether they’re on a desktop, tablet, or smartphone.

If you’d like to discuss the options for translating your web design into a fully responsive site, please contact us, or submit a quote. We’re happy to turn your vision into a pixel-perfect site via our best-in-the-world PSD to HTML coding.

*For further reference on responsive elements see, “Understanding the Elements of Responsive Web Design”

Responsive Design: Why You’re Doing It Wrong

Responsive design isn’t a fad that arose because of a cool CSS technique, it’s an answer to a problem. Always remember that and constantly ask yourself whether or not you’re really adequately addressing that problem. If you’re using copy and paste to insert your media query breakpoints, your solution might be flawed.

Let’s discuss why media queries exist and how we can leverage them to truly solve the quandary of the ubiquitous web. Let’s talk about why you should let your content determine the breakpoints of a layout, not hypothetical screen sizes.

This article is part of our series on “looking beyond desktop design”, brought to you in partnership with Heart Internet VPS.

The Idea Behind Media Queries

Responsive Design PSD to Responsive Screenshot

To begin this debate correctly, it’s necessary to discuss why media queries have suddenly become so popular. The answer is of course that “Responsive Design,” a term coined by Ethan Marcotte, is a fantastic way to address an ever-growing problem for web designers.

While everyone was ranting on and on about how the “mobile web” was going to overtake the traditional one, the revolution that took place was much more drastic: the web became ubiquitous.

This “problem” is great for the world as a whole, but a real headache for us. In the past decade, the worldwide web has transformed into something new. It’s no longer bound by the walls that we had previously established. I’ve said this before but it’s worth repeating. While everyone was ranting on and on about how the “mobile web” was going to overtake the traditional one, the revolution that took place was much more drastic: the web became ubiquitous.

At this point in time, we don’t access the web from a single point. We didn’t give up our laptops in favor of smartphones as “experts” predicted. Instead, the web is everywhere we are. It’s not only in our phones and computers, it’s in our tablets, iPods, gaming systems, televisions and even cars.

This trend will only continue as time goes on. Responsive design brings us past a season of creating separate mobile sites and into an era where we develop one site that evolves and adapts to the device that it’s being viewed on. Using media queries, we can present specific CSS to any number of different viewport sizes and make sure that everyone has the best possible experience.

The Problem With Responsive Design

The section above isn’t a semi-historical rant meant to fill space, it’s an important look at the goals that responsive design is meant to achieve. The question then becomes, does it meet these goals? Does responsive design adequately address the problem of ubiquity?

The answer is complicated, at best I can say, “it depends on how you do it.” That’s a confusing statement isn’t it? Responsive design is straightforward: use media queries to serve up custom CSS to different viewport sizes. This is how everyone approaches it right? So how can there be a right and wrong way?

The complexity arises when we begin to discuss a crucial part of this technique: which media queries should I use? Or put a different way, which “breakpoints” should I target for custom CSS? The current popular answer predictably starts with the best “mobile” devices around: the iPhone and iPad (cue angry Android user comments). From these archetypes we establish so-called “generic” smartphone and tablet sizes. Then we move up and address laptops and small desktops and finally large screens. A standard set of media queries, like this one from CSS-Tricks, typically has nine or ten pre-established breakpoints.

What if we focused on the needs of a specific design instead of a hypothetical device use case? What if we built layouts that simply worked everywhere?

To be fair, this system does work to a certain degree. We’ve all seen lots of great responsive sites built using a set similar to Coyier’s above. However, I can’t help but think that this is somehow repeating the same mistake that we made by designing “mobile sites” a few years ago. The entire focus here is on the device viewing the site. Before we even build the site, we have these breakpoints in mind.

But devices change. We’ve already established that the web is being connected to pretty much everything with a power switch, so why are we once again placing so much emphasis on currently common screen sizes? Is there a better alternative? What if we focused on the needs of a specific design instead of a hypothetical device use case? What if we built layouts that simply worked everywhere?

Content Focused Responsive Design

The aforementioned problems with pre-established media queries occurred to me only as I dug in and really started producing responsive work on my own. In theory, the standard suggestions are great but once you apply them to a complex design you’ll discover that those breakpoints don’t always cover it. The problem, as the Boston Globe designers found quickly found out once the site went live, is that issues arise “in the in-between” (for the record, that project is fantastic and any layout issues have largely been addressed). Things get messy when the design is at a size that you didn’t account for and you have to go in and patch the holes after the fact.

I say this as an avid Apple fanboy: stop designing websites for the iPhone.

My question is, why don’t we start there? Instead of going into a project with a set of devices, and consequently media queries, in mind, why don’t we let the design decide? Every web page layout has a point where the browser size lessens its integrity. Our job as designers, in light of the problem of ubiquity, should be to find that size and account for it, then lather, rinse and repeat until all of the weak points are accounted for.

I say this as an avid Apple fanboy: stop designing websites for the iPhone. Instead, design a website that maintains its integrity as its viewport size is reduced to any feasible state. Do keep specific devices in mind as a guide for your design (example: smaller devices tend to be touch-based, so make links large), but don’t put your blinders on and fail to look at the bigger picture: that your design should look good on any screen.

A New Workflow

So what does a content focused responsive design workflow look like? It’s simpler than you think. Obviously, you need a starting point of some kind. If you want to start mobile and go up, great. If you want to start large and come down, also great. I personally find it very difficult to really dig into a design and do it right if I’m starting at the mobile level, but there are many solid arguments for doing it this way.

Something magic happens when you follow this workflow.

Hypothetically, let’s say you started with a large, 1020px wide site. Check it out on the largest screen you can get your hands on and make sure it looks great. Now drag the window and make it smaller until the design gets ugly. There’s your first breakpoint. Set a media query for that point and fix everything that you need to address. Once you’re finished, grab that window and find the next point of ugliness. Repeat these steps until you’re satisfied with the range that you’ve accounted for.

But what about the iPad? What about the Kindle Fire or Samsung’s latest attempt at being relevant? Something magic happens when you follow this workflow. You just made it so that the layout looks good at just about any size. If you did it right, then when you pull it up on your phone or tablet, it’s going to look great.

Layout Only
Keep in mind this discussion refers to layout ratios only. You absolutely don’t get out of testing functionality on different browsers and devices. Responsive design does nothing to account for the fact that different browser engines interpret HTML, CSS and JavaScript differently.

Conclusion

To sum up, media queries and responsive design provide us with an incredibly powerful tool to account for the fact that websites are being viewed by all manner of screens and viewport sizes. However, once we start pegging our designs to a handful of devices, we’re right back where we started. Your goal instead should be to build a layout that’s so versatile that it can handle almost any viewport size thrown at it.

This is all nice in theory, but where’s the example? The jumping off point of this discussion came from a recent attempt of mine to build a responsive image gallery. Check out that article for a look at how a content focused responsive design workflow might look in the wild.

Twitter Bootstrap 2: Bootstrap Goes Responsive

Twitter just released Bootstrap 2.0, an update so large it equates to a near full rewrite. There are quite a few new features and toys to play with, but the real headliner is that the framework is now fully responsive. Join us as we dig in to see how the new grid works and what other cool new features have been added. You’ll learn how to implement Bootstrap in your projects and will also pick up some extremely handy CSS techniques that you can use anywhere.

Recently, we published a piece titled 5 Incredibly Useful Tools Built Into Twitter Bootstrap, which took a look at the basic structure of Twitter’s Bootstrap framework and walked you through implementing some of the major components.

Demo

We’ll be talking about several new Bootstrap features today. If you want to see them in action, stop by the live demo below.

Demo: Click here to launch.

Implementing the Responsive Grid

The most major aspect of Twitter Bootstrap is of course that it is now fully responsive. If you’re still labeling the whole responsive movement as a silly fad in hopes that you can ultimately skip learning the requisite techniques, you’re out of luck. Responsive design is well on its way to being a standard practice instead of a “nice to have” add on. It’s really not as complicated as you might think and tools like Bootstrap make it even easier.

The new responsive grid is twelve columns wide and works much like the sixteen column grid from Bootstrap 1. If you’ve ever used any grid system before, then you’ll feel right at home as there’s nothing too Earth shattering here.

To implement the grid, you pretty much follow the same steps as you always did. Start with a container div, then create a row and fill that row with span(x) divs. Given that it’s a twelve column grid, just make sure the numbers in a row add up to twelve. Try four “span3″ divs, a “span9″ with a “span3″ or even just a straight up “span12″ to go all the way across. Here’s a quick example:

<div class="container">
  <div class="row">
    <div class="span4"><p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet</p></div>
    <div class="span4"><p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet</p></div>
    <div class="span4"><p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet</p></div>
  </div>
</div>

The above represents a static grid. It will still be responsive, it just won’t respond to every minute browser window size change, only those set by media queries. If you want a fluid grid, use the fluid classes:

<div class="container-fluid">
  <div class="row-fluid">
    <div class="span4"><p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet</p></div>
    <div class="span4"><p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet</p></div>
    <div class="span4"><p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet</p></div>
  </div>
</div>

The Media Queries

The included media queries are listed below, starting at mobile and working their way up. Basically, each one goes in and changes the size of the columns to reflow the layout to something more appropriate for the viewport.

@media (max-width: 480px)
@media (max-width: 768px)
@media (min-width: 768px) and (max-width: 980px)
@media (max-width: 980px)
@media (min-width: 980px)
@media (min-width: 1200px)

The first media query (480px and below) targets smartphones and pretty much breaks everything down to a single, 100% width column. This may be a bit oversimplified for your tastes, but the beauty of frameworks like this is that they’re only suggestions, you’re encouraged to customize to your heart’s content.

The next media query targets portrait tablets with a range of 480px to 768px, then up to 980px for landscape tablets and on up to standard desktops and large displays.

For the static grid, individual columns start at 70px wide, then jump down to 60px and finally down to 42px before going 100% width for mobile.

Tip: Grab the Right Download
Interestingly enough, the media queries aren’t included in the default download from the Bootstrap homepage. If you want them, you’ll have to grab the GitHub Download.

Nice Attribute Value Selector Usage

If you check out the code for the media queries, you might learn a neat trick or two. For instance, the devs have implemented a solid example of the “Arbitrary Substring Attribute Value Selector”, which I wrote about in CSS Selectors: Just the Tricky Bits.

Bootstrap has many classes that use the word “span” (span1, span2, etc.), and rather than typing out each individually, the ASAVS grabs them all in one go with this fancy bit of code: [class*=”span”]. This selector actually digs through the HTML and finds anything with “span” in the class name, regardless of what follows it. Even a class of “spansomethingtotallycrazy” would be targeted.

Content Transformation

Though the heart of the media queries is to reflow the columns, there’s a lot more going on here as well. The developers have actually taken the time to restructure many of the elements so that they transform as the viewport size changes.

For instance, the navigation menus change pretty drastically when you’re viewing on a tablet or smartphone. To see an example, test out the Bootstrap Homepage. At full size, the navigation menu is a simple horizontal list of text links.

On a tablet or smartphone though, the text is cleared out and replaced with a button up in the top right of the screen.

Tapping on the button will expand the new menu area. Here we have a vertical list of links, which allows for larger tappable areas.

Responsive Images

The navigation menu isn’t the only thing that changes size with the viewports, lots of other objects do as well, from simple buttons up to more complicated objects like image carousels. To pull off the automatically resizing images, Twitter has taken the “max-width: 100%;” route. Here’s the full snippet:

img {
  max-width: 100%;
  height: auto;
  border: 0;
  -ms-interpolation-mode: bicubic;
}

This makes it so that, as those columns and rows resize themselves, the image width will max out at the width of the parent column. Also notice the “-ms-interpolation-mode: bicubic;” line. This is a fairly obscure property that essentially makes image re-sizing smoother in IE.

More New Stuff

The responsive functionality is definitely the coolest new feature of Bootstrap, but there’s a lot more here to get excited about. Here are three of my favorite items:

Progress Bars

Bootstrap now has cross-browser-compatible progress bars that are super easy to implement. Just insert a snippet like the one below:

<div class="progress">
  <div class="bar" style="width: 30%;"></div>
</div>

The “width: 30%” here resembles how far along the progress bar will be. If you want to change that to half full, just type in 50%.

Button Groups

Button groups are a bit like breadcrumb navigation in that they’re individual buttons that are all smushed together. Normally, this takes a good chunk of code to pull off. Not only do you have to style the general button theme, you also have to make the first and last button different.

With Bootstrap, all you need are some links with the “btn” class inside of a “btn-group” div.

<div class="btn-group">
  <a class="btn" href="#">One</a>
  <a class="btn" href="#">Two</a>
  <a class="btn" href="#">Three</a>
</div>

Carousels

The old Bootstrap JavaScript plugins have been revamped and some completely new ones have been added. My favorite here is the new jQuery carousel. The example code below may seem hefty, but if you break it down it’s pretty simple. The slide contents gets thrown in the “.item” div and an optional caption can be added. Navigation is tossed in at the end.

<div id="myCarousel" class="carousel slide">
    <div class="carousel-inner">
         
        <div class="item active">
            <img src="assets/img/bootstrap-mdo-sfmoma-01.jpg" alt="">
            <div class="carousel-caption">
                <h4>Third Thumbnail label</h4>
                <p>Lorem ipsum...</p>
            </div><!--end caption-->
        </div><!--end item-->
         
         <div class="item">
            <img src="assets/img/bootstrap-mdo-sfmoma-02.jpg" alt="">
            <div class="carousel-caption">
                <h4>Third Thumbnail label</h4>
                <p>Lorem ipsum...</p>
            </div><!--end caption-->
        </div><!--end item-->
         
    </div><!--end inner-->
     
    <!--nav-->
    <a class="left carousel-control" href="#myCarousel" data-slide="prev">‹</a>
    <a class="right carousel-control" href="#myCarousel" data-slide="next">›</a>
</div>

Conclusion

When a large company like Twitter puts out a free resource, it’s a gamble to actually build your workflow around it. One major issue is that you can’t know for sure how well it will be kept up in the long run. Fortunately, it seems like Bootstrap is, for now at least, a fairly high priority at Twitter. The new version represents a massive amount of time and effort and it really shows. This is turning into one extremely extensive boilerplate.

I’m personally stoked that Twitter deemed it necessary to take Bootstrap responsive. This will definitely help further the cause of responsive design that works well across not only all major browsers, but all major devices as well.

Leave a comment below and let us know what you think of Bootstrap 2.0. Did you try the first version? What are your favorite improvements?