Bootstrap is a free and open source front end web development framework primarily used for creating websites and web apps. Mark Otto and Jacob Thornton has created this amazing toolkit in 2011, whilst they were at Twitter as a way to maintain design consistency and reduce the maintenance burden that came as a result of using different libraries and tools on a single project. Mark Otto succinctly defines Bootstraps goal in his detailed article for Alistapart, to “provide a refined, well-documented, and extensive library of flexible design components built with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript for others to build and innovate.
Buy what makes Bootstrap so much better than most other front end framework/libraries/toolkits out there? We have summarized why you should use it in your next project below:
Open source and customizable
Bootstrap framework is completely open source and thus also incredibly customizable. You are not by any means confined to the elements that are provided as default and can repurpose the framework to suit pretty much whatever needs you have.
Its mobile first
You must know that mobile is crucially important and the vast majority of web traffic these days comes from mobile devices in both the developed and developing countries. There were many front end frameworks initially built for the desktop web and have later been repurposed for mobile. However, Bootstrap has been built with mobile first and focuses around infinitely scalable and malleable components which make it the perfect tool for designing product for the different mobile screen sizes out there in use today.
Saves lot of time
Starting new website or app completely from scratch is burden and consumes more time which can affect project delivery timelines. Bootstrap kicks any project into first gear with an extensive and ever growing set of brilliant, well documented CSS and HTML based elements such as buttons, forms, navigation and JavaScript plugins. You can say that the web has moved to a state of maturity which works well and delivers brilliant results without affecting an individual’s budget. Bootstrap provides the elements for the most tried and tested design patterns that are suitable for large proportion of web projects. You don’t need to reinvent the wheel each time.
Backed with huge and active community
Bootstrap has a huge pool of community. It is one of the most popular projects on Github. As of today it has 124,949 stars, 60,010 forks and 1,004 contributors. This is no small feat for something that was started less than 8 years ago. What this means is that it is continuously being maintained and optimized and if you run into an issues of want to know how to do something you are just one click away from thousands of heavy Bootstrap users that can help you an instant.
Fast
Speed is crucial. According to Kissmetrics stated that almost 50 percent of web users expect a site to have a fully loaded within 2 seconds and are likely to leave if it hasn’t loaded in 3 seconds. Thankfully Bootstrap light and fast and its components are constantly being optimized for speed and efficiency.