Bootstrap Web Design: Everything You Need to Know
Do you want to make your website your very own? Many businesses today adapt pre-designed websites and just fill in all the necessary information.
The only downside to that is they don’t get to make the website their very own! Personalization is huge when it comes to branding.
Not to mention, web design is not easy and it does not come naturally to those who didn’t study in the field. It can seem almost impossible to put together a functional website when you don’t have expert experience.
That is why Bootstrap has become one of the most popular front-end frameworks in the world.
Whether you have never even heard of the name or you’re not familiar with any top web design framework, Bootstrap is something you want to know about.
If you want to master website design, here is everything you need to know about Bootstrap web design and templates:
What Is Bootstrap Web Design?
Bootstrap has a strong reputation for being one of the world’s most powerful, responsive, and mobile-first framework that is built with JavaScript, CSS, and HTML.
It has quickly become a popular choice among website builders because of how easy it is to maneuver through the options and design a custom website.
When you think about a straightforward and easy to use website builder, Bootstrap should be the first thing that comes to mind.
Website design and building is usually difficult for beginners who have never designed a website before, but Bootstrap design makes it easier.
The set-up comes with everything you need to know about npm, CDN, and a plethora of Bootstrap website templates and designs.
It doesn’t necessarily come with a step-by-step guide on how to download and use each integration, but it does provide a lot of useful information and the tools to download what you need.
Bootstrap File Types
Bootstrap can be broken down into three main file types:
- Bootstrap CSS
- JS
- glyphicons
The CSS framework is required for web design, the JS is for JavaScript, and glyphicons are for an icon font set. However, it also offers a plethora of other integrations such as Sass, LESS, npm and more.
The beauty of Bootstrap is it already comes with basic template examples and the option to build your website from scratch.
The problem with many website builders today is they don’t give individuals enough room for customization.
With a Bootstrap HTML template, you will have the freedom to create your website specific to your needs.
Now you know all the basics on Bootstrap and what it is, it is important to understand all about their templates and how it works. Learn more about what Bootstrap design can do for you:
Bootstrap Themes and Templates
Getting started with Bootstrap is fairly easy.
It is available in two main forms:
- The precompiled version
- The source code version.
If you have no experience with website building, then you want to avoid the source code version overall.
By using the precompiled vanilla CSS, all the styles can be overridden in order to create your custom style.
Although Bootstrap is praised for being extremely customizable, it also comes with examples for you to start from.
However, the goal of this program is to give you the freedom to design what you want. The good news is it makes starting from scratch easier than ever before.
Once you download the program, it will already come with all the CSS, fonts and JS directories.
You will have to save each file in order to use them or integrate them the way you want. It is also important to point out that Bootstrap does not come with an HTML, so you have to make your own.
Keep in mind that in order to create an HTML, you need to start it with a 5 doctype declaration, the head needs three important “meta” tags, and any other head tags can be added after.
How Bootstrap Templates Can Benefit You
Bootstrap already provides simple options of both HTML and CSS templates that come with all the common UI components.
The components include buttons, typography, forms, tables, dropdowns, labels, badges, alerts and more.
That is why Bootstrap comes with JavaScript extensions because many of these components require it. These aspects are what make Bootstrap extremely convenient.
It also allows all classes to be overridden with any custom CSS style and color. Below are all the benefits of Bootstrap web design:
- The speed of website development; get your website done in no-time
- Bootstrap mobile continues to grow in popularity due to its responsiveness
- Consistency
- Fully customizable
- Simple, ready-to-go bootstrap responsive template
- UI Bootstrap allows for easy customization
- JavaScript components
- Pre-style components
The simple Bootstrap template and Bootstrap themes make it one of the trendiest and easy-to-use frameworks for web design today. It is completely responsive, mobile-friendly, and consistent, making it very user friendly.
On the other hand, instead of coding from scratch, it allows you to use codes that are already made to help you with setting your website up. Not only is everything easy to design, but the templates and themes are attractive and stay up to date on current website trends.
Get Started on Your Bootstrap Web Design Today!
Are you ready to design a website without having to learn all the techie language that comes along with it? We can’t all teach ourselves over night how to build a custom website.
The most popular web builders today are WordPress, Weebly, Wix, and Squarespace. However, other programs such as WordPress design do not allow for full customization like Bootstrap.
With Bootstrap, individuals can skip the hassle of learning how to build a website from scratch and take advantage of the full suite of templates for full personalization. Bootstrap is one of the leading website builder today; you aren’t lazy if you use them, you are simply taking the easier route to a better website.
For those who would like more expert advice on Bootstrap or WordPress web design, call Charles Brian International today for help with designing, building, and marketing your website!
More Info On Bootstrap
Less Tutorial for Beginner : Understanding Less
Center End 2 years ago less, tutorial
You may have heard or tried before or you know basic and willing to grow your LESS knowledge. Here I am going to make a complete tutorial for less. As this is the starting point, let’s understand what is less and why do we need this awesome preprocessor instead of plain css. This post will help you to understand and use less.
Less Tutorial for Beginners
What is Less?
Less is a CSS pre-processor which allow us to write css easily, to manage heavy css professionally and to make css dynamic by using variables, mixins, functions, operators, nesting etc. You may have faced rule replacing problems while coding for large websites, but with less your every selectors will be unique, there won’t be any chance of rule replacing if you understand basic of less and finally you’ll do more with Less.
Getting Started
This pre-processor is written in JavaScript and you need any web browser or Node.js server to run this. I believe, as you are developing website and application, I don’t need to explain more about web browser and node.js.
The first step to get started is download less.js from its official site or from Github. You can also use cdn, if you don’t want to host on your own server.
For node.js users, just go to your terminal/command, type following and hit enter.
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$ npm install -g less
Now you got less.js file, the next step is to include this less.js in your project. Go to end of the your html file, add this less.js just before closing body tag (you can use this just after jQuery) as regular JavaScript/jQuery library.
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Now you have to define which .less file is need to be compiled to css. To define this go to head and add like this as I am compiling style.less to style.css
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Inside css folder in your project directory, make one file style.css and another style.less. Now all you will need is style.less (you don’t need to touch style.css)
Let’s write something css rules in style.less and check your style.css file. There is nothing right? Ok we have one more thing to do before enjoying the magic of less. We have to tell less to compile style.less to style.css. For that we have two options generally. The first is using command line. Open your terminal from same directory or locate to your working directory and type
lessc style.less > style.css
If you hit enter, your less file will be converted to plain vanilla css which is supported by any web browser.
If you are not familiar with command line, no need to worry as there are numbers of Graphical User Interface (GUI) to compile your .less files into .css . Here in this tutorial, I am going to guide you one of the most popular Less GUI, WinLess.
First you need to download WinLess from it’s official site. Once you download it, install it as other software you do. If you have successfully installed WinLess , now open this software and you will see button “add folder” click there and add your project folder there. Refresh and compile. You don’t need to repeat same process again. It compiles automatically.
Less Variables
Variables is one of the best and most used features in any preprocessor. The different is only how to define it. With variables we can define a value and use that in multiple places. For example, most of the websites has one primary color (brand color). We can define brand color as
@brand:#188B87;
Now we don’t have to write this hex code instead write @brand wherever this color is needed. That’s fun. Now let’s say your client want different color for his brand, just replace the value for your variable @brand that’s all.
See example below if you haven’t understood yet.
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@blue: #5B83AD;
@light-blue: @blue + #111;
#container{
color: @light-blue;
}
Output should be
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#container{
color: #6c94be;
}
Nesting
Nesting is another great feature in many preprocessor including Less. Nesting helps to structure our css just like HTML. This feature helps to reduce style conflicts and to manage code easily as it creates unique selectors for each elements.
For example, you have a paragraph inside a div and that div is wrapped with section. Here you will first write css for section then div and paragraphs like this.
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section{
background-color: #03A9F4;
padding: 10px;
div{
background-color: #fff;
border-radius: 3px;
margin: 10px 0;
p{
font-size:14px;
color:#666;
}
}
}
Output will be
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section {
background-color: #03A9F4;
padding: 10px;
}
section div {
background-color: #fff;
border-radius: 3px;
margin: 10px 0;
}
section div p{
font-size:14px;
color:#666;
}
Mixins
With muxins, we are allowed to use css defined for a id or class to another elements. Suppose, we have defined css for .button-default and we want same button with red background for .button-red. Here we just need to apply background color red and using default button for other styles like borders, box shadow, color etc.
Example
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.button-default {
background: #f0f0f0;
color: #666;
padding:5px 12px;
}
.button-red{
.button-default;
background: #FF0000;
}
Output
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.button-default {
background: #f0f0f0;
color: #666;
padding:5px 12px;
}
.button-red{
color: #666;
padding:5px 12px;
background: #FF0000;
}
Operations
With less we can do basic math to numerical values and color. Suppose, we want three divs inside another div. One div need to be halved of the outer div and other two divs ¼ each. In this can we can use less operations as:
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@outer: 800px;
#outer{
width: @outer;
background-color: @color – 100;
}
#half{
width: @outer / 2;
}
.one-by-four{
width: @outer / 4;
}
CSS Output
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#outer{
width:800px;
}
#half{
width:400px:
}
.one-by-four{
width:200px;
}
Less Functions
Sounds like a programming language right? I would like to say it as css programming knowledge. With less we can do various functions to reduce time, increase efficiency and manage codes more professionally. Here is a basic example of less function.
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@var: #004590;
div{
height: 50px;
width: 50px;
background-color: @var;
u0026amp;:hover{
background-color: fadeout(@var, 50%)
}
}
CSS Output
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div {
height: 50px;
width: 50px;
background-color: #004590;
}
div:hover {
background-color: rgba(0, 69, 144, 0.5);
}
I believe you have learned a lot about less and might be willing to know more tips, tricks and ideas to boost your skill. This chapter is enough if you work on small sized of projects but if your products are too large and if you are crazy to learn everything in depth, keep visiting I am working on more advanced less tutorial.