Bootstrap – Quick Guide ”; Previous Next Bootstrap – Overview What is Twitter Bootstrap? Bootstrap is a sleek, intuitive, and powerful, mobile first front-end framework for faster and easier web development. It uses HTML, CSS and Javascript. History Bootstrap was developed by Mark Otto and Jacob Thornton at Twitter. It was released as an open source product in August 2011 on GitHub. Why Use Bootstrap? Mobile first approach − Bootstrap 3, framework consists of Mobile first styles throughout the entire library instead them of in separate files. Browser Support − It is supported by all popular browsers. Easy to get started − With just the knowledge of HTML and CSS anyone can get started with Bootstrap. Also the Bootstrap official site has a good documentation. Responsive design − Bootstrap”s responsive CSS adjusts to Desktops, Tablets and Mobiles. More about the responsive design is in the chapter Bootstrap Responsive Design. Provides a clean and uniform solution for building an interface for developers. It contains beautiful and functional built-in components which are easy to customize. It also provides web based customization. And best of all it is an open source. What Bootstrap Package Includes? Scaffolding − Bootstrap provides a basic structure with Grid System, link styles, and background. This is is covered in detail in the section Bootstrap Basic Structure CSS − Bootstrap comes with the feature of global CSS settings, fundamental HTML elements styled and enhanced with extensible classes, and an advanced grid system. This is covered in detail in the section Bootstrap with CSS. Components − Bootstrap contains over a dozen reusable components built to provide iconography, dropdowns, navigation, alerts, pop-overs, and much more. This is covered in detail in the section Layout Components. JavaScript Plugins − Bootstrap contains over a dozen custom jQuery plugins. You can easily include them all, or one by one. This is covered in details in the section Bootstrap Plugins. Customize − You can customize Bootstrap”s components, LESS variables, and jQuery plugins to get your very own version. Bootstrap – Environment Setup It is very easy to setup and start using Bootstrap. This chapter will explain how to download and setup Bootstrap. We will also discuss the Bootstrap file structure, and demonstrate its usage with an example. Download Bootstrap You can download the latest version of Bootstrap from https://getbootstrap.com/. When you click on this link, you will get to see a screen as below − Here you can see two buttons − Download Bootstrap − Clicking this, you can download the precompiled and minified versions of Bootstrap CSS, JavaScript, and fonts. No documentation or original source code files are included. Download Source − Clicking this, you can get the latest Bootstrap LESS and JavaScript source code directly from GitHub. If you work with Bootstrap”s uncompiled source code, you need to compile the LESS files to produce usable CSS files. For compiling LESS files into CSS, Bootstrap officially supports only Recess, which is Twitter”s CSS hinter based on less.js. For better understanding and ease of use, we shall use precompiled version of Bootstrap throughout the tutorial. As the files are complied and minified you don”t have to bother every time including separate files for individual functionality. At the time of writing this tutorial the latest version (Bootstrap 3) was downloaded. File structure Precompiled Bootstrap Once the compiled version Bootstrap is downloaded, extract the ZIP file, and you will see the following file/directory structure − As you can see, there are compiled CSS and JS (bootstrap.*), as well as compiled and minified CSS and JS (bootstrap.min.*). Fonts from Glyphicons are included, as it is the optional Bootstrap theme. Bootstrap Source Code If you have downloaded the Bootstrap source code then the file structure would be as follows − The files under less/, js/, and fonts/ are the source code for Bootstrap CSS, JS, and icon fonts (respectively). The dist/ folder includes everything listed in the precompiled download section above. docs-assets/, examples/, and all *.html files are Bootstrap documentation. HTML Template A basic HTML template using Bootstrap would look like this − <!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head> <title>Bootstrap 101 Template</title> <meta name = “viewport” content = “width = device-width, initial-scale = 1.0”> <!– Bootstrap –> <link href = “css/bootstrap.min.css” rel = “stylesheet”> <!– HTML5 Shim and Respond.js IE8 support of HTML5 elements and media queries –> <!– WARNING: Respond.js doesn”t work if you view the page via file:// –> <!–[if lt IE 9]> <script src = “https://oss.maxcdn.com/libs/html5shiv/3.7.0/html5shiv.js”></script> <script src = “https://oss.maxcdn.com/libs/respond.js/1.3.0/respond.min.js”></script> <![endif]–> </head> <body> <h1>Hello, world!</h1> <!– jQuery (necessary for Bootstrap”s JavaScript plugins) –> <script src = “https://code.jquery.com/jquery.js”></script> <!– Include all compiled plugins (below), or include individual files as needed –> <script src = “js/bootstrap.min.js”></script> </body> </html> Here you can see the jquery.js, bootstrap.min.js and bootstrap.min.css files that are included to make a normal HTM file to the Bootstrapped Template. Just make sure to include jQuery library before you include Bootstrap library. More details about each of the elements in this above piece of code will be discussed in the chapter Bootstrap CSS Overview. Example Now let”s try an example using the above template. Try the following example using Live Demo option available at the top right corner of the below sample code box on our website − Live Demo <h1>Hello, world!</h1> In all the subsequent chapters we have used dummy text from the site https://www.lipsum.com/. Bootstrap – Grid System In this chapter we shall discuss the Bootstrap Grid System. What is a Grid? As put by wikepedia − In graphic design, a grid is a structure (usually two-dimensional) made up of a series of intersecting straight (vertical, horizontal) lines used to structure the content. It is widely used to design layout and content structure in print design. In web design, it is a very effective method to create a consistent layout rapidly and effectively using HTML and CSS. To put in simple words, grids in web design organise and structure content, makes the websites easy to scan and reduces the cognitive load on users.