Bootstrap is the most popular HTML, CSS and JavaScript based framework for developing responsive, mobile-first websites.
With the successive growth of mobile devices in the world, it is becoming clearer that having a responsive website is a must, and by taking a mobile-first approach, this framework has been revealed as an indispensable tool and became more popular year after year, mostly because of its feature-rich nature and ease of use. One of the most essential aspects of this framework, which represents the foundation on which to build an organised, structured layout, is its grid. Bootstrap is built on a powerful 12-Column Grid System, which allows developers to arrange and align content in a fully customisable, responsive grid. The grid adjusts according to the device resolution or viewport size, making the website content interactable and pleasant for both mobile and desktop users.
Beyond this, Bootstrap offers a base style for most HTML elements, making the website look more polished, as well as an extensive list of pre-built, fully-responsive components that are easy to integrate and customise. In terms of customisation, Bootstrap lets you change the base style, including fonts, colours and sizes, as well as modifying the existing breakpoints used in grid layout by overriding the existing CSS rules with custom ones according to the project design.
For those who prefer to build a responsive website from scratch, without the assistance of any 3rd party libraries, and who use ready-made CSS code and components from previous projects to achieve this, or who may tend to have a more conservative approach towards accepting its framework features, Bootstrap can also offer great benefits.
So, what are these benefits of Bootstrap?
Well, where you have a project with a tight schedule and with multiple developers involved, Bootstrap offers consistency between projects and people (it represents a commonly known technology) as well as speed in development, thanks to its pre-styled classes, which require much less effort and time than when creating everything from scratch. It´s important to mention that Bootstrap has good cross-browser compatibility, being currently compatible with all the latest major browsers (Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Microsoft Edge and Internet Explorer 10+) and excellent support, thanks to the huge community behind it. And, most importantly, it´s completely free and open-source. Before looking at some examples, let´s see how easy is to get started with Bootstrap.
