State of Bootstrap 4 vs. Foundation
dannyherran.com
dannyherran.com
You do not need to include the whole javascript, you can include just the things you need. However, there have been problems with webpack and Foundation javascript developers seem to have no clue about what is going on in the JS frontend world, acting like isolated on a moon station, disconnected, what leads to problems with integrating other things.
Very problematic is they still have FOUC problems - you have to look for various workarounds, but FOUC out of the box! The menu components and everything related to responsiveness suffer from it. I do not understand how this ever got released.
Foundation 5 was ok, but this 6 release is disappointing. The modular handling of menus is a good idea, but overall execution is bad, lots of micro-problems everywhere, it feels not even pre-alpha. Also very monolithic and non-cooperative, ugly to integrate with anything else.
I would recommend looking at semantic ui instead, which also has a good react integration, something Foundation designers do not have ever thought about.
About the community: the people are great, but Zurb gives them only a totally annoying "forum" that is not able to filter for versions, so when you are searching for things you get all the stuff from previous versions, an information design nightmare, that would be easy to fix, but they do not even seem to have a problem with it - this says a lot about the agency behind it.
Also be careful with installing foundation globally: it will overwrite your Foundation 5 binary, if you are using this, be careful. Not a serious problem, but when you still want to use F5 you have to prepare for it! Even with version 6 they still do not have a clue how to handle versioning, this tells a lot about the code quality you will be confronted with.
But they have great marketing, the site and everything around F6 looks really great!
Perhaps this should be added to the list of instances of people dismissing valid arguments by labeling them polical correctness.
I don't think any of his technical arguments hold up. I'm also not sure that he would have convinced the Bootstrap team to have dropped this based on technical arguments if he hadn't seemed so annoyed, and made repeated references to how only people who speak the language should make certain decisions.
Some examples:
* the bug report is a command: "Stop developing RTL for Bootstrap!"
* the bug report ends with an exclamation point!
* the bug starts "I'm really annoyed..."
* "use cases that only natives can understand"
* A second command, bolded: "Remove it!"
I personally was inconvenienced by this because I was writing lots of bootstrap based .less, and if twitter and Bootstrap had worked together on an auto-flipping rtl system for Bootstrap then all the RTL users of my code would have got a far better service. Instead only those who use the Bootstrap CSS essentially as-it-comes get a manually RTL'd version from a 3rd party. A tool that can automate that work sounds like a far better deal for the RTL world, even if it would have annoyed this particular person.
I note that his argument against automated flipping included the fact that you really need one for farsi, one for arabic, etc. Yet he only manually produces one. Maybe with the right tooling he'd have got to where he wanted to be faster.
A link to such a tool: https://github.com/MohammadYounes/rtlcss (note how it documents various solutions to the 'problems' listed in the original bug report, like changing the font stack when in RTL mode)
There's no shortage of insufferably squeaky wheels who aren't acquiesced to, and I don't see any ways this one was treated exceptionally. It looks like the maintainers worked to understand the root of his frustration despite his abrasive style. Kudos. The Bootstrap team acknowledging it's a complex issue (rather than the solved problem they thought it to be) and changing their release plan accordingly seems a reasonable way to handle it, and one I'd encourage for maintainers of widely used projects. Finding the right effort/quality balance is tricky. That some of the issues could be relatively trivial to address (font stack) doesn't invalidate the category.
In particular, the distinction between RTL and “flipping” does seem to be a meaningful one, and fraught with unexpected issues. Eg, next=right and prev=left as a cultural convention that doesn't directly translate. As you note.
Frankly, if tasked with supporting RTL I'd probably start with a repo like the one you linked to, but fully expect it to fall down in a number of ways that could only be identified by a native user. Whether those issues get addressed would be a pretty clear statement on how much those users are valued.
PS upvoted for pleasant discussion :)
This appeared to be the crux of the original complaint/misunderstanding too. The assumption that the core BS devs would auto-flip and leave it at that. But all but the most basic of rtl-flippers allow for case by case overrides to add the final 5% that the simple rules can't handle. Finding and fixing those requires people with an understanding of RTL and Bootstrap could easily have recruited that effort. It's just that they only have to do the last 1/20th of the work, and even without expert input devs building on top of Bootsrap can automatically get 95% for free on any extensions they build themselves.
https://github.com/twbs/bootstrap/issues/19555#issuecomment-...
Did I just miss something obvious or does it not exist?
[0]: http://bourbon.io/
[0] http://bitters.bourbon.io/example.html [1] http://thoughtbot.github.io/neat-docs [2] http://refills.bourbon.io/
https://www.git-tower.com/learn/bourbon-neat-bitters/getting...
I wish there was more support for Bourbon in Wordpress.
Bootstrap is fantastic when you want a site that looks like Bootstrap, these tend to be put together by developers. Foundation (at least was) much less opinionated and therefore when you're given a PSD by a designer much easier to implement.
Have things improved on that front? Is it easy to override Bootstrap's defaults?
Foundation still blows Bootstrap away in terms of building a truly bespoke site on top of their components.
Maybe there's some sort of Bootstrap "reset.css" type of thing now, but I couldn't handle it back when I tried Bootstrap.
I think I've found one exception which is the toggle button in the navbar element that seems to have some annoying defaults I have to override every time, but that's it.
(If your experience was with Bootstrap 2, then that explains your feelings, but that situation was pretty categorically fixed with BS3).
That's because Bootstrap piles on a whole load of stuff that are really just annoyances for anyone who wants to make their site NOT look like it came off the same assembly line as millions of others.
Bootstrap has moved towards Foundation's more barebones method, but still not there.
I've taken to using CSS frameworks as reference guides for solving certain problems, I tend to not use them directly.
But Bootstrap has a nice "out-of-the-box" experience. I know much about usability engineering and user experience, but not so much about graphic design. And bootstrap fills this hole for me. Getting something out fast that doesn't look like 1999
Also flexbox support in IE is still terrible, so for those of us building sites for the open-web it's a non-starter for things where a 'just doesn't work' fallback is unacceptable, such as the main site structure and alignment of core elements.
Currently I only find flexbox useful for things like vertical centering, where it's not the end of the world if the element doesn't center in IE.
Not to say it isn't frustrating, especially since it works extremely well in Edge but MS said they won't port the fixes over.
For contrast if you work against a framework like Bootstrap 3, sites 'just work' all the way back to IE8.
Here's the Google Cache version for your reading pleasure: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...
button {
.btn;
}I usually mimic bootstrap classes too like btn even if I can't recall the last time in the last 3+ years I've left any of its buttons/forms etc in tact.
See an example here: http://v4-alpha.getbootstrap.com/layout/grid/#sass-mixins
I created an app for a customer in it, and while it looks shiny, it would have been more cost-effective to just have used bootstrap.
It seems like a good start for prototyping and admin interfaces, but for anything else it just adds too much styling and classes that need to be overridden.
The name seems poorly choosen, since you're constantly adding classes that reference styling decisions making it everything but semantic (ui very wide, ui very thin, ui three column doubling grid, …).
I have had some experience with semantic UI components recently and I enjoyed using it.
I think only having a single developer has had mixed effects on the project, which is a shame because it's so close to being great.
Meanwhile BS4 has solid built in components that are just documented enough to be usable despite not having as many. Issues get fixed quickly and it feels easier to follow its conventions. The JS APIs are simple enough as well, and the code behind it is much easier to follow than in Semantic UI.
If you want to start designing with it already (which is not a great idea; it is still alpha), here's a Bootstrap 4 PSD template you can use: http://hackerthemes.com/blog/bootstrap-4-psd-template
It is a good reason to leave the room / team / project when "design a website" means "open photoshop".
It does nothing to help their consistency, since you cannot define common styles to be reused.
And it has a trickle-down effect, where any developer working with the files now needs a license to open the document.
Maybe a simple canned marketing website can be worth skipping the planning phase, but good luck doing anything complex without some mocks. As a designer who can code, I usually skip the hi-fi mockup stage myself, but that's because I do it instead on paper.
There is a CSS and JS compiled version of the files there.
And that's not even getting into games and online services, where 'beta' never ends and you end up paying for alphas and early betas of things all the time.
I write web applications for internal use at non-profits. If the office boxes still run IE8, IE8 has to be supported by the application.
Problem is most (European, e.g. less donation-financed) non-profits have a cash flow fundamentally different to that of a company: Most of the budget comes from a foundation, the government etc. and is tied to a specific use.
So if the non-profit got funds for a specific project, they have e.g. full wages for 3 persons, much money for train tickets/renting of cars, food and accomodation, renting of kit, paying people like me for needed solutions, office rent and so on - but with fixed budgets for each! Stuff the non-profit could use after the funded project is finished (like modern computers, office inventory, cars) is much harder to get funded.
This setup is meant to prevent corruption, not save the foundation money. The foundation usually has no qualms to grant 10k for renting cars, but will refute 5k for buying a car.
In short, freely usable funds for upgrading IT equipment can be scarse even in well-financed non-profits.
I'm wary to not inadvertently fall into the IT support role by advising not to use IE. If a bunch of really unskilled folks switch to Firefox because I say so, whom will they call if something doesn't quite work as before? :) I can (and do) say no to calls like these, but I'm always wary it taints the relationship a bit.
An approach that usually works if I explain the reasons beforehand is transparent pricing: The solution costs $x for all browsers incl. IE9+, or more if IE8 has to be supported. That way the argument is about the org being able to afford IE8, not about me being the picky geek.
Vendors like Zurb (or in-house team for their own company site) usually working on large projects and able to make every decision clearly and fixing any problem they facing. However, for most of developers, they can't afford the cost of it. While there's Boostrap exists, why do you put yourself into risky?
A lot of backend developers using Boostrap. They even don't understand basic CSS.
From the presentation it look pretty full-featured and modular, I'd be interested to know what people who tried it think...
[0]: http://getuikit.com/
* http://www.isup.me/http://dannyherran.com/2016/03/state-of-a...
1. Skeleton framework (https://github.com/skeleton-framework/skeleton-framework) and
2.Skeleton Plus (https://github.com/oltmannsdaniel/skeleton-plus)
I like skeleton plus because of the responsive menu. The colours are not so good :P
b4 has a much stronger "foundation." What do I mean by that? Well to be honest if you actually look at the HTML structure of both frameworks, you'll see that b4 is not only utilizing more modern techniques but that they have reduced and simplified their markup. ie, navigation items. b4 uses <div>'s for each nav element which allows for more control while foundation is using an older technique of unordered list items.
This is just one example of how b4 takes a more wholistic approach to every aspect of their framework. I don't fault foundation at all and it probably has to due with the talent of the core b4 team as well as the massive community that they have, but I can't see a use case where I'd choose foundation over b4.