Re: Every once in a while I try... BootStrap
Reply #20 –
Just wondering about this. Why would you want to? Reason I ask is that for one of my mods I just took a look at the Reseller theme a bloke made over at SMF. It's based on Bootstrap.
So this is a responsive theme, but nothing over the top. Visuals are very basic. The minified (!) bootstrap.css is 98 kB. Then it's running about 60 kB of index.css, and about 5 of reseller.css (these last two files aren't minified).
For comparison, a responsive 2.0.x custom theme I've been playing around with: loaded with features and eye candy, has an index.css file that is 104 kB, which is only 6 kB more than bootstrap.css. Mine is complete with heavy commenting, luxurious formatting, and I haven't even been through it with a dose of salts to optimise it all yet. By the time it's all sorted and minified it'll easily be under 60 kB.
So the bootstrap-based theme is basically running twice as much CSS, in three http requests, for a theme which is visually and functionally simpler than mine. Go figure.
Then there's Bloc's latest efforts, where he's really gone into simplifying the class structure to keep the CSS down. Still responsive. Still plenty of features that 2.0.x doesn't have by default. Still looks good. The index.css for that is only 42 kB without minification, albeit with fairly dense formatting. Could be minified down to about 30 at a quick guess, or about a quarter of what's required to run the other theme on Bootstrap.
Re: Every once in a while I try... BootStrap
Reply #21 –
Where's Bloc's latest efforts?
I think most of the Bootstrap stuff is superfluous and for edge cases but using something that has a lot of support and you can find themes for is pretty nice for developers that want to move fast.
What's 100KB anyway? It's most likely in your cache already if you're using one of the CDN versions. If it's complicated, it is built with SASS so you can easily edit it and like I said, there's tons of support for it.
Re: Every once in a while I try... BootStrap
Reply #23 –
Has Bootstrap trot have a future? Currently, flat design is in, but later also. Bootstrap is not ideal in my opinion for Forum Systems.
Re: Every once in a while I try... BootStrap
Reply #25 –
I've found it fun to play with and have learned more about our templates and css. I don't really see that Reseller theme as bootstrap TBH, its only updated a couple of the templates and still relies on the old template markup structure and index.css.
Right now I've done several template areas, I begin with removing most of the existing class names and then update them to use bootstraps grid layout and use its class names (and structure) for various areas to try and get a similar look. The index.css file is ~400 lines long and some of that can be cut back, I've also removed areas of JS and use what bootstrap offers, for example the modal help pages, navigation dropdowns (no superduper) and the form validation for registration (probably removed 1/2 of register.js). But its just for fun.
Anyway I don't intend to replace or force this on anyone, its simply and experiment to understand what can be done to improve our templates. They are still un-standardized in markup and redundant across similar views of data. Many are monolithic and need to be broken down allowing resue elsewhere (some of that was done with the generics but I feel a lot more can be done) All of this leads to css complications and template bloat and of course maintainability issues.
Going through this makes me feel like today we use the CSS to try and standardize / make up for our non-standard markup, instead of using standard markup that we can apply the same classes. Like bootstrap tables .. you can do table table-striped table-bordered table-hover table-condensed table-zomg just add the class(s) you want to your table for the effects / layout you want. We instead kind of do lets add a new ID to a table then write a table css for that ID. Sure we reuse that with #bla, #bla2{} and then some #bla2{overrides} ... I like the here are our table css and here are form css and here are list css vs here is the css for memberlist and message index and .... Anyway just the musings of someone who is not a themer anyway.
On the positive side of a css framework is there are lots of examples help, and its supported and updated. Additionally someone has done the job of testing it across various browsers and devices. That compatibility testing is generally a cursory effort on our part.
Re: Every once in a while I try... BootStrap
Reply #28 –
As I said..why waste bytes on something that isn't used? If the bulk of Bootstrap isn't used, I see no point in using it. If its in my cache or not is beside the point really..I have some obnoxious sized pictures there too, which i didn't notice because I have a 100mb line. But when I did go to that site on my phone using 3G ouside the city(and poor connection at that) ..boy, I wish I hadn't.
Point is, bloat is never good.And in this case it IS bloat.
ShelfLife is planned to be ported to ElkArte, yes, but as you know its bit different than SMF. It will take some time to get to know it good enough to transform it well. And that is my biggest obstacle: since neither scripts have lean and mean default themes, the job to clear them out and make it such that normal features and mods, work fine afterwards, is a lot bigger.