Fullstack Web Development

Introduction to Bootstrap

Bootstrap is a free and open-source collection of tools for creating websites and web applications. It is the most popular HTML, CSS, and JavaScript framework for developing responsive, mobile-first websites. It solves many problems which we had once, one of which is the cross-browser compatibility issue. Nowadays, the websites are perfect for all the browsers (IE, Firefox, and Chrome) and for all sizes of screens (Desktop, Tablets, Phablets, and Phones).

Reason to choose Bootstrap:

·       Faster and Easier Web-Development.

·       It creates Platform-independent web-pages.

·       It creates Responsive Web-pages.

·       It’s designed to be responsive to mobile devices too.

·       It’s Free! Available on www.getbootstrap.com

·       You can quickly create multi-column layout with pre-defined classes.

·       You can quickly create different types of form layouts.

·       You can quickly create different variation of navigation bar.

·       You can easily create components like accordions, modals, etc. without writing any JS code.

·       You can easily create dynamic tabs to manage large amount of content.

·       You can easily create tooltips and popovers to show hint text.

·       You can easily create carousel or image slider to showcase your content.

·       You can quickly create different types of alert boxes. 

 

History of Bootstrap

Bootstrap was developed by Mark Otto and Jacob Thornton at Twitter. It was released as an open source product in August 2011 on GitHub.

In June 2014 Bootstrap was the No.1 project on GitHub.

Advantages of Using Bootstrap

If you have had some experience with any front-end framework, you might be wondering what makes Bootstrap so special. Here are some advantages why one should opt for Bootstrap framework:

• Save lots of time — You can save lots of time and efforts using the Bootstrap predefined design templates and classes and concentrate on other development work.
• Responsive features — Using Bootstrap you can easily create responsive websites that appear more appropriately on different devices and screen resolutions without any change in markup.
• Consistent design — All Bootstrap components share the same design templates and styles through a central library, so the design and layout of your web pages will be consistent.
• Easy to use — Bootstrap is very easy to use. Anybody with the basic working knowledge of HTML, CSS and JavaScript can start development with Bootstrap.
• Compatible with browsers — Bootstrap is created with modern web browsers in mind and it is compatible with all modern browsers such as Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Internet Explorer, etc.
• Open Source — And the best part is, it is completely free to download and use.

Websites that were built with a lot of CSS and JavaScript can now be built with a few lines of code using Bootstrap. Bootstrap comprises of mainly three components:

·       CSS

·       Fonts

·       Javascript

How to use Bootstrap 4 in a Webpage

There are two ways to include Bootstrap in the website.

• Include Bootstrap from CDN link.
• Download Bootstrap from getbootstrap.com and use it.

Bootstrap Grid System

Bootstrap grid system provides the quick and convenient way to create responsive website layouts. The latest Bootstrap 4 version introduces the new mobile-first flexbox grid system that appropriately scales up to 12 columns as the device or viewport size increases.

The Bootstrap Grid System Has 3 Main Parts: CRC

When working with the Bootstrap 12 column grid you have to keep in mind the order of elements and that there are always three parts: a Container, a Row, and any number of Columns. CRC.

 

For example:

table > tr > td is like .container > .row > .col-sm-6

Container – .container or .container-fluid

This is the parent container that determines if the columns should be full-width or not.

Row – .row

A horizontal wrapping container for the series of columns it contains. It essentially clears the floated columns

Column – .col-*-*

A column is a vertical division similar to a table cell. This is where your content goes and has built-in margin to the left and right to prevent text and images from touching each other. The default grid uses floating divs to achieve the horizontal columns.

 

Bootstrap 5 Breakpoints

Columns also have grid tiers which tell the columns how they should look at different breakpoints. In the example below I used .col-sm-6 which essentially says, “When the browser window is 576px or higher make this column span 6 of the 12 columns. For anything below 576px make it full width.” So when you declare a grid tier you are saying make it this size for the specified tier and up.

Bootstrap 4 includes predefined grid classes for quickly making grid layouts for different types of devices like cell phones, tablets, laptops and desktops, etc. For example, you can use the .col-* classes to create grid columns for extra small devices mobile phones in portrait mode, similarly you can use the .col-sm-* classes to create grid columns for small screen devices like mobile phone in landscape mode, the .col-md-* classes for medium screen devices like tablets, the .col-lg-* classes for large devices like desktops, and the .col-xl-* classes for extra large desktop screens.

The following table summarizes some of the key features of the new grid system.

 

Above table demonstrates one important thing, applying any .col-sm-* class to an element will not only affect its styling on small devices, but also on medium, large and extra large devices having screen width greater than or equal to 540px, if a .col-md-*, .col-lg-* or .col-xl-* class is not present. Similarly, the .col-md-* class will not only affect the styling of elements on medium devices, but also on large and extra large devices if a .col-lg-* or .col-xl- class is not present.

Now the question arises how to create rows and columns using this 12 column responsive grid system. The answer is pretty simple, at first create a container that acts as a wrapper for your rows and columns using the .container class, after that create rows inside the container using the .row class, and to create columns inside any row you can use the .col-*, .col-sm-*, .col-md-*, .col-lg-* and .col-xl-* classes. The columns are actual content area where we will place our contents. Let's put all these things into real action. Let's see how it actually works: