Those who work at least a little with the field of web design and are familiar with the process of creating sites and designing them, know how far the possibilities for visualizing your content have come lately. Thanks to CSS, JavaScript and Flash technologies, combined together, any site can be turned into a real masterpiece, a kind of work of modern art. And, of course, many designers are doing this, and a large number of companies generously commission the development of portals with incredible graphics. Moreover, the "wow-effect" of the page can be achieved not only through a set of different effects, but also with the help of simple but beautiful transitions, infographics, links, and more.
True, every designer and layout designer knows that in order to save time when developing any resource, you need to have a certain base, a template, on the basis of which you can create the final "masterpiece". That's what Bootstrap was created for: today it saves time and makes things easier for thousands of web designers.
Bootstrap - what is it?
So, the description of the product should begin with its general characteristics. Therefore, we note that Bootstrap is a platform expressed in a setoriginal templates for the site. Each includes graphics, CSS, and of course HTML.
The whole set comes in one archive, which can be downloaded for free from the platform's official page. Thus, anyone who wants to develop their site can use this set, and he will not need to write each page from scratch, doing basic actions: marking up the site, breaking it into blocks, selecting graphics for basic icons, and so on. At the same time, each set of Twitter Bootstrap is quite individual. Unlike the templates we are used to, there is nothing superfluous in it that needs to be removed or replaced. The designer will be able to create his brainchild directly on the basis of Bootstrap.
How to start building a website?
So, we have already got acquainted with the platform itself, now let's move on to how to start developing your unique website. To get started, of course, you need to download the archive with the Twitter Bootstrap template. It takes up very little space, and you can get it on the GetBootstrap page. There you can also choose the placement of the blocks that you need for the site. For example, there are pages in the form of a landing-page with one picture, with a slider, with several headings, with preset effects, and so on. You just need to make a choice and download the archive that is suitable for your site created on the basis of Bootstrap. What is this set, you will see immediately after downloading.
Customization of the theme
Each topic represents itself, like any site,a set of HTML, CSS and graphics files. The developers of the platform have strived to bring the design norms to the same standards, while giving the maximum opportunity for customizing your theme. Therefore, in order to make your site unique, you will need to understand the structure of the platform, the architecture of the site on it, and how the code of each template is written. You need to do this once, after which it will be easier to create your projects using Bootstrap. CSS and graphics are the same on all themes. This is the plus of this approach.
All we are interested in is the CSS file with the name of the theme (it is placed in the "css" folder, in addition to it, you will find two more files of the basic settings of the platform there, you can not touch them); as well as "index.html", which is the markup of the main page. You should start from this, and other specific additions in the form of sliders, some Javascript effects will already be determined by your task to create a particular site. For example, in the standard Bootstrap template, the menu might be designed in a dull gray color. For your website, of course, you will change it in such a way that it is made in the right color and with all the necessary effects. This is the same customization, but since Bootstrap is there, there is no need to create a menu from scratch, which saves time.
Opportunities for designers
Actually, now about the possibilities that the Bootstrap platform gives. What are these prospects - to work with such archives? It would seem, why are they so remarkable?
Poin fact, there is nothing like that in the developer platform from Twitter. The idea is extremely simple, as is its implementation. But now a designer does not have to create a site page from scratch, then to give it the desired look. No, now a specialist can start directly from the shell, from the design of the site, without being distracted by such basic things as the main markup. Isn't this an example of effective and efficient use of time?
In addition, another advantage of Bootstrap was not noted - that it is a way to help people who do not have high-level CSS markup skills to create their own professional design, because all the tools that a layout designer might need are already in the templates in question. A person who knows about building web sites is capable of so much more. And this is already a really significant plus in favor of Bootstrap.
Now the project is under development, despite the fact that it was launched back in 2011 and since then thousands of people have started working on it. Let's hope that developers will continue to make web design easier and help people create something new, personal and useful to the world.
