Those who even work a little with the field of web design and are familiar with the process of creating sites and their design, know how far lately the possibilities for visualizing your content have moved. Thanks to CSS, JavaScript and Flash technologies, combined together, from any site you can make a real masterpiece, a sort of work of modern art. And, of course, many designers are doing this, and a large number of companies generously order portal designs 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”. This is exactly what Bootstrap platform was created for: today it helps save time and simplify the task 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 set of unique templates for the site. Each of them includes graphics, CSS markup, and, of course, HTML.
This whole set is in one archive, which can be downloaded for free from the official page of the platform. Thus, everyone who wants to develop their own site can use this set, and they 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 usual patterns, there is nothing superfluous in it that will need to be removed or replaced. The designer will be able to create his brainchild directly on the basis of Bootstrap.
How to start creating a site?
So, we have already become acquainted with the platform itself, now we are moving on to how to begin developing our own unique site. First, 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 choose the placement of blocks that you need for the site. For example, there are pages in the form of a landing page with one picture, there are with a slider, with several headers, with predefined 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 this set is, you will see immediately after downloading.
Customization Themes
Each theme is, like any website, a set of HTML, CSS and graphics files. The developers of the platform sought to bring design standards to the same standards, while at the same time giving the maximum opportunity to personalize your theme. Therefore, in order to make your site unique, you will need to understand the platform device, the site architecture on it and how the code for each template is written. You need to do this once, after which creating your projects will be easier using Bootstrap. CSS and graphics are the same on all themes. This is the plus of this approach.
All that interests us is a CSS file with the name of the theme (it is placed in the “css” folder, in addition to it there you will find two more files of the platform’s basic settings, you can not touch them); as well as "index.html", which is the layout 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 this or that site. For example, in the standard Bootstrap template, menus can be designed in a dull gray color. For your site you, of course, change it so that it is made in a suitable color and with all the necessary effects. This is the very individualization, but at the same time, since there is Bootstrap, there is no need to create a menu from scratch, which saves time.
Design Opportunities
Actually, now about the opportunities that the Bootstrap platform provides . What are these prospects - working with such archives? It would seem, why are they so remarkable?
In fact, there is nothing like that on the developer platform from Twitter. The idea is extremely simple, as well as its implementation. But now, the designer does not have to create a page from scratch, then to give it the right 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 basic markup. Is this not an example of the efficient and rational 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 can be useful to the layout designer are already in the templates that are discussed speech. A person who knows about the creation of basic sites is capable of much more. And this is really a 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 the developers will continue to simplify the work with web design and help people create something new, individual and useful to the world.