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Nazanin Ashrafi
Nazanin Ashrafi

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What is bootstrap? And should you use it? (A simple explanation for a total newbie)

This post is for a total beginner (obviously lol) who knows nothing but only heard of bootstrap.

I had hard time trying to understand what bootstrap is and wether I should learn it or not, so I'm writing this post to help others who has the same problem as I had.
I hope this help you guys



Before I talk about it let me just tell you what I thought bootstrap is before actually learning it.
Okay so after I was done with css basics I wanted to move forward a little, I had only heard of bootstrap and thought it's an app that I should just install and use lol


If you Google what is bootstrap? it'll tell you it's a framework for css. then you'll wonder what is framework?
To put it simply you might get lost in tons of new words and information ( like how I was lost)
So let me tell you what bootstrap is but before that I need to talk about a few things :


1.HTML : It's the structure/skeleton of the site.
2.CSS : it helps us style the site.

Let's talk about css a little bit, shall we?
If we wanna style a HTML element we add a class to it like :
< P class="paragraph" > this is paragraph </ p> then we go to our css file and style our element however we want like :
.paragraph : {
color: blue
Height : 200px;
}


And now it's time to talk about bootstrap:
I think a very simple explanation would be : bootstrap is a ready-to-use classes. You only need to give a class to your HTML element. Here's an example :
< p class="container"> this is paragraph </ p>
after giving the "P element" a class, you don't need to go to your css file because "container class" was already created in bootstrap and is ready to use. To put it simply it's a CSS file that helps you style your site faster.


But now the question is if bootstrap (or any other css framework) helps us style our site faster then should we still learn pure css?

Frameworks sure helps us do our work faster BUT you should definitely learn pure css. Maybe your client wants their site to be styled bit by bit and it needs to be 100% perfect and they're like i want header to be like this, button like this etc... then you have to use pure css to satisfy your customer's needs but if you're making a blog for yourself or your client who doesn't want the site to be very specific and wants their site kinda simple then you can use framework.



This was my very first blog I really tried my best. I hope it was helpful for beginners.
If there's any misleading information or something please let me know because I want to help others not misguide them.

Also a big shout out to Dan Spartling that his tweet made me actually go with writing this blog ^^

Top comments (2)

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scichei_50 profile image
Youssef

Thank you nazanein, a smoothie yet insightful article 👍🏻

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nazanin_ashrafi profile image
Nazanin Ashrafi

Thank you🙏 , hope it was helpful