Can anyone explain me this please? I somehow missed the whole “Bootstrap everywhere” craze and i tried to catch up and i simply don’t get it.
The CSS has 5000 lines and (minified version) is 100+ KBs! Before you even start you bloat your website with that! Sure, you get some of the work done, but all that just for few buttons and responsive columns? That’s too many in my book.
And the thing that surprised me even more is that i started seeing people looking exclusively for Bootstrap templates. What is so special about them? Is their CSS magical?
What am i missing here, can someone shed some light or just give their opinion on this matter.
Thanks
Yep, I’d also like to know that 
I totally don’t get it
To address your point about the amount of CSS, the entire style library is separated into .less stylesheets, so it’s very easy to take only the parts you need and roll your own main stylesheet. They even allow you to customize here http://twitter.github.com/bootstrap/customize.html
You can be the judge as to whether the code is good or bad, but it’s as lightweight as you choose to make it.
It’s popular because it’s easy to work with, provides a lot of functionality, it looks pretty good out of the box, gets you started quickly with a solid framework, and is free. But no generic solution is every going to be optimized for ALL use cases, so if you compare a generic framework like Bootstrap to a more specialized framework for a specific use case, the generic framework will almost always look bloated. That doesn’t mean it’s not useful as a starting point for many people for lots of reasons.
Those that are looking for Bootstrap-only templates may be pigeon-holing themselves, but on the other hand, the framework is popular enough that if they’ll be able to find plenty of templates they can easily customize without having to relearn a whole new set of classes every time. For those that are flipping websites quickly, eliminating that overhead increases efficiency.
You can argue whether Bootstrap is good or bad, but the reason it’s popular is that it’s useful, plain and simple 
sevenspark said
You can argue whether Bootstrap is good or bad, but the reason it’s popular is that it’s useful, plain and simple
Yes it’s useful as a starting point, like any other framework, it helped me understand what a css framework is, but the more I used it, the more I learnt, and the more I wanted to create my own framework 
What I hate the most in those is the semantic, “span8” isn’t very meaningful, especially for buyers, better call your columns “onefourth” “onehalf” etc…
I guess BS is also good for developers that are good with design, html and css, but not so good with JS, as it has some ready to use components.
So I’m not bashing it, it’s definitely useful, the only thing that surprised me is that envato started recently to promote bootstrap templates/themes, and this is a bit unfair as BS is “just a framework” nothing more, and certainly not “better” than custom frameworks.
It is so popular because everyone now has nice buttons.
I prefer foundation over bootstrap. Though my client told me he liked those rounded colorful buttons, so I guess it’s because of that.
One other thing is that the “span#” naming is more easier to code and embed in scripts to generate grids. Because it has that index at the end and is easier to edit.
I find particularly good the fact that you have everything out of the box, including a good amount of very cool features like progress bars, tabs and so on. Also as @wickedpixel said, the spans are ready helpful too
I used it first time when I decided that its time to switch to responsive templates. Learning two thing at one time was difficult. But Bootstrap in this role worked great, now I’m familiar with it and use it every time. It speed up the coding process, standardize the work (add more logic into code), and the library itself is easily configurable and customizable with LESS. You easily can achieve what you need. Of course, its not like use jQuery instead of clean JavaScript, but somewhere near that.
Honestly i don’t really like it that much, not because it’s bad or anything, it’s just that most of the designers don’t change a thing when using it, so every other template looks the same!
Just my point of view
trendyWebStar said
Honestly i don’t really like it that much, not because it’s bad or anything, it’s just that most of the designers don’t change a thing when using it, so every other template looks the same!
Just my point of view
Very true. Although I’ve not tried using Bootstrap yet so I may change my mind
Hi,
Bootstrap (like any framework) have some bad sides (like adding HTML for presentation purpose, loading more code than necessary, non-semantic classes, not mobile first). All the drawbacks are philosophical, i’d say. Wich is important for sure, but there are so many good points that essentially speed up developpement. Most browser compatibilities issues are handled by the framework, you get lots of components out of the box… And most of all, when it comes to HTML templates, your buyers can tweak the code like crazy, and get 396 validation errors without breaking the layout :). Also if they made a website using a bootstrap template, it s easy to use another BS theme to change design with no need to rewrite all the HTML.
About the lookalike designs subject - It depends how you see things. I find that a template has very boring parts inside it: regular content areas where a user may need add standard content blocks easy, with no fuss. There I see bootstrap doing a good job.
The other parts of the structure, where it needs to stand out… well, there is where a designer needs to add the magic. Simple bootstrap eye-makeups will always be boring.
We have experimented with it for a bit, and came to a point where much of it was simply overridden with our own CSS. So we took what we needed from it and removed it completely.
||+771240|Little-Neko said-||
Hi,
Bootstrap (like any framework) have some bad sides (like adding HTML for presentation purpose, loading more code than necessary, non-semantic classes, not mobile first). [...]
About those non-semantic classes… nobody is forcing you to write your html like: div class=“span8” a class=“button blue blah-blah”… etc. - You can also build the grid in the LESS by using mixins delivered by Bootstrap.
I think the non-semantic way of using it is just populated so much because it’s a kind of ‘solution for everybody’ but if you know what your doing then you can make things a little better.
Is popular because people are lazy and they just think about fast money, it sells because most buyers are novices which will never have a successful site where the loading speed is not something just “nice to have”, same for jquery, I see it used just for a hover effect or minimal effects but at least there is a CDN for it. With all the responsive themes, it makes it even worst since they are loading the same files/images on phones.
http://divshot.github.com/geo-bootstrap/ it is so popular because of this theme. ahh geocities. memories
the Input with error style is win