Is Bootstrap 5 Helpful Or A Timewaster
09 Oct 2024My experiences and thoughts on Bootstrap 5
So far I have made 4 webpages with Bootstrap 5 and I have had the same experience with all of them. Note that these are not complete working webpages, they are just made to look like an example page. With the help of github copilot I could very easily setup the overarching structure for each different part of my webpage but then trying to format anything inside those parts was a nightmare. The reason for this is most of the actual text on the page had to be nested within 4 or more tags. Most of those were divs but ul and li came up frequently for the navbars. And each tag had at least 1 Bootstrap 5 class though a good chunk had more than 1. Each time I wanted to change the format of something I would have to run the html code, use the inspect tool on chrome to bring up that code on the page, wade through each layer of tags until I found which 1 I needed to change and then figure out the css code needed to actually make the change. Most of the time I would have to close and rerun the html code several times tweaking the code in between each time until I actually got it to look how I wanted it to look. That whole process is very time consuming not to mention frustrating. In addition I often do not know what most of the Bootstrap 5 classes being implented actually do because github copilot gets me close to what I actually need and then trial and error gets me close enough to what I need. Close enough being the keyword because I can never get things perfect. To see what I mean take a look at the image below which is a replication of the website this essay is on.
If you pull up a side by side of the original and that image you will see that everything is just a little bit off. It took me about 2-3 hours to make that page and of that maybe 15-20 minutes was me writing out the HTML side of the code and the rest of that time was spent trying to format things. I should clarify that writing out the HTML code entirely consisted of me hitting tab when github copilot suggested things and then deleting a couple of tags. Most of the formatting troubles came from trying to figure out exactly which tags I needed add the Bootstrap 5 Justify-Content classes to which was surprisingly difficult. I got things to look alright but I was a little upset I could not get a couple of things to look perfect.
Is Bootstrap 5 useful?
After the scathing review I have just given I am guessing that any one reading this essay might be suprised that my answer is Bootstrap 5 is groundbreakingly useful, especially with the use of github copilot or a similar ai. I said earlier that I did not know what most of the Bootstrap 5 classes do. This is why it took me so long to format things, I did not know what to format. By the end of creating the above webpage I was starting to apply Bootstrap 5 classes over using CSS styles because I figured out some of the more simple classes. If I actually decided to become fluent in the use of Bootstrap 5 then tried remaking the above webpage I believe I could do it in have the time if not faster. Using these premade classes is great not only because I do not have to write out the CSS code but It also makes it more practical to have close to everything on the HTML page meaning I do not have to switch between the HTML and CSS pages when coding which I find annoying to do. I would not say Bootstrap 5 completely eliminates the need for a style.css page because sometimes it will just be easier to use CSS but there are a lot of repetitive or code intensive formatting options I can now apply with a single class that I did not have to write myself. And as I mentioned the benefits are even better with an ai helper like github copilot. The ai helper will shave down a lot of time on writing out the tags and classes which means you can very quickly get a well formated webpage very quickly and all you have to do is tweak a few things and then add in the actual content. Actually learning how to use the Bootstrap 5 classes should not be to difficult as I was starting to figure it out with very little exposure and I never even looked anything up. If one is practiced in the ability to google stuff I expect they could apply Bootstrap 5 quite easily if they already understand the usage of HTML and CSS.