On any theme page, you can now click “Open Sandbox” to open a JSFiddle page with that theme and any dependencies pre-loaded.
Coupled with our snippets feature and Bootsnipp, it’s now easier than ever to experiment with the themes.
Paper brings the material design’s principles of transformation and movement to Bootstrap. Best of all, Paper’s animations are implemented in pure CSS, meaning no custom markup or JS is needed. In case you missed them, here’s a quick tour of these effects in action.
When hovering over a button, a shadow edges in. On click, the shadow fills the button.
Input fields are marked by a bottom border, which transitions to a wider, more colorful border when focused.
Paper makes use of custom checkboxes that transform in shape and color when selected.
Radio buttons are much the same.
Not an animation, but progress bars in Paper have contextual backgrounds.
We weren’t able to implement floating labels in pure CSS, but you only need to add a bit of code to achieve this effect. Check out the source.
A big thanks to Ryan Walters for his awesome work on the checkboxes and radio buttons, and sharing his code for floating labels.
With the release of Bootstrap 3.3.2, Bootswatch is not far behind. You can check out the latest Bootstrap changes here.
In addition, a number of Bootswatch issues have been addressed, including:
Thanks to the bug reporters and contributors!
Bootswatch is supporting SASS! With Bootstrap offering an official SASS version for some time now, it’s only right Bootswatch did the same. You can now download _variables.scss and _bootswatch.scss, in addition to the usual CSS and LESS options.
Also available is a new grunt task, convert_less, that can be used to convert all LESS files in your repo to SASS.
Credit goes to Corey Sewell, who’s generously submitted a pull request with the SASS source and ensured that LESS to SASS conversion work as smoothly as possible.
We’re giving away Bootswatch merchandise this month! Three prize packs are up for grabs that include a t-shirt and stickers that feature the new logo.
There are two easy ways to enter the giveaway:
You’re welcome to do both to double your chances. Winners will be picked at the end of September.
T-shirts and stickers are also available for purchase, if you’d like to show your love for the project. Several t-shirt designs are available based on themes including Cyborg, Flatly, and Slate (pictured above). Head over to the Support page for more details.
Winners have been chosen and contacted via Twitter. Thanks to all for participating!
Two new themes have been added to the Bootswatch library: Paper and Sandstone.
Paper takes inspiration from Google's material design manifesto. Features include animated form inputs and tabs, as well as progress bars with matching background colors. No button click animations yet, but if you’re up to the task of recreating them with CSS only, please contribute.
Sandstone offers a warmer palette of tans, browns, and greens in this cold world of blues and grays.
But Bootswatch giveth, and Bootswatch taketh away — Amelia has been deprecated. For now, you can still access it directly here and through the API, but it will be removed in the next update.
Bootswatch is giving away five copies of Extending Bootstrap by Christoffer Niska.
Extending Bootstrap covers more advanced ground compared to Packt’s previous offering, Twitter Bootstrap Web Development How-To. Topics include when and how to apply Bootstrap themes, make custom builds using LESS and Grunt, and create custom JavaScript plugins. It touches on some similar topics as my Smashing Magazine article on customizing Bootstrap, but adds highly guided walkthroughs and examples.
To find out more about the book, visit the publisher site or Amazon.
Five lucky entrants will win an ebook copy of Extending Bootstrap. Enter to win using the form below by Friday, June 27.
Winners will be selected at random. Please do not submit multiple entries. Your email address will be used for this contest and nothing else.
Don’t forget to tell your friends and colleagues about this giveaway, and subscribe by RSS or email to get future updates. Good luck!
The giveaway has ended and the winners will be contacted by email.
It’s tempting to use Bootstrap for your project and be done with the design, especially if you don’t come from a design background. What you often end up with resembles something like this (view live):
But if you care about how your content is received, don’t let Bootstrap be the final word on your design. A small effort here will pay off in spades.
To help with this, here are five simple tips to get the most out of Bootstrap. Don’t worry: you won’t have to dig into LESS and customize the Bootstrap source.
As I go through the list, I’ll apply each piece of advice to the example above.
When it comes to typography, a common rule of thumb is to limit lines of text (i.e., the measure) to 50-75 characters for improved readability. To put it in Bootstrap terms, your text should use 6 columns at most, given the default 14 pixel font size. Using all 12 columns for long-form text results in 170-character lines, well over the optimal range.
Here, I’ve reduced the text to 8 columns while bumping the font size up to 20 pixels. (view live)
Adding whitespace to your sections, paragraphs, etc. can dramatically improve the readability of your site. By default, Bootstrap often doesn’t provide sufficient margins and paddings. Not that I blame Bootstrap — it can’t know in advance how your content and components are going to fit together, which is what determines the effective use of whitespace.
In my example, I’ve increased the paragraph top and bottom margins and line height to 1.6em. (view live)
When it comes to interface design, less is more. You want to bring the content to the forefront. Use only a few fonts, a few colors in your palette, and even as few Bootstrap components as necessary. The slighter the differences are, the more likely it is that you should eliminate them by combining styles.
I noticed slight discrepancies with the font size, weight, and color between the main paragraph text, the lead, the button text, and the navbar brand in my example. I’ve made them consistent here. (view live)
There is one exception to the “less is more” maxim: when it comes to images, bigger is better. For example, if you have a jumbotron at the top of your page, consider replacing it with a full-width background image or pattern. background-size: cover is your friend here.
In my example, I simply darkened a photo by 75% to contrast the white text and set it as the background image. (view live)
Last but not least, consider using a Bootswatch theme to give your site a fresh look. This gives your Bootstrap components a distinct style with minimal effort. Unless you’re confident in what you’re doing, stick with a more neutral theme like Lumen, Darkly, or Yeti.
Here, I’ve replaced the default Bootstrap stylesheet with Yeti, giving the page’s button and typography a new spin. (view live)
Here’s an animation that shows the progression. Granted this is a basic example, but these same principles can be applied to any website. Keep them in mind and even if you’re not a design guru, hopefully they help you take your Bootstrap-based site to the next level.
Photo by David Masters. Text courtesy of Wikipedia.
Know of a Bootstrap site that needs sprucing up, whether yours or someone else’s? Hope you haven’t forgotten about Geo, a Bootstrap theme for the ages. Cupid and Shamrock also make effective themes on this special day…
Earlier this month I mentioned Bootsnipp, a repository of HTML snippets for Bootstrap. Browse the collection and you’ll find contact forms, timelines, pricing tables, and more that you can copy and paste into your own project. Bootsnipp also provides a handy drag-n-drop form builder and button builder.
What I wanted to bring your attention to today is Bootsnipp’s new theme selector. For any HTML snippet, you can now switch between plain Bootstrap and any of the Bootswatch themes. In the screenshot above, I’m previewing the login snippet with Lumen, and it takes seconds to check how it would look with Cyborg, Flatly, and other themes.
Bootswatch styles, Bootsnipp markup, and Bootstrap as the interface between the two. Now that’s a powerful combo.
