LowEndBox - Cheap VPS, Hosting and Dedicated Server Deals

How I Learned Bootstrap in Exactly 2.5 Hours

Bootstrap LogoI’m working on a Laravel-powered site which is using Bootstrap for its CSS.

I had a discussion on LET about Bootstrap vs. Tailwind.  I think if I was a pro web designer or looking to make this a full time career, I’d invest the time to learn Tailwind, as it is a more flexible package.  I also considered PureCSS and other minimal frameworks, but I needed something a little more advanced.  My entire goal was to avoid writing any CSS, and with a couple small exceptions, I was able to achieve that with Bootstrap.

The usual complaint is that “all Bootstrap sites look the same” and that’s fair, but in this case the value is in the data presented rather than a fresh look and feel.

To start, I didn’t know anything about Bootstrap.  I perused the docs, which are great references but not great teaching aids.  I also looked at a couple Bootstrap books, which seemed to assume I knew a lot about CSS (I don’t) and just want to learn Bootstrap’s implementations.

Finally, I headed over to – where else – YouTube.  I usually don’t like YouTube for learning technical things because watching videos is slower than reading, but in this case, I think video is the perfect medium.  The instructor can input some CSS/Bootstrap classes and show you the effects in real time.  Change this, here’s the result, change that, now it looks like this, etc.  It’s a very effective method.

In the end, I watched two tutorials which got me what I neededed.

The first is from Traversy Media.  We’ve discussed them before, and I’m a big fan.  Brad Traversy has an excellent teaching style and his material is top notch.  Here is a fantastic crash course on Bootstrap where he builds an excellent page from scratch.  He uses both grid and flexbox just so you get exposure to both:

Next up I looked at this course from the YouTube Web Dev Simplified channel.  Kyle goes through Bootstrap in a quick, efficient manner.  Indeed, this is one of the most efficient videos I’ve ever seen.  He speaks at a steady, well-edited pace and goes through all the bullet points one by one.  I’ve gone back to this video multiple time to pull out examples.

That’s actually 2 hours, 30 minutes, and 2 seconds but you can skip the final second of both videos.

Next up for me is to go deeper with Brad Traversy’s full Bootstrap course.  It’s $25 $20 with the code BOOSTRAP20.  It contains full builds for 5 different web sites, and I’m really looking forward to it.  I’ll post a review once I’ve drunk from that firehose.

 

 

 

raindog308

No Comments

    Leave a Reply

    Some notes on commenting on LowEndBox:

    • Do not use LowEndBox for support issues. Go to your hosting provider and issue a ticket there. Coming here saying "my VPS is down, what do I do?!" will only have your comments removed.
    • Akismet is used for spam detection. Some comments may be held temporarily for manual approval.
    • Use <pre>...</pre> to quote the output from your terminal/console, or consider using a pastebin service.

    Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *