Bootstrap - the ( beginner) web designer's best friend!

Once I felt more comfortable with HTML and CSS, I decided to explore the idea of using Bootstrap for my website. Bootstrap is open source front end development framework. It consists of HTML, CSS and Java Script. The more I learned about it the more I was convinced I will be using it. First of all it was going to allow me to really build my website from scratch. While, by themselves, Bootstrap elements are like using a template, in reality they provide the skeleton of what you want to do, they are a start and from there you can change and redesign them to suit your needs. Most importantly using then meant I do not have to try and learn Java script as well. Boostrap works with Java script libraries that are hosted online. It was going to be a matter of linking my website with that library, and then Boostrap simply draws from there whatever script it needs to support its elements and functionality. 

It was also going to offer some ready solutions for the responsiveness of my website - something that I already wrote about and decided not to take on by myself, as  trying to do better on that front might overcomplicate my code or confuse me at times. Bootstrap is responsive by design and if I do not play with it to the point I break the code, it should be just fine. It is flexible and once you know HTML and CSS it is relatively easy to work with. As a collection of CSS classes it is invaluable tool for every beginner! Yet, if you have no idea about CSS, it will limit considerably what you can do with Boostrap, as you will not be able to understand what is actually happening and what each line of code is doing for your website. 

If you want your website to be unique and a web design masterpiece - don't use Boostrap. It will help you for a fast development, but it is a library after all, one that everyone can use. For a beginner it is perfect because it shows you how to do certain elements , and those designs are a good start when thinking about your layout. It might save some time from writing CSS, but as I said - if you have no idea about CSS it is useless. I am absolutely sure that I will change things as I go along, and elements will need redoing in order to fit my design. I will not be able to do that if I do not understand what I am looking at. 

After doing some more research I found that a lot of Boostrap elements and designs work best with jQuery, allowing me to improve functionality and responsiveness! To sum this up - if you are just starting your journey in web design, Boostrap can be your best friend, especially of your goal is to make a website from scratch. Yes, I know we were told we can use templates... Yet, for me, this kind of defies the purpose, with the purpose being to emerge at the end of this assignment  with a new skill set that I will be able to use in the future. If i simply get a template and populate it with content I will get nothing out of this, I will be able to build a website, or not able in my case, just as much as I was at day 1 of teaching in this module. I will be where I started and this is not what I want and what I am aiming at.




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