Bootstrap is a free and open-source CSS framework directed at responsive, mobile-first front-end web development. It contains CSS- and (optionally) JavaScript-based design templates for typography, forms, buttons, navigation, and other interface components.

Highlights:

Author: Mark Otto, Jacob Thornton
Developer's: Bootstrap Core Team
Initial release: August 19, 2011
Written in: HTML, CSS, Less (v3), Sass (v4) and JavaScript
Platform: Web platform
Open-source: Yes
Website: https://getbootstrap.com
Alexa Rank: 2,108

Bootstrap 4 Alpha 6 Features:

1. Rewritten grid system in flexbox: They improved the grid system with three major changes. Here, one can disable the grid classes by the SASS variable. You can add a grid customization section to the documents. You will see also witness simplified grid classes. These changes are available in both standard and flexbox grids.

2. Flexbox by default: Along with flexbox being the default system. There are flexbox grids, also available, apart from standard ones. And new flexbox alignment utility classes at hand for distributing items as well.

3. IE9 support: Bootstrap CSS has released this long-awaited update of IE9 support.

4. Forms: With development to Alpha 4, there are significant changes in forms. There are necessary improvements in sizing, alignment, and component layout. The ‘fresh form validation and help text options are ready. And the documentation for forms is simplified too.

5. Automatic equal-width grid columns: Breakpoint-specific column classes can be employed for columns with equal width.

6. Updated and improved Navbar: Earlier there were certain styles for nav components that could not be set by variables. This update takes care of that and also adds some new features to it.

7. Auto margins for easy spacing: They improved the auto margins for easy spacing.

8. Change in system fonts: Helvetica/Arial font was old system fonts. They are replaced with a system font stack of modern, and strong fonts. This is done for companies like Apple, Google, Mac, to target the latest devices. Although, there is no such update available for Linux users.

Pros:

Massive community support.
Widest variety of themes.
Best browser capability.
Has both a fluid and fixed pattern grid system.
More development tools available.
Many popular websites are built on this framework.
Superiority in mobile support.
Most of the celebrated custom web development companies prefer this tool.

Cons:

Not as lightweight when compared to others. Out-of-the-box file size of 276 KB due to an excessive number of rarely used styles.
Difficult to use jQuery plugins.
Websites are easily recognizable.
The excessive number of HTML classes and DOM elements can be messy and confusing

Popular Brands Using Bootstrap:

Lyft
Vogue
Riot Design
Newsweek

Ideal for: Beginners and those who prefer a robust front-end framework.

Bootstrap, originally named Twitter Blueprint, was developed by Mark Otto and Jacob Thornton at Twitter as a framework to encourage consistency across internal tools. Before Bootstrap, various libraries were used for interface development, which led to inconsistencies and a high maintenance burden.

After a few months of development by a small group, many developers at Twitter began to contribute to the project as a part of Hack Week, a hackathon-style week for the Twitter development team. It was renamed from Twitter Blueprint to Bootstrap and released as an open-source project on August 19, 2011. It has continued to be maintained by Mark Otto, Jacob Thornton, and a small group of core developers, as well as a large community of contributors.

Bootstrap 2

On January 31, 2012, Bootstrap 2 was released, which added built-in support for Glyphicons, several new components, as well as changes to many of the existing components. This version supports responsive web design, meaning the layout of web pages adjusts dynamically, taking into account the characteristics of the device used (whether desktop, tablet, or mobile phone).

Bootstrap 3

The next major version, Bootstrap 3, was released on August 19, 2013. It redesigned components to use flat design and a mobile-first approach.

Bootstrap 4

Mark Otto announced Bootstrap 4 on October 29, 2014. The first alpha version of Bootstrap 4 was released on August 19, 2015. The first beta version was released on 10 August 2017. Mark suspended work on Bootstrap 3 on September 6, 2016, to free up time to work on Bootstrap 4. Bootstrap 4 was finalized on January 18, 2018.

Significant changes include:

Major rewrite of the code.
Replacing Less with Sass.
Addition of Reboot, a collection of element-specific CSS changes in a single file, based on Normalize.
Dropping support for IE8, IE9,[contradictory] and iOS 6.
CSS Flexible Box support.
Adding navigation customization options.
Adding responsive spacing and sizing utilities.
Switching from the pixels unit in CSS to root ems.
Increasing global font size from 14px to 16px.
Dropping the panel, thumbnail, pager, and well components.
Dropping the Glyphicons icon font.
Huge number[quantify] of utility classes.
Improved form styling, buttons, drop-down menus, media objects, and image classes.
Bootstrap 4 supports the latest versions of Google Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera, and Safari (except on Windows). It additionally supports back to IE9 [contradictory] and the latest Firefox Extended Support Release (ESR).

Bootstrap 5

Bootstrap 5 is a updated version of bootstrap4 and Bootstrap 5 alpha was officially released on June 16, 2020 after several months of refining. With all of the major changes in this version, the Boostrap 5 development team informed the users that the current version is still in alpha version thus, breaking changes will continue to occur until the first beta is released so it’s better to always check the open issues and pull requests on their official GitHub repository for open questions and feedback.

Summary of the most important changes:

jQuery was removed
Switch to Vanilla JavaScript
Drop Internet Explorer 10 and 11 support
Improved grid system
Improved documentation
Improved modularity
Improved forms
New responsive font
New utilities & helpers
Easier customization & theming
Lighter package
New API available

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Written by Web Sky Star

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