I'm sure a lot of developers have heard of bootstrap and what it does. It's still no surprise at all that despite how well documented and easy bootstrap is to use, a lot of developers still find it difficult working with bootstrap. I know this because I've been on that ship and it is the reason why I am writing this article.
In this article I would be explaining what bootstrap is, the concept behind how bootstrap works and my experience with bootstrap.
First, let me break down what bootstrap is, bootstrap is a CSS library. I'm sure we understand what a library is and what it is they do in a library. So you'd understand clearly what I mean let me explain 'library' in this context.
We all know a library is a place where books, journals, research, documentaries etc are kept for easy access.
The same applies to Bootstrap, it's a collection of utility classes that can be used over and over again in a single project just as a library is a collection of books for easy access.
Even after I took two different bootstrap courses online including YouTube videos, it was still difficult working with bootstrap. I was working on a non bootstrap project when I finally got the idea behind how bootstrap works.
I was creating my own utility classes in that project, then it became clear this was the exact way I should use bootstrap, just that I don't need to create the utility classes because they've been created already in bootstrap, all I just have to do is to use the classes in my project.
Now I know you'd be wondering how you'd know what a class does and when to use a particular class? This same question was what pushed me to read bootstrap's documentation again. But now, I was going through the documentation with a clear understanding of how bootstrap works, I just needed to know what the classes do and when to use them.
It's easy understanding something when you have an idea of how that thing works behind the scene
After going through bootstrap's documentation, I finally understand what some of the classes does and when to use them, so I started a project just to test what I've learnt, I was amazed to see that I didn't write a lot of CSS code myself as almost everything was already available as a utility class in bootstrap which I just have to add to my html tags when they are needed.
That was how I finally grasped how bootstrap works and how to use bootstrap my project, and I've been using bootstrap ever since, the more I use bootstrap, the more I learn about more interesting features.
I want to believe that you now have an idea of what bootstrap really is, so it won't be hard following their documentation henceforth. I hope this article was helpful?