Introduction
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Once upon a time web developers had to build websites and web apps from scratch. They would take the mock-ups from the designers, painstakingly counting the pixels and crafting the CSS with lots of care and patience. Countless hours would be spent in an (often futile) attempt to obtain a pixel-perfect reproduction of the design concepts across the range of supported browsers.
Things started to change in August 2011, when a new hero rose to challenge the web. Born from the passion and dedication of Mark Otto and Jacob Thornton, the newborn Bootstrap took the front-end development kingdom by storm. The second version came fast, after only half a year and it was built along the principles of responsive web design. It boasted a robust twelve column grid, lots of pre-styled components and it allowed almost everyone to put together a basic webpage, just as easy as stacking together LEGO pieces. And just on its second birthday came the announcement of the evolution to version 3, featuring a mobile-first approach and ditching the previous Web 2.0 gradients in favor of the flat design. Two more years later, in August 2015, the first alpha version of the fourth iteration became available to the wide community. The growth trend seems to have come to a halt though, as at the time this words were written, no further public advancement happened.
I dare say that Bootstrap had almost the same effect on the World Wide Web as Ford's assembly line had for automotive industry. Every Joe and Jane with a minimum of knowledge in the field of front-end technologies could now put together a basic website that worked well across a large variety of devices and browsers. Sure, on one hand, most of them are similar to thousand others, to the point where many people started complaining that "Bootstrap is killing web design". On the other hand, there are true masterpieces of design and craftsmanship, that you can admire on dedicated websites such as or .
So here we are, almost 5 years from the birth of Bootstrap. In this time it grew from an internal framework at Twitter to the most used UI/front-end framework on the web, with more than 7 million websites using it (according to ). Despite the apparent break in the development cycle, version 3.X.X of Bootstrap remains a solid option for building up your websites and web apps.
This is where this book comes in. Beginners will find a wealth of knowledge to help them start on this new and fascinating road. Advanced developers could also catch small tricks and tips, designed to make their life easier. One thing is sure though: Bootstrap is here to stay and we haven't seen the last of this great framework.