AppStudio 6 adds support for the Bootstrap framework. It describes itself as “the most popular HTML, CSS, and JS framework for developing responsive, mobile first projects on the web.’
It is a free and open-source front-end library for creating websites and web applications. It contains HTML- and CSS-based design templates for typography, forms, buttons, navigation and other interface components, as well as optional JavaScript extensions. It aims to ease the development of dynamic websites and web applications. Originally developed at Twitter as an internal tool, it was released as an open source project in August, 2011. Bootstrap is the second most-starred project on GitHub, with over 95 thousand stars and more than 40 thousand forks. It’s used by over 10 million websites.
Why add another framework?
jQuery Mobile, while good and free, hasn’t seen an update in two years. It’s getting old.
jqWidgets, the other framework we supported in AppStudio 5 is excellent, well supported and has constant new releases. But it’s not free.
Bootstrap is free, has some great responsive features and has new versions coming out. It’s nicely designed for the modern web and had been great to use in our testing.
We will continue to support jQuery Mobile and jqWidgets. One important warning: jQuery Mobile does not play well with others. Do not use jQM and Bootstrap controls in the same project.
What are some of the features of Bootstrap?
- Responsive Grids – Bootstrap makes it easy to organize your app as a responsive grid. Controls easily line up with each other at all screen sizes.
- Icons – Bootstrap includes FontAwesome, with over 600 icons and effects.
- Themes – AppStudio includes 17 Bootstrap themes. There are more out there, and you can make your own.
- Appearance – Controls can be given a consistent appearance, for example, action buttons can all be blue.
- Controls – AppStudio 6 comes with over 2 dozen Bootstrap controls – more than any of our other frameworks.
- Children – You can build up your own control out of Bootstrap elements. Start with one control, then add other controls as children.
Want more information? Read Introduction to Bootstrap.
We will be highlighting some of these features in future blog posts.