Bootstrap Sass System

[EpicGlobalWeb]

What was the major benefit changing the framework to use Sass?

 

[Rob Whisonant]

I wonder if it could be as simple as the SASS user base is much larger that the LESS user base? Kind of like VHS or BETA-MAX back in the day?

 

[EpicGlobalWeb]

I'm not sure what a VHS or BET-MAX is but I think I understand your point. (lol!)

 

[Mike001]

Mike001

That is just so wrong in so many ways.....

 

[EpicGlobalWeb]

EpicGlobalWeb

Remember tape rewinders? And how movies used to skip? And when camcorders were roughly the size of a hand cannon?

 

[EpicGlobalWeb]

I promise that's the last old joke.

 

[Mike001]

I really like the BootStrap framework and actually have a couple of college classes that I teach in the framework and have even developed a 24 video series on the framework that I have on my website.

Most people do not realize that BootStrap was develop and designed by one of the major developers of Twitter, who originally worked on the development of Google. It was originally called Twitter Blueprint and developed in 2010 and released in 2011. Twitter did not want their name associated with the release and that was why the name was changed. A decision that they have come to regret by the way. It is not been around that long. But it is the most popular framework in use today because of its mobile first design philosophy and its ease of use.

I wonder if it could be as simple as the SASS user base is much larger that the LESS user base? Kind of like VHS or BETA-MAX back in the day?

Rob that was a good part of it. But there were some development reasons also.

The bigger reason was the support and speed of SASS.

The LESS optimizer was becoming a little outdated with the changes that were occurring in CSS and the development team as LESS was not keeping up. They are in to many different projects and with the speed at which things were changing in the styling code was happening too fast for them to incorporate into the LESS optimizer.

I still like them both, but as we move more and more into CSS animations and transitions it is very important that whatever optimizer we use be able to support those new features. With the introduction of BootStrap 4, and it is still in the Beta Phases, there will be much more dependence on the new features of CSS and less on JavaScript. SO they wanted to be able to use an optimizer that would support all the new features of the CSS styling language.

When you look at the development tree and road maps for the optimizer's (LESS and SASS) for future development, that would have to be SASS.

Just thought I would chime in on a subject I could actually talk intelligently about....

 

[EpicGlobalWeb]

In your expert opinion, do you feel that Bootstrap made it much easier for search engines to standardize and index websites?

At the same time, does the framework cause a security issue for xss-related problems? I've pondered this because all the classes in Bootstrap are the same on all different websites, which I imagine makes it easier for bots to scan them.

Also ease of use is an understatement! I couldn't believe when I tried it, thought it was going to be a tough task to learn, but with Bootstrap you can design really nice, complicated looking websites in a tiny fraction of the time. I'd even argue that it's easier than regular HTML.

 

[Mike001]

In your expert opinion, do you feel that Bootstrap made it much easier for search engines to standardize and index websites?

Yes, much easier. The fact that the standardization of the HTML scripting language has added the proper tag structure to pages for different content and that BootStrap actually uses those changes has made it easier to properly index those pages. Now whether the developers use those new features in BootStrap is a different story. Like everything else you need to stay up to date withe the changes and developers have not. BootStrap 3 does support most of the new structural elements you just have to place them correctly in the page structure.

At the same time, does the framework cause a security issue for xss-related problems? I've pondered this because all the classes in Bootstrap are the same on all different websites, which I imagine makes it easier for bots to scan them.

I have not seen any real security issues using the framework, that I would not have seen in a generic site. We will always have bot issues and scrapper issues on the web, at least for the foreseeable future. I have followed the same standard security principles that I have followed in most of my sites.

What I have done on high security areas of a site that uses BootStrap 3, for instance eCommerce portions of a site. I have renamed many of the BootStrap Classes and moved those styles to a separate CSS file outside the root folder. But I do this with a lot of the security areas of my sites anyway. Files outside the root structure are always much more secure. Of course that takes a little knowledge in programming to get those files accessible from the site.

Also ease of use is an understatement! I couldn't believe when I tried it, thought it was going to be a tough task to learn, but with Bootstrap you can design really nice, complicated looking websites in a tiny fraction of the time. I'd even argue that it's easier than regular HTML.

BootStrap 3 is extremely easy to use. I have designed some very complex sites for both mobile, desktop, and tablets using the framework and was amazed at how easy it was to get the responsiveness for those pages on multiple devices. And the beauty of the framework is if you really understand the framework, the footprint is extremely small and very stable. I only load the files that I will need for the actual site and that keeps the files sizes of the site very small for what it is doing. I am always amazed at how many people will fuss about site speed and when I look at there sites they are loading 1000's sometimes 10,000's of lines of code that are not being used.... and they wonder why it is slow and unresponsive.