Bootstrap is a toolkit from Twitter designed to kickstart development of websites and apps.
It includes base CSS and HTML for typography, forms, buttons, tables, grids, navigation, and more.
Nerd alert: Bootstrap is built with LESS and was designed to work out of the gate with only modern browsers in mind.
For the quickest and easiest start, just copy this snippet into your webpage.
A fan of using LESS.js? No problem, just clone the repo and add these lines:
Download, fork, pull, and more with the official Bootstrap repo on Github.
The default grid system provided as part of Bootstrap is a 940px wide 16-column grid. It's a flavor of the popular 960 grid system, but without the additional margin/padding on the left and right sides.
As shown here, a basic layout can be created with two "columns," each spanning a number of the 16 foundational columns we defined as part of our grid system. See the examples below for more variations.
<div class="row">
<div class="span6 columns">
...
</div>
<div class="span10 columns">
...
</div>
</div>
A basic 940px wide, centered container layout for just about any site or page.
<body>
<div class="container">
...
</div>
</body>
A flexible fluid or liquid page structure with min- and max-widths and a left-hand sidebar. Great for apps.
<body>
<div class="container-fluid">
<div class="sidebar">
...
</div>
<div class="content">
...
</div>
</div>
</body>
A standard typographic hierarchy for structuring your webpages.
Nullam quis risus eget urna mollis ornare vel eu leo. Cum sociis natoque penatibus et magnis dis parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus. Nullam id dolor id nibh ultricies vehicula ut id elit.
Using emphasis, addresses, & abbreviations
<strong>
<em>
<address>
<abbr>
Emphasis tags (<strong> and <em>) should be used to add visual distinction between a word or phrase and its surrounding copy. Use <strong> for plain old attention and <em> for slick attention and titles.
Fusce dapibus, tellus ac cursus commodo, tortor mauris condimentum nibh, ut fermentum massa justo sit amet risus. Maecenas faucibus mollis interdum. Nulla vitae elit libero, a pharetra augue.
The address element is used for—you guessed it!—addresses. Here's how it looks:
Note: Each line in an address must end with a line-break (<br />) to properly structure the content as it is read in real life without any styles applied.
For abbreviations and acronyms, use the abbr tag (acronym is deprecated in HTML5). Put the shorthand form within the tag and set a title for the complete name.
<blockquote>
<p>
<cite>
Be sure to wrap your blockquote around paragraph and cite tags. When citing a source, use the cite element. The CSS will automatically preface a name with an em dash (—).
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua...
Dr. Julius Hibbert
<ul><ul.unstyled><ol>dl
<table>
<thead>
<tbody>
<tr>
<th>
<td>
<colspan>
<caption>
Tables are great—for a lot of things. Great tables, however, need a bit of markup love to be useful, scalable, and readable (at the code level). Here are a few tips to help.
Always wrap your column headers in a thead such that hierarchy is thead > tr > th.
Similar to the column headers, all your table's body content should be wrapped in a tbody so your hierarchy is tbody > tr > td.
All tables will be automatically styled with only the essential borders to ensure readability and maintain structure. No need to add extra classes or attributes.
| # | First Name | Last Name | Language |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Some | One | English |
| 2 | Joe | Sixpack | English |
| 3 | Stu | Dent | Code |
<table class="common-table"> ... </table>
Get a little fancy with your tables by adding zebra-striping—just add the .zebra-striped class.
| # | First Name | Last Name | Language |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Some | One | English |
| 2 | Joe | Sixpack | English |
| 3 | Stu | Dent | Code |
<table class="common-table zebra-striped"> ... </table>
Taking the previous example, we improve the usefulness of our tables by providing sorting functionality via jQuery and the Tablesorter plugin. Click any column's header to change the sort.
| # | First Name | Last Name | Language |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Your | One | English |
| 2 | Joe | Sixpack | English |
| 3 | Stu | Dent | Code |
<script type="text/javascript" src="js/jquery/jquery.tablesorter.min.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
$(document).ready(function() {
$("table#sortTableExample").tablesorter( {sortList: [[1,0]]} );
});
</script>
<table class="common-table zebra-striped">
...
</table>
All forms are given default styles to present them in a readable and scalable way. Styles are provided for text inputs, select lists, textareas, radio buttons and checkboxes, and buttons.
Add .form-stacked to your form's HTML and you'll have labels on top of their fields instead of to their left. This works great if your forms are short or you have two columns of inputs for heavier forms.
As a convention, buttons are used for actions while links are used for objects. For instance, "Download" could be a button and "recent activity" could be a link.
All buttons default to a light gray style, but a blue .primary class is available. Plus, rolling your own styles is easy peasy.
Button styles can be applied to anything with the .btn applied. Typically you'll want to apply these to only a, button, and select input elements. Here's how it looks:
Fancy larger or smaller buttons? Have at it!
For buttons that are not active or are disabled by the app for one reason or another, use the disabled state. That's .disabled for links and :disabled for button elements.
One-line messages for highlighting the failure, possible failure, or success of an action. Particularly useful for forms.
For messages that require a bit of explanation, we have paragraph style alerts. These are perfect for bubbling up longer error messages, warning a user of a pending action, or just presenting information for more emphasis on the page.
Modals—dialogs or lightboxes—are great for contextual actions in situations where it's important that the background context be maintained.
One fine body...
Bootstrap was built with Preboot, an open-source pack of mixins and variables to be used in conjunction with LESS, a CSS preprocessor for faster and easier web development.
Check out how we used Preboot in Bootstrap and how you can make use of it should you choose to run LESS on your next project.
Use this option to make full use of Bootstrap's LESS variables, mixins, and nesting in CSS via javascript in your browser.
<link rel="stylesheet/less" type="text/css" href="less/bootstrap.less" media="all" /> <script type="text/javascript" src="js/less-1.0.41.min.js"></script>
Not feeling the .js solution? Try the LESS Mac app or use Node.js to compile when you deploy your code.
Here are some of the highlights of what's included in Twitter Bootstrap as part of Bootstrap. Head over to the Bootstrap website or Github project page to download and learn more.
Variables in LESS are perfect for maintaining and updating your CSS headache free. When you want to change a color value or a frequently used value, update it in one spot and you're set.
// Links @linkColor: #8b59c2; @linkColorHover: darken(@linkColor, 10); // Grays @black: #000; @grayDark: lighten(@black, 25%); @gray: lighten(@black, 50%); @grayLight: lighten(@black, 70%); @grayLighter: lighten(@black, 90%); @white: #fff; // Accent Colors @blue: #08b5fb; @green: #46a546; @red: #9d261d; @yellow: #ffc40d; @orange: #f89406; @pink: #c3325f; @purple: #7a43b6; // Baseline @baseline: 20px;
LESS also provides another style of commenting in addition to CSS's normal /* ... */ syntax.
// This is a comment /* This is also a comment */
Mixins are basically includes or partials for CSS, allowing you to combine a block of code into one. They're great for vendor prefixed properties like box-shadow, cross-browser gradients, font stacks, and more. Below is a sample of the mixins that are included with Bootstrap.
#font {
.shorthand(@weight: normal, @size: 14px, @lineHeight: 20px) {
font-size: @size;
font-weight: @weight;
line-height: @lineHeight;
}
.sans-serif(@weight: normal, @size: 14px, @lineHeight: 20px) {
font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;
font-size: @size;
font-weight: @weight;
line-height: @lineHeight;
}
.serif(@weight: normal, @size: 14px, @lineHeight: 20px) {
font-family: "Georgia", Times New Roman, Times, sans-serif;
font-size: @size;
font-weight: @weight;
line-height: @lineHeight;
}
.monospace(@weight: normal, @size: 12px, @lineHeight: 20px) {
font-family: "Monaco", Courier New, monospace;
font-size: @size;
font-weight: @weight;
line-height: @lineHeight;
}
}
#gradient {
.horizontal (@startColor: #555, @endColor: #333) {
background-color: @endColor;
background-repeat: repeat-x;
background-image: -khtml-gradient(linear, left top, right top, from(@startColor), to(@endColor)); // Konqueror
background-image: -moz-linear-gradient(left, @startColor, @endColor); // FF 3.6+
background-image: -ms-linear-gradient(left, @startColor, @endColor); // IE10
background-image: -webkit-gradient(linear, left top, right top, color-stop(0%, @startColor), color-stop(100%, @endColor)); // Safari 4+, Chrome 2+
background-image: -webkit-linear-gradient(left, @startColor, @endColor); // Safari 5.1+, Chrome 10+
background-image: -o-linear-gradient(left, @startColor, @endColor); // Opera 11.10
-ms-filter: %("progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.gradient(startColorstr='%d', endColorstr='%d', GradientType=1)",@startColor,@endColor); // IE8+
filter: e(%("progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.gradient(startColorstr='%d', endColorstr='%d', GradientType=1)",@startColor,@endColor)); // IE6 & IE7
background-image: linear-gradient(left, @startColor, @endColor); // Le standard
}
.vertical (@startColor: #555, @endColor: #333) {
background-color: @endColor;
background-repeat: repeat-x;
background-image: -khtml-gradient(linear, left top, left bottom, from(@startColor), to(@endColor)); // Konqueror
background-image: -moz-linear-gradient(@startColor, @endColor); // FF 3.6+
background-image: -ms-linear-gradient(@startColor, @endColor); // IE10
background-image: -webkit-gradient(linear, left top, left bottom, color-stop(0%, @startColor), color-stop(100%, @endColor)); // Safari 4+, Chrome 2+
background-image: -webkit-linear-gradient(@startColor, @endColor); // Safari 5.1+, Chrome 10+
background-image: -o-linear-gradient(@startColor, @endColor); // Opera 11.10
-ms-filter: %("progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.gradient(startColorstr='%d', endColorstr='%d', GradientType=0)",@startColor,@endColor); // IE8+
filter: e(%("progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.gradient(startColorstr='%d', endColorstr='%d', GradientType=0)",@startColor,@endColor)); // IE6 & IE7
background-image: linear-gradient(@startColor, @endColor); // The standard
}
.directional (@startColor: #555, @endColor: #333, @deg: 45deg) {
...
}
.vertical-three-colors(@startColor: #00b3ee, @midColor: #7a43b6, @colorStop: 0.5, @endColor: #c3325f) {
...
}
}
Get fancy and perform some math to generate flexible and powerful mixins like the one below.
// Griditude
@gridColumns: 16;
@gridColumnWidth: 40px;
@gridGutterWidth: 20px;
// Grid System
.container {
width: @siteWidth;
margin: 0 auto;
.clearfix();
}
.columns(@columnSpan: 1) {
display: inline;
float: left;
width: (@gridColumnWidth * @columnSpan) + (@gridGutterWidth * (@columnSpan - 1));
margin-left: @gridGutterWidth;
&:first-child {
margin-left: 0;
}
}
.offset(@columnOffset: 1) {
margin-left: (@gridColumnWidth * @columnOffset) + (@gridGutterWidth * (@columnOffset - 1)) !important;
}