Preface

Bootstrap is the most popular frontend framework today. One of its advantages is that it is easy to start working with. In fact, it is possible to simply get the links for Bootstrap's CSS and JS files over a Content Delivery Network (CDN), and you are good to go!

However, under this low barrier to entry lies a whole world of possibilities to put together websites in Bootstrap 4.

For example, there are additional ways to install Bootstrap, such as cloning it via Git or installing it via NPM or Bower.

There are also several ways to work with it, with increasing levels of complexity. For example, you can simply use its CSS as is. You can also use its SCSS files, which come with the default installation in Bootstrap 4. By tweaking SCSS files, using includes, variables, and mixins (Sass functions), you can create highly customized layouts.

Bootstrap 4 also includes the amazing Flexbox grid, which gives us a whole new way of working with layouts.

When working with any frontend technology, there are always a lot of repetitive tasks, such as minification and Sass-to-CSS compilation. These tasks are performed using task runners, and in this book, the focus is on Grunt. Although working with task runners does add an extra layer of complexity to our development with Bootstrap 4, it also increases our efficiency as frontend developers.

Bootstrap 4 is powered by Sass and jQuery, so due care was given to covering the use of both technologies in this book’s recipes.

In the last few chapters, we are looking into integrating Bootstrap with Jekyll, GitHub’s serverless blog system, and deploying it onto GitHub pages. We also take a look at using GitHub with .NET Core, Angular, and React.

One of the more ambitious goals of this book was to truly build on the available Bootstrap 4 documentation, rather than just reiterate the existing concepts. If some of the recipes seem a bit too advanced, understanding Bootstrap’s official documentation might be a prerequisite for better understanding. Also, each recipe was built to be as straightforward and beginner-friendly as possible, while remaining self-contained.

The world of the frontend web development is changing fast, and it is becoming increasingly complex. In the recipes of this book, emphasis was given to catering for this complexity in a manner that would suit developers of various levels of expertise.