Trying to make these columns align...
23 Feb 2023
Bootstrap
For the past week, we have been learning about Bootstrap 5, which was my first exposure to front-end frameworks. Front-end frameworks are intended to make web development easier because they include predesigned “templates” for you to build on and modify. Bootstrap is also responsive, so your website will automatically adjust and will still look good on different devices/screensizes. To learn Bootstrap, I watched video tutorials on Youtube as well as going through the documentation. Going through the documentation made me realize there is so much Bootstrap offers, it feels like almost learning a new programming language. Some of the takeaways I learned that were also reinforced by the assignments were creating a navbar, footer, buttons and inserting images.
Pros and Cons
Some of the pros with using a UI framework like Bootstrap is that it makes creating a web page a lot easier. For example, last week, we were only limited to using HTML and CSS. One of our assignments last week was to create three columns containing text. I remembered how it was a little tedious to fiddle around with the margins and paddings to make the three columns aligned and looked nice. However, with Bootstrap and its grid system, it makes creating those three columns a lot faster. Another benefit with Bootstrap is it can provide consistency for developers. As someone who is a beginner programmer, Bootstrap allows me to create a web page that looks pretty decent in a short amount of time. Therefore, it gives me that momentum and motivation to want to continue learning more about HTML, CSS and UI frameworks so I can make more comprehensive websites.
After being expose to a UI framework for about a week, some of the disadvantages I noticed is that although it does provide consistency, it can have limitations in terms of creativity because the style of websites will all look somewhat the same. Another disadvantage is it made me wonder if I am actually coding/problem solving because sometimes it feels like I am just copying and pasting the code I wanted from the Bootstrap documentation page. However, UI frameworks does make web development more efficent and can provide that basic foundation/prototype for web development.