I’ve got a review copy of Twitter BootStrap Web Development How-to By Packt Publishing and I’ve just managed to go through the book. The book is authored by David Cochran and because I’ve been using bootStrap in few of my projects, I was quite interested in going through the book, which I believe is the only book on Bootstrap I know of.

Twitter Bootstrap is a sleek, intuitive, and powerful front-end framework for faster and easier web development. The book is a short book that covers all the areas of Bootstrap and as long as you know HTML/CSS/Javascript at some level, you should be able to understand the book pretty easily. If you want to explore Bootstrap’s capabilities in one quick easy read, this book is for you.

One thing that I would have liked to see in the book (but is not there) is how to customize Bootstrap using LESS. The book only talks about how to customize Bootstrap from Twitter Bootstrap’s Customize page but does not talk about how to use LESS to customize. I think that would have definitely added more value to the book. Anyways, that’s just an observation and not a criticism of any sorts. I would stil recommend this book along with Bootstrap’s own documentation for anyone who is new to Bootstrap.

What this book covers

  • Downloading and setting up (Must know), walks you through the basics—getting the CSS, images, and JavaScript, and creating a page template.
  • Headings, links, and buttons (Must know), introduces you to Bootstrap’s ready-made styles for clear typographic hierarchy and turning hyperlinks into visually appealing buttons.
  • Conquering the layout (Must know), experiments with Bootstrap’s fantastic twelve-column grid system, just to get familiar with it.
  • Creating a standard sub-page (Must know), applies the Bootstrap grid system to lay out a standard sub-page with a wide main column and a narrower sidebar.
  • Creating a portfolio page (Must know), assists you in laying out a full-page grid of linked images with captions, using Bootstrap’s styles for thumbnails.
  • Creating a products page (Must know), walks you through the steps involved in creating a products page. Bootstrap comes with effective styles for laying out a good, basic, visually appealing table. We’ll use it to start a products page.
  • Customizing the navbar (Must know), assists you in adding links to these pages in Bootstrap’s main navigation bar.
  • Making it responsive (Should know), connects jQuery and Bootstrap’s JavaScript plugins to enable the navbar to adapt responsively to small devices and viewports.
  • Adding drop-down lists (Should know), shows how to add drop-down lists to your navbar. With the JavaScript in place, it’s quite simple.
  • Using tabs for switching content (Should know), illustrates the use of tabs for switching content. Now that we’re getting used to leveraging all of Bootstrap—markup, CSS, and JavaScript—we’re ready to create dynamic tabs for switching between panes of content.
  • Creating a homepage carousel (Should know), adds a final touch to your site. To finish our site, we’ll add a beautiful image slideshow, using Bootstrap’s excellent, fully responsive carousel.
  • Optimizing and customizing (Should know), will show you how to optimize your site for better performance and how to add customizations. Out-of-the-box Bootstrap is great. But you’ll want to customize it. We’ll bring in some custom colors and font faces. And we’ll optimize our files in the process.
  • Uploading, testing, and launching (Must know), walks you through a basic process of uploading our site to the web. Then you’ll leverage a couple of great online tools to test our site for both desktop and mobile devices.
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4 Responses to Book Review : Twitter BootStrap Web Development How-To

  1. sanaranicole says:

    I am also familiar with this book and its is full of great ideas and very useful. Web Development is done through many steps like E-commerce , Flash, PHP etc

    • gav says:

      @sanaranicole – but would you not have preferred to have some content covering the .less side of things?

  2. Jeromy says:

    I was also interested in best-practices for customizing Bootstrap’s CSS via LESS. I asked this question on StackOverflow (http://stackoverflow.com/q/13809895/1430996) and was able to work out a way of storing my customizations while still being on Bootstrap’s “upgrade path” (ie: I can pull in their updates at any time, run the lessc command, and instantly have output that combines their latest with my customizations). Hope that’s helpful!

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