New US Govt guidelines do not like Bootstrap CSS

[Dave S]

From IT World, this heads up about a new US standard for government website contractors:

<quote>

Not only does the U.S. standard choose other frameworks, it specifically does not recommend bootstrap for production sites.

<blockquote>

18F specifically does not recommend using Twitter/Bootstrap for production work because of one, the difficulty in adapting its opinionated styles to bespoke design work and two, its CSS style places semantic layout instructions directly in HTML classes.

</blockquote>

For CSS, the standard recommends using Sass</a> as a CSS preprocessor and the Bourbon framework to jumpstart layout development. They also define an alternative if you can't/don't want to use Sass and prefer something more lightweight: Yahoo's Pure.css.

</quote>

This story is at 

<URL:http://www.itworld.com/article/2989009/open-source-tools/a-useful-web-development-standard-from-an-unlikely-source-the-us-government.html>

and includes a link to the standard:

<URL:;https://playbook.cio.gov/designstandards/getting-started/>

which begins with
<quote>

The U.S. Web Design Standards are designed to set a new bar for simplicity and consistency across government services, while providing you with plug-and-play design and code.

</quote>

Whether you agree or not, sounds like an interesting discussion.

/dps "do all Bootstrap sites look alike?"

[Leonel Câmara]

There's a reason people like opinionated CSS frameworks. They save a lot of time which means customers save a lot of money, I can bet you my government which isn't swimming in money right now would not have the same opinion. Completely bespoke design is great but it is also a lot more costly for my client. There's also a basic usability heuristic of following the standard, by following a site structure the users are familiar with, it's easier for them to use it and I think that, coupled with design trends everyone wants to follow at the same time (see what happened with flat ui, which is all the rage right now despite creating poorer interfaces in my opinion), is the reason why many websites look similar and not because of bootstrap.  

  

I also don't think that bootstrap is that hard to change, but maybe I'm just used to it. The upcoming Bootstrap 4 addresses some of the issues I think.

That said, there's a lot of good stuff in the government's document, it's well worth the read.

[Dave S]

On Wednesday, October 7, 2015 at 12:53:28 AM UTC-7, Leonel Câmara wrote:

There's a reason people like opinionated CSS frameworks. They save a lot of time which means customers save a lot of money, I can bet you my government which isn't swimming in money right now would not have the same opinion. Completely bespoke design is great but it is also a lot more costly for my client.

The new US guidelines and samples are open sourced, and built on open source.The "playbook.cio.gov" link above is an example site, which you can copy ... and is available on github.  So your government (and your customers) don't need to be swimming in money.  I think the sample site has a very nice, clean look that would be a good model for many sites.
 

There's also a basic usability heuristic of following the standard, by following a site structure the users are familiar with, it's easier for them to use it and I think that, coupled with design trends everyone wants to follow at the same time (see what happened with flat ui, which is all the rage right now despite creating poorer interfaces in my opinion), is the reason why many websites look similar and not because of bootstrap.  

 The example site's structure can be followed easily.  But yes, fads are fads, and occasionally become lasting trends.

  

I also don't think that bootstrap is that hard to change, but maybe I'm just used to it. The upcoming Bootstrap 4 addresses some of the issues I think.

That said, there's a lot of good stuff in the government's document, it's well worth the read.

Definitely, even if you choose something else.  I was hoping someone here could estimate how hard it would be for one of us to use those examples instead of bootstrap.

/dps


 

[Leonel Câmara]

 I was hoping someone here could estimate how hard it would be for one of us to use those examples instead of bootstrap

I don't think it's hard at all. It's just a matter of making your own layout.html and then creating a formstyle for it if you will be using SQLFORM, and a ui dictionary to send to the grid (again only if you're using it). Maybe 2-3 days to do everything quite calmly.

[Dave S]

On Wednesday, October 7, 2015 at 10:47:22 AM UTC-7, Leonel Câmara wrote:

 I was hoping someone here could estimate how hard it would be for one of us to use those examples instead of bootstrap

I don't think it's hard at all. It's just a matter of making your own layout.html and then creating a formstyle for it if you will be using SQLFORM, and a ui dictionary to send to the grid (again only if you're using it). Maybe 2-3 days to do everything quite calmly.

Sounds promising ... thanks for the guidance!

/dps