Re: For 1.4, thoughts on looking at Bootstrap as an option for CSS?

[Jeff Kowalczyk <..hidden..>]

Chris Travers <chris.travers@...> writes:
> 
> Hi all;
> 
> Wondering as we get towards testing 1.4, if it might not be a good
> idea to start looking at Twitter's CSS framework "bootstrap" for
> handling things like alignment.  Right now we are doing a lot manually
> that might be better off handled by something like this.
> 
> My thinking is:
> 
> 1)  If it's useful in handling allignment and layout, that's a plus.
> 2)  If it gets in the way of general theming, that's a minus.
> 
> Anyone out there have much experience here with this?
> 
> Best Wishes,
> Chris Travers

I was just about to post with this same thought, glad you beat me to it. Our 
experience with bootstrap has been that it is very well suited to getting a 
business-ready look applied to content even while prototyping the app.

I think LedgerSMB's improved functionality deserves a visual refresh, and 
Bootstrap would be a good choice for a program like this at this point in time.

Two items to consider, which were to have been the point of my post:

Bootstrap idiomatic use relies on markup being assigned classes [1][2], so there 
would be widespread minor editing of HTML emitting source and templates.

Because this, of a merge barrier will be created similar to a minor whitespace 
cleanup or perltidy event, although less impactful.

I note we are sill merging 1.3 to 1.4 (trunk) regularly. Do these merges ever 
affect HTML emitting portions?

Is there value in porting bootstrap to 1.3 and merging up to 1.4?

For a successful bootstrap port, I suggest a prototype of a representative 
snapshot screen or two in static HTML, to obtain consensus. Then, we should have 
a commitfest in the target branch, merge up (if the target is 1.3), and be enjoy 
the new look.

I hope we do use bootstrap, it would look fantastic. Well worth the effort.

Thanks,
Jeff Kowalczyk

[1] http://twitter.github.com/bootstrap/base-css.html#tables
[2] http://twitter.github.com/bootstrap/base-css.html#forms