I am new to developing so I like to ask ChatGPT things like what stack would you use to build this app or that app and often it recommends React or Tailwinds, as someone knows very little I am curious why Wappler uses Bootstrap over others?
And I guess I could say the same with Firebase vs MySQL or FireAuth vs JWT
I love Wappler it bridges a gap for me and gets me out the Wordpress world.
Thanks for any knowledge
Bootstrap and MySQL were pioneers (i.e. the most used tools in the web industry) before stuff like React, TailwindCSS and Firebase came along. Btw, Firebase is a proprietary cloud-hosted service, it's not self-hostable like MySQL or PostgreSQL.
Basically, Wappler uses the things Wappler team is familiar with, not the latest trends in the industry.
ChatGPT has a React fetish but not as bad as Claude's fetish for React. Tailwind support would be amazing as currently implementing it is a manual task. There are several requests to incorporate Tailwind but not sure any of them has gained enough traction as of yet...
There is nothing wrong with Bootstrap. Personally and within our organisation we develop primarily using Bootstrap for 90% of our applications (internally). That other 10% is a mix of Tailwind and custom styles and classes based on Client requests. As for which Framework is better that is a little like arguing over Football teams. The fallback is creating your own CSS to achieve exactly what you want. In that regard there are no set specifics and it is entirely up to you.
Its swings and roundabouts essentially! One thing that is not in doubt is the fact, like you mention above, is that any of the above is far superior to Wordpress if you want full control. Don't get me wrong Wordpress has its place and am not knocking it. But we are all here as we like to control our development process to a greater extent which is something Wappler allows us all to do. So why does Wappler use Bootstrap..? I can't answer for the Team as to why they made that choice but one reason is its shear popularity and ease of use. The support for Bootstrap is huge, it is well documented, tried and tested, and free. Probably all major factors. But things have moved on since the initial Wappler release several years ago hence the requests for other Frameworks to be implemented. Am sure in the future they will be provided for but for now you'll have to integrate those yourself.
Not sure if that aids you in any way with regards to your question though...?
We Developers are like Chefs. We'll essentially cook the same dish but use different ingredients to spice it up and add our own flavor to it. No set menu and all open to interpretation by the cook making the dish. Now and again we'll burn the food but most of the time the dish comes out fine and dandy. Wappler is the kitchen and we are the Chefs.
I echo this question. Bootstrap isn’t dead from a utility perspective but it seems to be from an innovation perspective. Almost 2 years since a last major release. I’ve resigned to associate Wappler with bootstrap from a UI perspective. I’d love to hear an update on their vision for the future.
What does Bootstrap not provide? From my perspective, it covers all my needs. Even if Wappler decided to support something else I would prefer they go with a similar components library which would mean something like https://flowbite.com/ or https://ui.shadcn.com/
Shadcn would be great.
That is the thing, I really don’t know if I am missing out on anything as I know that little.
I must say that flowbite looks interesting, didn't know that one. The chatcn library is only for React and that is not supported in Wappler, the flowbite is like a modern bootstrap and doesn't require any specific framework and can easily be made compatible with our App Connect framework.
Might this be considered for a future update?
It’s very encouraging to hear that alternatives to Bootstrap are being evaluated. I’ve spent a lot of time looking into React libraries where most of the buzz seems to be these days, especially in AI accelerated platforms like v0 (shadcn is part of Vercel) and LLMs in general as Cheese mentioned. Tailwind is also de facto. But for non React I also had my eye on Web Awesome as well - https://backers.webawesome.com/ I know there have been other threads on this in the past. Flowbite looks promising!
There was a question - “what doesn’t bootstrap offer”? It’s clearly still a commonly seen technology but as a technologist it feels uncomfortable investing time/effort in stagnant/dead tech. Sadly it feels to me like Bootstrap is in that camp. Repos/techs that are being actively developed to provide new features and modern CX. And options are always good to have.
Anyway- I popped back in to share encouragement for evaluating Bootstrap alternatives. Will keep my fingers crossed!
Bootstrap is not dead tech. It's a mature product that can produce a wide range of UIs. There's not much they need to do with it and it still has active development on github. Are there modern alternatives, yes. In essence, Bootstrap gives you a component library with fixed patterns, while Tailwind provides a flexible, token-driven system that lets you build your own patterns. Neither offers "recipes" or JSX style props in the same way as some CSS-in-JS frameworks do, like https://panda-css.com/. All achieve the same outcome, just in different ways. Each with their own advantages and disadvantages.
We can have different opinions on stagnation. It’s obviously still widely used. But last major release (5.3) in May 2023 and last point release in Feb 2024 seems pretty stagnant to me.
Fair, they are working on newer versions though.
