Bootstrap Project Reflection

Using Bootstrap elements, I was able to find ways to take my content and present it in more digestible ways. My accordion turned a big block of text on a Google Doc into an interactive visualization. It was also a great tool in building my website, which allowed me a lot more freedom in what I did and allowed me to do more with my site in the same timeframe. I struggled to change the colors of Bootstrap components, but I eventually internalized my understanding of the different default classes and how to style them.

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I also learned the sensitivity of certain elements. My carousel was temperamental as I resized it, and I struggled to keep all the controls working. I still wasn’t 100% satisfied with it but opted to leave it at some point. I also ran into issues with the grid and eventually had to copy and paste an example from Bootstrap. I was happy with the overall layout using the grid. I also loved the button to watch my favorite kill, it just felt like a fun touch.

I think that the template I chose worked well with my content, the initial vibe was very polished and professional, and minor tweaks made it perfectly spooky. Making a site with a template would further allow me the freedom to expand my content and refine my elements. I found the code to be confusing to sift through, with lots of classes and comments in the templates that I had to get used to. That was especially difficult when I was getting rid of animated features that didn’t make sense for my purposes.

I was pleased with how minor tweaks in color and font changed the overall vibe of my page. I struggled to sift through all of the different classes to create rules-mostly when it came to changing colors. In the future, I would take more time to clean up the template’s code to be more semantic for me: like creating meaningful classes and deleting the broken code I didn’t need. I also fought with some of the default Bootstrap styling that I had to overwrite. I know I overused the !important command. I feel like there was a better way to do what I needed, but once I realized it worked for this project it was a great tool. Overall I found Bootstrap to be frustrating, but as a tool for developing on a larger scale, I can appreciate the usefulness of it.