I don’t make web front-ends often and, honestly, I would prefer not to touch them at all. That said, I still have this website as well as a few blogs and landing pages to support, so I don’t have much of a choice. I have no time and no interest in trying dozens of different CSS frameworks in search for the Holy Grail, so I’ve been using the most mainstream solution for a while. Of course, I’m talking about Bootstrap.

Bootstrap is cool. It’s customizable, it’s not too verbose, and it just works (in most of the cases). The only thing that annoys me is the fact that it needs crazy amounts of JavaScript for no good reason, and I’m not a big fan of bloated webpages. Over-sized webpages is a huge problem, and I don’t want to be a part of it.

The Bootstrap contributors understand those complaints, and they cut down on JavaScript in of Bootstrap 5, which is still in development. First, I wanted to switch to Bootstrap 5, but then I thought “why don’t I try vanilla CSS?”. One weekend later, it turned out that it’s pretty easy to use vanilla CSS, and it actually made it easier for me to experiment with website styling. There is some comfort in not having to manage NPM dependencies, and it’s a pleasure to build directly on the well thought standards that are aimed to last for decades. Software tools are so ephemeral nowadays, maybe it’s better to cut down on navel-gazing a bit, at least in the area I don’t really like.