Bootstrap 2.1 and counting

Tuesday, 21 August 2012

Bootstrap 2.1 and counting

A year ago we introduced the world to Twitter Bootstrap, a sleek and powerful open source project that helps you build awesome stuff on the web with speed, ease and style. Bootstrap was made to help our engineers improve the tools we use to run Twitter internally; we quickly recognized that folks outside the company could make use of it as well. Fast forward one year to today, Bootstrap’s first birthday, and we have a massively popular project that keeps growing while staying true to its ultimate goal: helping anyone make amazing software for the web.

Today, we want to highlight Bootstrap’s growth and impact over the last 12 months and introduce the newest version, Bootstrap 2.1.

Popularity

Within a few months of its launch, the project grew to be the most popular project on the world’s largest social coding service, GitHub. Since then, we’ve released a handful of updates to continually close bugs, add awesome new features, and make it easier to use for those who are less familiar with web design. In all, we’ve closed thousands of bugs while adding dozens of features to help make more compelling and visually pleasing web sites and applications. The open source community has been incredibly kind and appreciative about Bootstrap over the last year, so we’re delighted to keep giving back.

Community

Speaking of community, Bootstrap wouldn’t be the success it is today without a lot of love and support from the development and open source communities. Looking past just the bug reports and feature requests, we have an amazing set of people contributing directly to Bootstrap. More than 100 people have pushed code to Bootstrap. That’s a stat we’re not only proud of, but excited to see grow.

We’re constantly amazed at the number and scope of projects using Bootstrap. Some of our favorites come from larger organizations: NASA’s code.nasa.gov, NBC’s BreakingNews.com, and the White House Digital Government initiative. Looking back to the startup community we’ve come from, there are many teams like SoundReady, Kippt, and Jetstrap using Bootstrap to create brand new products and services.

Bootstrap 2.1

With Bootstrap 2.1, we focused on simplicity. We completely overhauled the documentation to make it easier for people just getting to know Bootstrap and web development. We placed more emphasis on live examples and succinct, thorough text to walk people through each aspect. And, as is the case with every release, we’ve added a handful of new features and made existing ones even better. But that just brushes the surface: we’ve closed over 100 issues in Bootstrap 2.1—issues all reported and documented by the very folks who use it.

Looking forward

The Web is a constantly changing place, and the tools we use to build for that evolving landscape need to reflect it. Looking ahead, we will continue focus on simplicity as we add new features, improve mobile functionality, and encourage developers to embrace new techniques as we add them to the framework. The last year has been a blast, and we’re excited to keep improving Bootstrap with every release in order to help others make the web a better place.

Posted by Mark Otto (@mdo)
Designer