On Wed, Mar 20, 2013 at 3:31 PM, Stefan Nagtegaal <
[email protected]> wrote:
Besides the very good point Klaas comes up with here, is that Twitter
Bootstrap has proven it's value for many, many big projects and
websites.
Yes, for many _websites_. Bootstrap is primarily for websites and
less for
apps. That’s a difference. I used it several times for websites as
well as
apps and it indeed proved helpful for websites. For the apps not so much
because things need to be streamlined.
If you want to have a consistent UI, with usable and proven UI elements
for navigation, dropdowns, balloons, or whatever this is the way to
go imo
or at least base our core/css/style.css-file upon it.
First off, lots of the UI elements in Bootstrap we don’t even need, and
basically all of the others we would need to improve or change looks of
anyway if we want to use them. We don’t need the grid first of all. We
don’t need any balloons, for dropdowns we use jquery.multiselect or
Chosen
already, and the left side navigation styles we also already did, see
https://github.com/owncloud/core/pull/2275
We have buttons and button groups and breadcrumbs done already. We don’t
need any pagination, media object, wells, tabs, pills and so much other
stuff. For the Javascript stuff, we don’t need Scrollspy, tabs or
popovers.
Our tooltips are handled by tipsy already (which is also used by
Bootstrap), we have alert styles already, we don’t need Accordions nor
Carousels.
What’s left? What we have right now.
Your point here is crap, and doesn't bring any value to the discussion:
Funfact: No usability test participant ever said »strange, this website
doesn’t use Bootstrap«. Because people don’t care. Let’s work on real
issues."
Yeah, please don’t attack my arguments just based on one »fun fact«
which I
inserted just for laughs.
The point in here was that our most pressing interface issues
definitely do
not include the need to use a hyped library which will really not
help us
that much.
People DO care about a UI that is consistent, user-friendly and looks
good. Bootstrap is bringing that faster to ownCloud than scratching
your
own itch, because a lot of (usability) test participants are already
familiar with the UI-elements (because of they are used by big
companies
like Twitter, Google, etch etc).
That’s simply not true. People are not familiar with the UI elements.
Everyone who uses Bootstrap customizes it. Facebook, Google, Twitter and
Apple all use vastly different elements. None of these big
projects/companies use Bootstrap, because it would hold them back with
strange predefined styles which wouldn’t be used anyway because they
have
better designers. I don’t see how Bootstrap will help us here.
Also it’s not about »test participants« but about people, about everyone
who will use the software.
I also don’t get what you mean by »scratching your own itch« in this
case.
We constantly listen to feedback and do testing, it’s far from only
doing
ownCloud for ourselves. I got feedback by someone who runs ownCloud in
primary schools in France and they love it (they even switched over from
another software) because it’s so easy to use.
Afterall, I'm not saying Bootstrap brings us everything we ever
wanted. But
I AM saying that Bootstrap is a pretty solid base to work from, to
bring
ownCloud a consistant user interface and fix a gap between coders and
designers.
Seeing how we wouldn’t use much of it, and of the remaining stuff
heavily
customize anyway, I fail to see that. Maybe I’m wrong.
If you like, you can rework the current interface (ideally also the main
apps) to use Bootstrap, but make sure it looks and works similar to
how it
does now. We have reasons for designing it this way and not just using
Bootstrap and its default styles. Then please submit a pull request and
we’ll see if it’s better. If it’s better we can use it.
My main point here is that not everything is magically improved by
using a
library like Bootstrap, and it’s not even a good base. Look for
instance at
our installation process. It’s so vastly simpler than any other
installation process, and it would look and work way more complicated
if we
used Bootstrap. If we want to do proper usable design, we need to invest
more.
