Wednesday, July 24, 2013

Twitter Bootstrap - IE8 Issues & Fixes - Slow Performance?

I am almost finished with my first Bootstrap layout.

Overall, it was very intuitive - and my first use of media queries with CSS.

Unfortunately, I had to deal with some buggy issues with IE8 - but there are tricks to get around these.... will post soon.

ISSUE 1: Slow performance with IE8 - 10 second load times

FIX:  put script tags at the very end - like in bootstrap examples.  It made a HUGE impact on speed.


ISSUE 2: Menu doesnt have mouse-over option by default.

FIX: there is a plugin available to add this feature:  http://cameronspear.com/demos/twitter-bootstrap-hover-dropdown/


NOTE: .... Just as I finished one Bootstrap client, and started another, Twitter bootstrap came out with a new release V3 which is VERY different - but based on the same concepts.  Oh well.   V2 works fine for first client.  Will be using V3 for second.


Monday, July 15, 2013

Need responsive website templates?

The latest trend now in web design is responsive web design.  In this paradigm, we have one website that easily scales from wide screens to mobile screen devices.

TIP: Don't do it from scratch.

In my search for some good templates for responsive websites, I found bootstrap - a collection of tools (js and css) and a design framework already built by the geeks at Twitter.  All you need to do is download it, learn it... and apply it.  It is free and you can download it here.

I am currently working on my first website applying it.... There is a little learning curve... but much less than doing everything from scratch.