ATO2014: Using Bootstrap to create a common UI across products
Robb Hamilton and Greg Sheremeta from Red Hat spoke in this session about Bootstrap.
First up was Robb to talk about the problem. The problem that they had at Red Hat was that they had a bunch of products that all had their own different UI. They decided that as you went from product to product there should be a common UI. PatternFly was the initiative to make that happen.
Bootstrap was the framework they chose for this solution. Bootstrap is a front end framework for apps and websites. It’s comprised of HTML, CSS, JavaScript and an icon font (for resolution independent icons). Of course Bootstrap is open source and it’s the most popular project on Github. Bootstrap is mobile-first and responsive – design for the smallest screen first and then as the screen gets bigger you can adjust. Bootstrap has a lot of components like a grid, drop down menus, fonts, and form elements. So the answer to ‘Why Bootstrap’ seems obvious now. But one reason that Red Hat chose it was that most everyone was already using it in their products.
PatternFly is basically Bootstrap + extra goodness.
Up next was Gregg to talk about using PatternFly on his project – oVirt. First when you have to work with multiple groups/products you need good communication. The UI team was very easy to reach out to, answering questions in IRC immediately and providing good documentation. One major challenge that Gregg ran in to was having to write the application in a server-side language and then get it to translate to the web languages that PatternFly was using.
Gregg’s favorite quote: “All problems in computer science can be solved by another level of indirection, except of course for the problem of too many indirections” – David Wheeler. So he needed to come up with a layer of indirection to get from his language to bootstrap. He Googled his problem though and found a library that would work for him.
The post ATO2014: Using Bootstrap to create a common UI across products appeared first on What I Learned Today....
Related posts:
ATO2014: Building a premier storytelling platform on open source
ATO2014: The first FOSS Minor at RIT
Open Source Documentation
