[Owncloud] About Bootstrap and ownCloud

[Klaas Freitag]

On 20.03.2013 16:05, Jan-Christoph Borchardt wrote:
Hi,

> What I know is that the design we’re going for – look at the News app or
> the Notes app – is so simple that we do not need Bootstrap. We have what –
> a header, an app navigation bar and for the app a left navigation bar and a
> content area. That’s it.
Yes, I am of course not voting for "use this" or "use that". But your 
initial mail sounded very much like "we don't use a framework, we do one 
ourselfes". No discussion that this would be stupid, right?

But - what happens if the app developer wants a framework? The ownCloud 
surrounding "frame" (header, navigation bar and stuff) is only a piece 
of the cake, right? The music plays in the apps imo, and what standard 
solution do we offer/recommend/enforce(?) there? Or is every app dev 
supposed to bring its own?

Klaas

>
> On Wed, Mar 20, 2013 at 3:31 PM, Stefan Nagtegaal <
> development at standoutdesign.nl> 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.
>
>
>
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