A bootstap world

You might have noticed some changes to the website.  This week, I pushed some changes into production, and it reflects some of the newer technologies on the web.  We are now using MVC5 and Bootstrap web to provide a consistent experience for people using the website on a mobile device or web browser.  This week on the blog, I want to talk about Bootstrap and how it fits into our mission to provide web applications that work any time and any place.

I believe that I am a late adopter of Bootstrap.  The first open-source version was released in 2011 and became the most popular download in the GitHub development project in 2012.  I stumbled upon it in 2013 when I was about to change careers.  Another developer exposed me to it as some revelation.  Now, there was a way to build websites that looked good on small browsers and that functioned well on full screens.  It was a revelation, but it did not seem like something that would work with the Microsoft technologies I was working with.

This changed with the release of Visual Studio 2013 , which used Bootstrap 3.0 as its default tool to manage the look and feel of web pages.  I quickly became a convert when I saw how easy it was to work with.  Instead of noodling around with web pages and cascading style sheets, I had a built-in tool to help build web applications that scaled from the mobile phone to the big screen.  It was also great that Microsoft included tools like LESS to create my styles and to add tweaks to my layouts.

For you, the consumer, this is a big deal.  Now, you can rest assured that there is an industry-standard way to ensure your website looks good on a small browser or a giant screen.  In addition, your web applications will now work anywhere you have a connection to the web.  This gives you significant power in managing your business processes because you can look up inventory on the phone, tablet, or laptop with no significant interruption of service.  This is the cloud-based connectivity that we boast about.

All of us at E₃ Systems are excited about this technology.  It is nice that the collective wisdom of the World Wide Web has embraced this approach, and that means that you, the consumer, now have an industry standard to measure progress. Contact us today and find out how we use Bootstrap to help you.

New fun, and using technology to solve a business problem is even more fun.  Bootstrap is one of those technologies that does both, and you will see more of it as time passes. It is a bootstrap world, and we are living in it.

Until next time.