It’s WWW…Wednesday! Bootstrap 5 Alpha

by Taylor Slattery | August 5, 2020

Bootstrap is back, and they’ve made some major changes. This time around the team was looking to trim the fat and lose what wasn’t working, which in this case meant v4’s dependency on jQuery. Though grateful for all that jQuery has offered the community over the years, its exclusion results in substantially smaller file sizes with improvements to page loading as well.

Also worthy of note is that v5 will no longer support Internet Explorer, a move that should come as no surprise, as Microsoft moves to fully phase out their legacy browser in favor of Microsoft Edge. The move makes room for a suite of custom CSS properties, the application of which had been limited to simple variables and fonts in previous versions due to Internet Explorer. In v5, these properties are being expanded to a handful of new components, with support for buttons coming in the future.

In addition to the technical overhaul, the site has undergone a facelift as well. Improvements to the site’s appearance have been made to better reflect its purpose, and the old rounded box logo has been replaced with a new silhouette evoking the imagery of a set of braces. Beyond just the cosmetic changes, new documentation has been added to the site as well. The Customize page has been updated to provide further detail on how to get the most from Bootstrap. In addition, they’ve created a starter project on GitHub, which you can use to springboard your learning.

Bootstrap v5 also features an update to the form controls that were added in v4, making the checks, switches, and radios fully customizable. A utility API has also been added with v5, which has the potential to drastically impact the way you build sites. Due to slow generation times, Bootstrap will be using Hugo, rather than Jekyll, as their documentation static site generator moving forwards. The change cuts reload times drastically. Users can look forward to a hefty bill of features to be added in future updates, like CSS variables and improvements to JavaScript and APIs.

Be sure to check out Bootstrap v5 here.