How to Make Your Site Look Half-Decent in Half an Hour

http://24ways.org/2012/how-to-make-your-site-look-half-decent/

by tagawa • 14 years ago

514 140 14 years ago

WMcNC1• 14 years ago

Was looking alright until that background image came along, awful. Not very fond of the font either - not necessary to be loading other fonts in, especially that one.

emehrkay• 14 years ago

USE BOOTSTRAP

baseh• 14 years ago

But use google web Fonts to make it less bootstrappy

cmwelsh• 14 years ago

I liked the first one the best. Just because something is there, does not mean you have to use it.

richforrester3• 14 years ago

Not a fan.

richforrester3• 14 years ago

Wow. Got a lot of minus points for stating that I'm not a fan. Guess I should've elaborated.

Perhaps I should've spoken about how I think half an hour is cutting it a bit tight.

Perhaps I should've mentioned that the background-image idea isn't too smart, as it leaves too much room for erring with non-fitting imagery. That's part of what designers do: they know what fits together - you shouldn't expect programmers to be able to do that. And if you're really set on educating programmers, maybe talk about the background-image's colors, composition or contrast. Or maybe suggest a totally blurred image or something gimmicky that will make it an "instant hit".

Perhaps I should've mentioned that making bootstrap not look like bootstrap in half an hour, inevitably means that you're going to end up with a lesser product. Bootstrap has been designed from the bottom up. You either use that and it's default features, or end up with a hybrid that looks like you "tried to make a half-decent site in half an hour".

But thanks for the rage points there. I wonder if I could make up some points by posting "I'm a fan" elsewhere.

jspthrowaway212• 14 years ago

The reason you got downvoted is because these thoughts should have been the ones you shared. Hacker News punishes tiny comments that add nothing to the discussion. So, you're not a fan. Tell us why.

Now you know.

DenisM• 14 years ago

Most important takeaway from this for me is that you can get designer themes for Bootstrap, similar to how you can get themes for Wordpress:

https://wrapbootstrap.com/

johns• 14 years ago

Also check out bootswatch.com

kops• 14 years ago

And the http://colorschemedesigner.com/. Two links that may come handy one day isn't a bad return on an investment of 10 minutes of my time. I also bookmarked http://charliepark.org/bootstrap_buttons/ but I suspect i may never get around to using it.

tomjen33• 14 years ago

I wouldn't brandish that link around too much -- I am sure it is great for designers but we are most likely to end up making a bigger mess of the entire thing.

tommoor• 14 years ago

I clicked through thinking this would be about balance, spacing, typography, information heirachy and colour. An understanding of these basics will give you a much better starting point than css3, background textures and webfonts. There's a damn good article on this somewhere if anybody knows the place...

jschuur• 14 years ago

The author does link to a full book along those lines: http://designforhackers.com/

andrewfelix2• 14 years ago

http://startupsthisishowdesignworks.com/

subsection1h• 14 years ago

That page doesn't have more than three consecutive paragraphs. It seems to be designed for children with low IQs and severe ADHD.

duaneb2• 14 years ago

> I clicked through thinking this would be about balance, spacing, typography, information heirachy and colour.

Such a post would take years to read. People spend years learning the subjects. I much prefer a practical post such as this, which delivers on what it claims. The site she ended up with was much better than half-decent.

Anyway, I have a huge difficulty imagining any blog post about, let's say, typography that does more good than harm in terms of what it teaches people about design. Worrying about anything more than sans vs serif will probably just waste their time.

54mf11• 14 years ago

"I am a programmer. I am not a designer."

Then perhaps you shouldn't be giving design advice.

"I am a designer. I am not a programmer. Here's how to build a half-decent web application in half an hour. First, download PHP..."

All due respect but the author knows just enough "design" to be dangerous, so to speak. Bootstrap is well-designed (dull, but well-designed), and the author's redesign is more of an "un-designing". Arbitrarily adding fonts, colors, and background images take a perfectly usable layout and make it look like something straight out of 2002.

(Do people still use "pimp" as a verb non-ironically?)

[Edit] A note of clarification: I mean no disrespect to anyone doing web design, whether their job title starts with a capital-D or not. I just wouldn't recommend that most of them dole out advice about it.

josh_blum3• 14 years ago

I don't think that the author is saying to "un-design" at all. She's saying to use a basic framework as a starting point and learn how to make it your own. Adding the fonts/colors/images that you feel add to the site are your own creativity and a way to break away from the typical Bootstrap site that is commonly used today.

Obviously it isn't advice a designer would take, I feel its meant more from one programmer to another and gives a way to make your demo less stereotypical.

54mf11• 14 years ago

I'm going to sound like a dick for saying this, but I'm okay with it: most people's "creativity" shouldn't be expressed in a public way. Breaking away from Bootstrap and making it "less stereotypical" is probably a bad idea unless you know what you're doing. It's like putting a bejeweled, glittery case on an iPhone; yeah, it's "your creativity", but please don't.

redguava• 14 years ago

So no-one should share advice or tips they have learnt to help them get by in a field that isn't their primary profession?

I like that they are sharing what they have learnt about a field that isn't theirs and doing so in a way that will appeal to other programmers.

I often find design tips from programmers much more relatable and usable for my skill set than I do design tips from designers.

54mf11• 14 years ago

Perhaps I'm being nostalgic, but 24 Ways is sacred to me. It's a yearly list featuring the best-of-the-best sharing insight in to their specific areas of expertise. Christian Heilmann on localStorage (http://24ways.org/2010/html5-local-storage/), for example. This article feels way below the bar; at least, the bar I have set for the site in my own head.

JohnsonB• 14 years ago

>Then perhaps you shouldn't be giving design advice.

I think design is something that is relatively easy to learn (for a hacker) if it just has to be "good enough" to pass muster with the latest design and UX standards. Certainly something a hacker can learn.

54mf11• 14 years ago

Design is not easy to learn, for anyone, and the article did little to teach design. It offered sources for finding fonts, and finding textures, with little advice about what makes a good or poor font choice, or when and why textures work.

jspthrowaway212• 14 years ago

> All due respect but

Our culture's greatest and most universally consistent flashing warning sign regarding the words after it.

enraged_camel• 14 years ago

Yeah, it's similar to starting a sentence with "I don't mean to sound racist, but..." Because at that point you know for a fact that they will say something racist.

54mf11• 14 years ago

Actually, no. I meant it. The author is a programmer and writer who has received attention for her work in both areas, and I absolutely respect that. I simply disagree with her offering design advice.

jenius2• 14 years ago

Yeah I mean this is really not good design, at all. And I'm so strongly against the idea of using bootstrap as a "hey slap this on my site and now i don't need to worry about design anymore!" type tool -- the fact that this person is trying to promote this exact idea makes me ill. Please HN community, we should value good design. It's really important. Really, important.

jspthrowaway212• 14 years ago

Last I checked, the title of this article was How to Make Your Site Look Half-Decent in Half an Hour, not A Complete Guide to Good Design. The subtext of that, which she talks about in the text, is that even for a developer with no design sense it doesn't take much effort to make Bootstrap not look like Bootstrap.

She ended up with something that didn't look like Bootstrap at the end, with minimal effort and allowing the developer to focus on coding. That was the entire point. And you know what? I wouldn't have picked that particular font, but the end result did not look that bad.

There are a lot of developers working on MVPs here that have absolutely no design sense nor the budget to hire a designer that might find this useful. Just because you don't doesn't mean it's useless, and I find your comment needless. Read the article before commenting, please. It's important. Really, really important.

trb2• 14 years ago

Twitter bootstrap makes prototypes usable. It does not replace good design on a product, and no one claims that.

If you are developer, please use it on your next prototype instead of throwing together some html and css.

pseut6• 14 years ago

> Arbitrarily adding fonts, colors, and background images take a perfectly usable layout and make it look like something straight out of 2002.

For sure. I've seen a lot of these "improve bootstrap" articles that advocate adding fonts, colors, etc. But, at the end of the day, the webpage is still obviously twitter bootstrap with a few tweaks (almost always for the worse. I'm not a designer, but "oversized header + buttons for links + 2 or 3 columns below the header" (and often with something functionally equivalent to a menu bar at the top) is so clearly bootstrap that I don't understand making any effort to hide it.

josh_blum3• 14 years ago

I don't think the effort is so much to hide it as it is to make the site more your own.

weisser• 14 years ago

> But, at the end of the day, the webpage is still obviously twitter bootstrap with a few tweaks

Certainly, but is your site targeting developers? If not, the average person has no idea what bootstrap is. They will like the site if it has a decent layout and does something useful, fun or solves a problem.

I think you should always strive to make something unique but trying to hide the fact that you built something with bootstrap from people who don't even know what that is seems like a waste of time.

john_flintstone• 14 years ago

It's only clearly Bootstrap to people who have heard of Bootstrap. 99.999% of your visitors will never have heard of Bootstrap, will never have heard the word 'framework.'

trb2• 14 years ago

Please don't be so harsh on the author.

She's not saying "this is going to be a professional design for your next project", the title itself contains "half-decent".

She's providing insightful tips for developers to make their pet projects look..like they're not designed by engineers (we do tend to make a mess of things).

And the advice she gives is perfectly fine for exactly that. There are fonts that look good together, subtly textured backgrounds do look better than simple, flat colored one's and using basic color theory upgrades a websites look (teal vs. orange, cough). Together, they make something that looks half-decent.

Just like the author claimed.

geon• 14 years ago

> Then perhaps you shouldn't be giving design advice.

Giving advice outside your field of expertise is fine. She just happened to give some bad advice.

54mf11• 14 years ago

That's why I said perhaps. :)

monsur• 14 years ago

Nice article, but what's going on with the screenshots on that page? They are greater than 1MB, 02-fonts.png is +5MB and still loading.

rbn• 14 years ago

Not a fan of the design of the site it self. Waaayyy too many layers.

muratmutlu2• 14 years ago

I think it looked better at stage 2 before all the work was done to it. That font doesn't really look good

aseidl2• 14 years ago

Going beyond the not so great font, is it really a good idea to mix serif fonts with sans serif on the same page, specifically having (sub)headings one and main content the other? I've noticed this in a few places lately, but it doesn't seem very clean to me.

wahnfrieden• 14 years ago

It's fine.

andrewingram• 14 years ago

It's often encouraged. Font foundries (and other sources) will occasionally publish lists of type pairs that work well together, and more often than not, one will be serif and the other sans serif.

muratmutlu2• 14 years ago

Actually it's encouraged, but it still means you have to take time in selecting the combo. Georgia and Helvetica play nice together

Here's some combos

http://bonfx.com/19-top-fonts-in-19-top-combinations/

sergiotapia2• 14 years ago

It's a best practice for design. You want your readers to notice the differences between content and headers at a glance. And having different font families for each is the best way to do that.

zaidf2• 14 years ago

Why not just use themeforest if your business' core competence isn't design? Buy a theme from a designer who spent hours taking care of nitty gritty details that would take you days and weeks. Your blah niche customers would most likely not notice or care if randomly land on another site with a similar template.

jspthrowaway212• 14 years ago

That was discussed in the middle of the article, and an alternative site was suggested. I'm kind of disappointed that the majority of the comments here seem to be from the title and first few paragraphs alone.

zaidf2• 14 years ago

Sure, but the post kind of just glosses over this instead of seriously evaluating whether uniqueness of design is very important to the business. And if it isn't, why is home rolling your own design as a non-designer a better business decision than themeforest etc.?

dropdownmenu• 14 years ago

I never knew that I should use bootstrap and then extend it with custom CSS to make my site look better. I would have never thought to do that! /sarcasm

amix• 14 years ago

I would recommend reading "Don't Make Me Think" by Steve Krug. It will teach you the most important aspects of a usable design - - which are much more important than just doing a pretty design.

vanwilder77• 14 years ago

exactly!!

recroad• 14 years ago

I'm crying. Why is this the #1 story? And how can a person with such a hideous looking site give design advice?

jspthrowaway212• 14 years ago

Thank you for your content-free comment. Allow me to point out some problems with it:

1) This is the #1 story because people other than you find it interesting.

2) The "hideously-designed" site is merely publishing the author's essay, and is not owned or controlled by the author at all.

3) If you are crying at a Hacker News article which you entirely missed the point of, as did half the other commenters, then you need a walk.

choxi2• 14 years ago

I would encourage people to check out http://getskeleton.com instead of Bootstrap.

Bootstrap has a very rich design already, so it's not a great scaffold to build on top of because there's very little room for you to add flavor and customization to it without making it look like a frankenstein design.

Skeleton is really minimal, it basically just does typography, some basic form styling, and a grid system. It's a much better base to work off of and add to than Bootstrap.

choxi2• 14 years ago

I'l love to hear any suggestions for a framework between Skeleton and Bootstrap, by the way.

justinph• 14 years ago

Try Foundation. http://foundation.zurb.com

capex• 14 years ago

Everything was sort of okay until the Corben font was introduced onto the page. A complete crime against design, in the way its been used.

ashray• 14 years ago

I thought this was going to be an article that would tell me how to fix my existing sites. You know like, make the font larger, increase line height, that kind of thing.. I know that for new sites I should start out with bootstrap...

jspthrowaway212• 14 years ago

This thread is bringing the worst of Hacker News out of the woodwork. The author is not claiming to be a design expert, nor is she publishing a "how to design" guide. She's demonstrating a skill which I think a lot of developers could use: taking Bootstrap, which is a good start for a front end these days, and making it not look like Bootstrap. She even says this in TFA. It's for developers without a designer to make their site look half-decent in half an hour. That's the TITLE.

Since we all like MVPs and demo days here, I would think this is applicable to a lot of people on Hacker News. You want to stand apart from the other ten demoing startups that used Bootstrap as well, don't you? Put a little effort in, which is all she is advocating.

Based on the quality of the majority of the comments here it seems like most people opened it, saw the ugly design of the site which is only publishing her work (she didn't design it), made it a few paragraphs in, then ran back to comment about how articles like this are killing our profession, making them ill, making them cry, or how she shouldn't be giving design advice.

Dreadful. Truly dreadful. You're better people than this.

pseut6• 14 years ago

1. It's Saturday night.

2. It still looks like bootstrap. Telling people, "use bootstrap, but quickly change the fonts and colors and maybe add some images" isn't helpful. I wouldn't mind an article outlining how to use LESS to make bootstrap not look like bootstrap (which would involve, at a minimum, not using a 12-column grid, because I associate that with bootstrap more than anything else). And that seems like something developers should be interested in.

3. There are an ungodly number of blog posts that say, "use bootstrap, but change the fonts etc so that it doesn't look like bootstrap." The specific details: "use textures" for example, made the example site look worse, so it's hard to see what this article added.

jspthrowaway212• 14 years ago

> 1. It's Saturday night.

Granted.

> 2. It still looks like bootstrap.

To you and me.

> I wouldn't mind an article outlining how to use LESS to make bootstrap not look like bootstrap (which would involve, at a minimum, not using a 12-column grid, because I associate that with bootstrap more than anything else). And that seems like something developers should be interested in.

Please write it.

tomjen33• 14 years ago

A comment like that is not helpful; bootstrap is not a bad design and would be a lot better than what you would see on most geek designed sites.

In other words, get of your high horse.

mattrepl• 14 years ago

Can you really identify the number of columns being used by looking at a layout? And is Bootstrap the only one to use 12-columns?

I've used Bootstrap as a starting point for several apps and have modified the grid setup before, but it wasn't because I thought it looked like Bootstrap.

justjimmy2• 14 years ago

"Based on the quality of the majority of the comments here it seems like most people opened it, saw the ugly design of the site which is only publishing her work (she didn't design it), made it a few paragraphs in, then ran back to comment about how articles like this are killing our profession, making them ill, or making them cry, or how she shouldn't be giving design advice."

Do you not see the irony?

We are visual creatures, we judge a book by its cover (and the only time we don't do that is if we know the author or it's recommended to us) That site reminded me of Geocities (though not as bad), I'm already put off from reading it. That was my first impression. But with so many comments, I forced myself to read through it.

With a bad taste in the reader's mouth, they start off immediately with a negative impression, which could explain why a lot of negative comments.

My issue is that the author thinks half an hour is sufficient enough to make a their site look 'half-decent' or make it non-boot strap like. As a non-designer, it's not that easy. Her points are valid though, just a lil optimistic with the time.

Another easy way to make it non boot strap like is get rid of the gradient on the buttons. Go flat with a border, ala Google Style.

jspthrowaway212• 14 years ago

That's a fair point, even if it's unfair to the author (the site publishing her could use some work, granted). If one does bail on the article, though, I wish that wouldn't lead to a comment of some kind.

54mf11• 14 years ago

Mostly, I just find it frustrating that you and the author are presuming that taking Bootstrap and, as self-proclaimed non-designers, "making it not look like Bootstrap" is a good thing. Good design isn't just a thing that happens when you put a cool font on a photo. I'd be less irked if the article was about finding and installing great Bootstrap themes.

Also: 24 Ways' design has, and has had, an excellent design for years and years. The colors are a bit interesting, but the typography and layout is wonderful.

Also also: you're building quite the straw man there. No one said the article was killing anything, illing anything, or making anyone cry.

I definitely wouldn't take the author's design advice, though.

metellus• 14 years ago

> Also also: you're building quite the straw man there. No one said the article was killing anything, illing anything, or making anyone cry.

jspthrowaway2 was paraphrasing other comments on this page. When this article was newer, all of the top comments where about how terrible the design is. Here are some direct quotes from other comments on this story:

> the fact that this person is trying to promote this exact idea makes me ill

> I'm crying. Why is this the #1 story? And how can a person with such a hideous looking site give design advice?

> We're supposed to take design advice from a site that looks like a car accident? No thanks.

jspthrowaway212• 14 years ago

Your comment was the direct inspiration for mine and I hated everything about it. It wasn't good enough for you to share your opinion as a designer, you had to attack the author personally because she had the gall to design a bit even though she wasn't a bloody designer. Really attacking the messenger. Half of me suspected you and others reacted as you did because she's a woman, to be quite honest, even though I know that's probably untrue; that just tells you how much I loathed your comment.

Suffice to say, this thread is reflecting pretty badly on you as a person and you should reconsider your attitude.

mikeash2• 14 years ago

Can you imagine an article about writing clearly and effectively whch ws wrtn all lik dis??!# It sez good shit, wy u care f its all txtspk?

No, you need to avoid demonstrating the opposite of what you're setting out to teach at the very first moment. Don't put an obvious SQL injection in the form that leads to your article on web security. Don't use a hyperactive loudmouth to promote your massage therapy business. And don't put an article about web design on a site that hurts the eyes.

Is it her fault? I guess not, although I imagine she knew what the site looked like even if she didn't actually design it. Does it mean that the content is worthless? Of course not. Is it a huge red flag that really should not be there? Oh yes.

bconway• 14 years ago

I think you're missing that this article was posted in jest.

jspthrowaway212• 14 years ago

[citation needed]

hakaaak• 14 years ago

I think "dreadful" is really harsh. Every site should not look like default bootstrap. That would be incredibly boring.

But, that said, I think it would have been better without everything between the font change and the color scheme change removed. For example, the icon is an additional unnecessary visual element- either use text or an icon- if you have both it means that one or the other is insufficient on their own and that is a bad design smell -> simplify! Textures are ok, but a bad example- the only change I could tell was the missing horizontal rules/grey lines. The alpine background- meh, even for a ski lodge- this isn't a cheesy blog. The CSS change I could barely tell.

mcgwiz• 14 years ago

The CSS change is only visible in the screenshot that introduced the background image. In that screenshot, a white glow effect has been applied to the main header.

uxwtf• 14 years ago

Agree that adding an icon on the button is useless, but as I work with developers, I see that it's the way some developers understand UI and UX - adding an icon equals designing! As for the textures, I suggest myself everybody using subtle patterns, but, again, the mistake here is adding an extra alpine background image: the thing I saw several times when developers tried to make efforts in UI, lol! But the good thing is that this topic really makes people react!

moe• 14 years ago

That has to be the worst webdesign I've seen in months, and I'm talking about 24ways.org.

We're supposed to take design advice from a site that looks like a car accident?

No thanks.

duaneb2• 14 years ago

Ad hominem. The actual advice isn't half bad for a personal site.

tbirdz• 14 years ago

I wouldn't want to take this advice, from someone with such a poorly designed site.

timmm• 14 years ago

I've seen another 'designer' with this exact same layout. Heh.

Drew Mclellan was his name.

drewmclellan6• 14 years ago

"I've seen this exact same layout on this exact same site."

Dude.

gruseom2• 14 years ago

I've come to dread looking in on these threads. It feels like walking into a swarm of wasps. Boy is the content/nastiness ratio low in this one. It makes me sad and, as someone who has spent a lot of time here, ashamed.

To the people making and upvoting these putdowns: you don't come across as caring about design; you appear to care about feeling superior. That is not smart. It is a mean person's idea of what it is to be smart. As HN has acquired a reputation for being a smart place, it has become a mean place.

Do you guys know what "mean", in the sense of "nasty", means? It means common. Look up the root. The more you reinforce your wish to feel smart in this way, the more common you in fact become. It's hard to see this, because self-image is always telling us the opposite, and that feels good — really good. It's the opiate of the jerk.

In my experience, if one really wants to get smarter, one must work on inhibiting this. I was going to offer a tip or two, but who would want them?

Incidentally, these self-appointed protectors of Design against the masses appear to me to be significantly more mediocre in this way than some of the other subgroups here. Perhaps it's sample bias. Or perhaps it's because there's so little objectivity to any of it that one gets a purer strain of identity politics — "Leave Design to the Designers" and all that.

On another note, thanks to the OP for the helpful and playful article!

pkuhad• 14 years ago

Agree, the one which is simple is simply ignored because if its simplicity.

pknerd• 14 years ago

"I was going to offer a tip or two, but who would want them?"

You can make a blog post and submit on HN?

gruseom2• 14 years ago

Thanks, but I already feel sheepish for preaching. Besides, HN is my strategy for never having a blog.

rpm4321• 14 years ago

I couldn't agree with you more. I'm a programmer with a fair amount of experience managing graphic designers, and I have a pretty good eye for design - if I do say so myself ;)

After not having personally touched any frontend code for a number of years, I recently found myself in the position of having to personally bootstrap an important side project - backend, frontend, design, and mobile - all on a miniscule budget.

The process she outlines so closely mirrored my own that I'm still not entirely convinced she didn't have a hidden camera in my office. This post would have easily saved me weeks of fumbling around, false starts, procrastinating, and looking around for the appropriate resources and frameworks. In my opinion my end product looks much more polished, but she was clearly just putting together a simple demo to support the text, and her design quality is easily sufficient to test out a minimum viable product. Of course, once you get some traction and have a budget to hire a designer, you should because design is sacrosanct blah, blah, blah, etc, etc.

But if you're a programmer on your own with no budget, just trying to get your idea out into the world and not embarrass yourself, this could be invaluable.

kstenerud• 14 years ago

As a programmer and a non-designer, I don't understand how this will help me. Why are each of the successive design tweaks better than the previous ones? I've seen pages with flat designs and with gradient designs, with images and icons and without, and with various fonts, and they all look fine to me. How are you supposed to tell the difference between good and bad design?

And to take it further, if an average person like me can't even tell the difference, what's the point of it?

ZeroGravitas• 14 years ago

I didnt read it as design advice but rather a guide to resources. I personally was aware of all the resources mentioned, but think its a great summary of whats out there. So it's not saying 'use this font' or even, 'use a different font', just 'if you want to change the font, get one from here and read this article about choosing between them.

The article seems to have mainly recieved two contradictory responses from HN. a) I already use Bootstrap, this article is useless, and b) this article is bad because it recommends bootstrap, which you should never use, instead devote the next decade of your life to learning design and build something unique and award winning instead.

Stratego• 14 years ago

This article is not nearly as bad as it makes itself look at first. Speaking of appearances.

Saying you're giving lousy advice isn't an excuse for giving lousy advice.

> "I want to make my sites look attractive."

Sure, but you should worry about making them usable and solving a design problem first: how do I best convey the usefulness of this product to its potential users?

> "Design seemed to consist of complicated rules that weren’t written down anywhere, plus an unlearnable sense of taste, possessed only by a black-clad elite."

Design is about solving problems elegantly, I'm tired of fellow programmers rehashing the idea that (interaction) design is like modern art, it couldn't be further from it. But "seemed" makes it sound like that was just the past, how about today?

> "I decided to do my best to hack what it took to make my own projects look vaguely attractive."

Let's make thing "vaguely attractive", that's the ticket.

> "And too often now, I see excellent programming projects that don’t reach the audience they deserve, simply because their design doesn’t match their execution."

Couldn't agree more, except their design is their execution. If you mean to expose your work to the public and fellow professionals, it's your job to make it compelling.

> "I really think that Bootstrap is one of the most significant technical achievements of the last few years: it democratizes the whole process of web design."

Because web design was such a dictatorship until now. Yes, I'm nitpicking, but if you make no effort to learn HTML & CSS, I highly doubt you will by using bootstrap. Why would you? It looks "half decent" enough as it is. I hope I'm wrong.

The rest of the article, as others notes, is not nearly as wrongheaded as its introduction makes it sound. Still, I wish developers would stop trying to "hack" design and actually have the guts to learn it, as designers do with programming.

danenania2• 14 years ago

"Still, I wish developers would stop trying to "hack" design and actually have the guts to learn it, as designers do with programming."

I've refactored a whole lot of designer code in my day. Let me assure you that this is a two way street.

AYBABTME2• 14 years ago

6 months ago I had no damn idea what was bootstrap. Neither did my neighbour. Now I know what it is, and with this short, pragmatic article, I have a few pointers on how I could make something 'decent' to my neighbour although I have 0 skills in graphic design.

And my neighbour still has no damn clue what is Bootstrap, so whatever if it still 'looks like Bootstrap'. The audience doesn't care.

Nice submission, if you ask me.

nzealand• 14 years ago

Where did you hear about bootstrap?

This is the first time I have seen it, and it looks amazing.

AYBABTME2• 14 years ago

Here.

styts• 14 years ago

Thanks for the summary. Although, as a programmer, I've known most of the things mentioned, it would have still saved me some extra time (better spent writing code than designing).

thenomad• 14 years ago

Worth it for the links alone, many of which I'd not seen before.

I AM a semi-competent coder/designer, and I got a decent amount of new information out of this article. I don't agree with all of it, but I didn't expect to.

Great info, well-presented, easy to understand, make me think. Five stars, would read again.

sergiotapia2• 14 years ago

I don't know if I should be happy or terrified that I know and use these tips on a daily basis. I'm just starting out as a UI front-end guy after years of solid backend work.

FiloSottile• 14 years ago

This reminds me of this other similar submission and thread:

Customize Twitter Bootstrap To Not Look Bootstrap-y https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4427864 http://antjanus.com/blog/web-design-tips/user-interface-usab...

ishbits• 14 years ago

I thought the article was fine. I learned a few things.

I'm a developer that sometimes needs to tack a web interface on during the prototype phase. And I use Bootstrap. And I want it to look like Bootstrap. Should the time come for a designer, I'd hope the no frills approach would somewhat convey the desired usability of the app.

This article gave me a few tips - if only a no nonsense guide to using web fonts!

vicks711• 14 years ago

This is a wonderful article. I am planning to launch a MVP and was struggling with a design of the website.

Though I have dabbled with CSS and know the basics I am basically design challenged. This article helps a lot.

thanks

bilalq• 14 years ago

While I certainly wouldn't recommend this kind of article to most people, I wish professors from Computer Science departments would try to add just a little styling. It's painful to go through most of their sites.

LiquidEyes• 14 years ago

she would have been better off leaving the comic sans quip out of the article. That ruined any shred of credibility the author had in my eyes.

13rules• 14 years ago

Came here to say this.

Didn't get past the line: "I am not a designer... and I don’t mind Comic Sans."

TommyDANGerous• 14 years ago

I personally liked the design of 24ways.org. I liked the article she wrote, even though I don't use bootstrap and design all my sites before I even code them, the tools she provided are some I've never heard of and will definitely look to utilize in the near future. Great post.

neya• 14 years ago

Personally, it's a beautiful article in my opinion.

pimentel• 14 years ago

I've never bought a template, but couldn't I simply get the source of a template's example, when it's available?

wowoc• 14 years ago

How to Make Your Site Look Half-Decent in Half an Hour

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