Ask HN: Do you trust a company with a website built with Twitter Bootstrap?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6806359

by fargo • 13 years ago

9 15 13 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Today I found myself doing further research about a service I was about to subscribe just because they were using bootstrap. I am wondering, what could be the psychological effect to a developer/ designer regarding using a service using a website built with twitter bootstrap? Would you provide your card details with the same ease you would on a different website?

mschuster91• 13 years ago

I don't care with which tech stack a website was built. The really interesting thing for a quick check is more: does the website use SSL for sensitive data?

ancarda2• 13 years ago

Would you provide your card details with the same ease you would on a different website?

The only thing I'd look for would be EV SSL. No "green bar", no credit card.

dangrossman• 13 years ago

That's a bit over the top. Virtually the only sites with an EV certificate are financial institutions. If that was your standard, you wouldn't be comfortable shopping with Amazon or Wal-Mart.

ancarda2• 13 years ago

I make an exception for Amazon as they are a big, known site. I mean "shady site I've never seen before". I'll see if it has EV SSL. If it doesn't, it depends how badly I want the item it's selling. Most stuff can be bought on Amazon.

By the way, some non-financial websites use EV SSL, such as Twitter. I don't see why Amazon can't get a cert.

hnriot• 13 years ago

developer/ designers don't pay for web services anyway :) It's only the rest of the population that pay for things. Said developer/ designers find open source alternatives.

Who cares what tech stack a web app is written with. It's like saying you wont pay for services that use rails, prototype instead or jquery, or a color palette you don't like.

jmduke• 13 years ago

Personally, I make certain assumptions of a site using Bootstrap, all of which revolve around product maturity: if a site has identifiable Bootstrap design, then I assume they haven't been old enough/profitable enough to afford a new coat of paint.

That being said, unless you're creating a service specifically for picky designers/developers, it doesn't matter. 99.8% of the Internet has no idea what Bootstrap is.

(ps: the folks who first made Bootstrap worked at Twitter, but Twitter let them take the ownership of the product with them as they left.)

meerita2• 13 years ago

So, Twitter isn't mature at all with that initial argument. Bootstrap powers many parts from Twitter, the maturity argument doesn't apply because of the use of a framework.

To be honest with you, I think the only valid argument in here would be design taste: "that project is using mostly the standard bootstrap design,they don't invest in x yet" and that would be a valid just in half. The truth is there is a lot of projects that, even with different code, they all look the same with little variantions. In the end, it doesn't matter the skeleton, what it matters, imho, it's the service they offer.

dictum• 13 years ago

And the quality of the service they offer is greatly shaped by their design.

Of course Twitter uses Bootstrap—it was made by/for Twitter. However, Bootstrap's defaults are based on Twitter's brand guidelines. That's part of the problem: with Bootstrap 1 and 2 basically every website made with Bootstrap looked a lot like Twitter. Bootstrap 3 alleviates that by encouraging customization and shipping with a flat appearance, but sites made with Bootstrap are still very similar to each other—developers don't customize it, and don't try to change some of Bootstrap's easily recognizable idiosyncrasies.

It reminds me of 2004/2005 when every web app was more or less trying to copy the aesthetics of 37signals apps.

Misiek• 13 years ago

Twitter Bootstrap is the best CSS framework but you mean rather a website with a default theme. There are a lot of themes and templates of Twitter Bootstrap that don't look like Bootstrap, for example on wrapbootstrap.com.

kape• 13 years ago

In some cases you won't even recognize Bootstrap. For example YC-company https://kippt.com/ uses Bootstrap, but wouldn't guess it without knowing it.

Anyway, I think Bootstrap default theme (or slightly modified, but recognizable) is alright for young products targeted to "normal" people who have no idea about Bootstrap. I think it matters more for developers and designers and products targeted for them should invest in creating custom theme.

kennethtilton• 13 years ago

Where's the beef? If it is a Web design company, web prefab is an issue because that's their beef. If the company sells something else and the site looks/works great, I would only give them credit for saving time/money/energy by using prefab.

meerita2• 13 years ago

"Sacrilege!"

Unless you're a code auditor, where you have time to spend looking and analyzing the code, there's no reason to not trust anyone who didn't code the website from 0. Bootstrap as well other frameworks are just that: a conjunction of best practices and some other modules that proven to work well across several browsers and devices.

We can argue speediness and all the yada-yada, but in the end, pro developers repeat the same things even missing one bigs when do all from 0. Using frameworks is a way to avoid those mistakes and, to have a development line well documented. You still can extend, trim the framework as you want.

Think other professions never distrust anyone because he's using that library, that gem, that framework. In the end everyone has limited time to execute work, so if other programers enjoy those libraries why the frontend ones don't?

olgeni• 13 years ago

It depends if they also run some random version of Linux.

wikwocket• 13 years ago

Are you serious? Isn't this like asking whether you would trust the coffee from a coffee shop because they had a sign on the door printed in Papyrus or Comic Sans? Good or bad design decisions aside, who cares? What could that possibly have to do with the coffee?

There are endless websites with terrible web designs that provide valuable, reliable services. And there are endless more websites with good-looking, hand-built designs that offer no service of value and, could have their (plain-text) password database cracked tomorrow and disappear off the net forever.

Even if you are going to judge an entire company by the web framework it chooses to use, Bootstrap could be a good sign, as they are at least tech-savvy enough to know what that is, as opposed to using the default Wordpress theme!

sreenadh• 13 years ago

Twitter Bootstrap is a CSS framework which makes site presentable. If the intent of the site is not design innovation, why bother. Personally for me, I am allergic to CSS and so bootstrap is great for developers like me.

Ask HN: Do you trust a company with a website built with Twitter Bootstrap?

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