Bootstrap is one of the most used front end libraries for HTML and CSS designing. For coders who don't want to spend lots of time designing their front end, Bootstrap is a handy library that can make the job easier for them. I have been using Bootstrap for most of my front end projects. Many enterprise applications have also started using Bootstrap and building their websites with the help of bootstrap. I was glad to read an article yesterday about the new features and changes that are being introduced in Bootstrap 5.
An alpha version is already available. It shouldn't be used for a production application but it is better to give it a try. As this is an alpha version, there is a high possibility that somethings may not work but we will be able to easily find it and use an alternative solution and adapt when the library is fully ready.
The above is the website to get it set up for your project. There are few good things about this new release where the library has become more lightweight and easy to use. They have removed jQuery as a dependency and they are also working on bringing icons in the library itself instead of looking for icons from font awesome and other libraries. I'm glad that the jQuery dependency was removed completely and everything was completely written using vanilla Javascript.
Another notable thing is that the website has also got a new look and feel. With the help of Sass and CSS, things are made even more customizable and flexible for the developers. Apart from the regular colors that used to be there earlier, the new version brings a lot more color now. The developers and website designers can now pick any color of their choice to decide the look and feel of their website.
Now with the new release, all the other websites and supporting libraries and themes will have to start providing support for version 5. Many companies are still using version 3 as their bootstrap version and are finding it very hard to upgrade to version 4 because of breaking dependencies. In order to prevent that from happening for an upgrade to bootstrap 5, the team is working on getting a smooth transition. If there are challenges, I guess the information will at least be available in the documentation about any breaking change.
I'm not going to go deep into the new features but I would like to list out some of the notable features in Bootstrap 5.
I have listed only a few above. There are so many minor and major changes in Bootstrap 5. Not everyone is fully aware of what are all the major changes that have been implemented in the new version. The javascript part of the library has gone through a major refactoring. I guess it was a huge effort to convert everything into vanilla javascript.
From a developer perspective, I'm pretty excited about this and I really want to use this in my next project at least to see how it is working. I guess other front end libraries like Vue js, Angular, and react should also bring some support for the new versions. There are already libraries that use bootstrap for vue. With the new version, they should also get updated to the latest version considering all the dependencies.
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