Hi!
This is the first of 3 threads talking about some improvements I’ve thought (and read here) about how to focus my proposal for GSoC.
One of the points I’d like to take care of is about modernising the UI and making it responsible. As I have explained in my proposal, my idea was to upgrade Bootstrap version and use the responsive utilities available on it to make the site available in tablets.
My idea of using Bootstrap instead of a self-made CSS framework is that it is a well-known project, which maintain compatibility while you don`t change the major version, and there is a big company supporting it (Twitter).
Another improve I have commented on my proposal is the inclusion of another CSS library called FontAwesome, which only uses some classes and a font to show scalable icons (uses vectorial font to improve cross-device compatibility).
If you don’t like using CSS frameworks, this task could be completed, but with a higher amount of work, but it will not be a problem. However, Bootstrap has been fully tested and used in thousands of sites and maintaining it isn’t a problem as long as the changes between major versions are only a few and this kind of change occurs very rarely.
What do you think about this idea?
I haven’t done any mockup right now, but I have experience using this framework in other projects and the UI wouldn’t be a problem in my opinion.
Gem I usually use that include both frameworks:
GitHub - diowa/twbs_less_rails: Twitter Bootstrap and Font Awesome for Rails Asset Pipeline (LESS version)
GitHub - diowa/twbs_sass_rails: Twitter Bootstrap for Sass and Font Awesome for Rails Asset Pipeline (SASS version)
And if you don’t like to depend from a single developer, there is an official gem from Bootstrap (GitHub - twbs/bootstrap-sass: Official Sass port of Bootstrap 2 and 3.)
I’m pretty sure there are alot of areas which we can improve on.