With 2.2.2 out the door, our attention has shifted almost entirely to the next major update to the project, Bootstrap 3. Things are coming together and we want to give you an update on what’s next and give you a chance to share your thoughts.
Specifics of v3
Overall, Bootstrap 3 will be rather narrow in focus compared to the last major update. In short, we’ll drop legacy code, improve responsive CSS, and centralize community efforts. Specifically, v3 will address the following:
Use tags for all versioned downloads, use smaller feature branches for dev work, and merge right into master (after 3.0 launches).
To help communicate and track changes, we’ve opened a Bootstrap 3 pull request. Follow along with what we’re working on, ask questions, or contribute by using that pull request as a reference point. We’ll be keeping it up to date as development progresses.
In addition, we’re going to try to accelerate versioning by focusing on individual components for major releases after 3.0 (e.g., modals or the carousel could be punted to a 4.0 release). Given this approach, it’s less important for us to stuff a lot of feature work into 3.0.
Beyond that, we’re open to addressing a couple of things with 3.0 like form styles and mobile enhancements. We want to limit these kind of changes for 3.0 though, so let us know what features are most important to you.
New GitHub organization
We mentioned this a few times in recent months, but with 3.0 we’ll be transitioning to a new organization on GitHub, twbs. The username is homage to H5BP, one of the most notable front-end tools out there, and of course, Twitter. The move shouldn’t present any problems to you fine folks.
New URLs
With the move to the new organization, the URLs of the Bootstrap docs must change. We host our docs on GitHub Pages and those URLs are based on user or organization names. To better future-proof things, we’ll be making https://getbootstrap.com/ our base URL instead of just a redirect.
For us, this will be the most painful part of the move. Given how prolific links are, we’ll also try to setup something at the old URLs to redirect folks, but we’re unsure how we will do that just yet. Perhaps a shell repository with dummy pages pointing to their replacements? Time will tell.
Strengthening the community
The larger goal behind the organization move is to bolster the Bootstrap community. To start, we’ll be transferring the main Bootstrap repo, the Heroku customizer app, and the blog to the new organization. But more importantly, we want to bring community projects into the organization as official projects.
From language ports to extensions to snippets, we want to work with leaders of key community efforts to see if this makes sense. We’re still working on the criteria for this and have yet to reach out to anyone.
If you think your project fits, hit us up. We’ll be looking to add projects shortly after 3.0.
Growing the team
Bringing additional projects into the fold is going to be a huge undertaking as managing the existing code is already a hefty task between Jacob and myself. To that end, we’ll be looking to add one or two people to the team to help us manage issues, pull requests, etc. This is a huge deal for us and we’ll be taking our time on figuring it all out.
Growing the team with official contributors, other than the two of us, is also a goal. Similarly, we’re super nervous about this and have no clear timetable for it as well.
Wrapping up
Bootstrap is still just getting started. There is so much more awesome stuff to do and we want to work with you awesome folks to do it all as best we can. We hope you’re as excited as we are.
Please reach out to us on Twitter or GitHub with any questions or feedback.
Today we’re launching Bootstrap 2.2.2, another larger bugfix release that focuses mostly on CSS and documentation fixes, with a few key JS issues mixed in as well. Here’s the rundown on what’s new in this release:
Docs:
Assets (illustrations and examples) are now retina-ready.
Replaced Placehold.it with Holder.js, a client-side and retina-ready placeholder image tool.
Dropdowns: Temporary fix added for dropdowns on mobile to prevent them from closing early.
Popovers:
No longer inherits font-size: 0; when placed in button groups.
Arrows refactored to work in IE8, and use less code.
Plugin no longer inserts popover content into a <p>, but rather directly into .popover-content.
Hitting escape will place focus back on the <input>.
Print styles, from HTML5 Boilerplate, have been added.
Get a more complete list by viewing the 2.2.2 milestone on GitHub. Most of the issues not mentioned above are minor CSS tweaks and documentation typos.
We have a 2.2.3 release slated for further bugs and improvements we couldn’t tackle in this version, but most of our ongoing efforts are going to transition to development on 3.0.0. More details on that will come next week.
In the next week or so, we plan on releasing v2.2.2. To date, there are over 50 CSS and documentation related issues already closed, and we want to get those out in your hands. We still have some significant JavaScript issues to work out, but those will be punted to 2.2.3 so we don’t hold up development. Our hope is to have that release out by end of year at the latest.
For a more complete set of changes, view the 2.2.2 milestone on GitHub. Most of the issues not mentioned above are minor CSS tweaks and documentation typos.
How to help
We would love to have folks help test these changes to prevent further regressions.
Checkout the 2.2.2-wip branch, or browse the release candidate docs so you can easily load it up on devices and such for testing. Note: downloads on the RC docs do not work.
Take a look at the docs and give ’em a run on the docs, on your phone, your (least?) favorite browser, etc.
Open a new issue on GitHub to report bugs. Please include as much context and information as possible. If it’s a visual bug, please include a screenshot. If it pertains to JavaScript, consider including a jsfiddle.
If you’re submitting a pull request against 2.2.2-wip, be sure to read the Contributing to Bootstrap wiki page first.
Earlier this week, I was excited to announce that our next release, 2.2.2-wip, would include the new Glyphicons icon font. In hindsight I got a little carried away and forgot about something.
IE7 doesn’t really do icon fonts.
I could put together a hack to add IE7 support, duplicating tons of code, but that doesn’t feel right as we’re dropping IE7 support in BS3. Instead of spending time on something we’ll just remove later on, we’re going to focus on things that will be here in the next major version.
So, it’s with some sadness that I inform you we will not be including the Glyphicons font in 2.2.2-wip.
Backwards compatibility is always a pain in the ass, and to avoid huge headaches for folks, we sometimes have to bend over, well, backwards. I hope this doesn’t screw up your plans too much and that you understand we have the community’s best interests at heart.
There’s some good news though. For you nerds who live on the edge, I’ve been working on tons of BS3-esque changes in the 3.0.0-wip branch on GitHub. If you really cannot wait for the Glyphicons font (and don’t mind using unsupported code), do check it out. I plan on accelerating work on it in the coming weeks. (Please don’t submit issues for it though, but rather email me or ping me on Twitter for questions.)
After the 2.2.0 release last night, a few bugs were reported, but only one major one: malfunctioning carousels. To address that, @fat just pushed out a 2.2.1 hotfix release that fixes the bug. Upgrading should be super simple given the scope of this release.
Aww yeah, our first release since leaving Twitter is here with Bootstrap 2.2.0! We originally planned to release this as 2.1.2, but given the timing and scope we’re bumping the version. Included in this release are dozens of bug fixes, documentation enhancements, and a few new and improved features.
tl;dr
2.1.2 is now 2.2.0: four new example templates, added media component, new typographic scale, fixed that box-shadow mixin bug, fixed z-index issues, and more changes.
Highlights
Added four new example templates to the docs, including a narrow marketing page, sign in form, sticky footer, and a fancy carousel (created for an upcoming .net magazine article).
Added the media component, to create larger common components like comments, Tweets, etc.
New variable-driven typographic scale based on @baseFontSize and @baseLineHeight.
Revamped mini, small, and large padding via new variables for inputs and buttons so everything is the same size.
Reverted 2.1.1’s .box-shadow(); mixin change that caused compiler errors.
Improved dropdown submenus to support dropups and left-aligned submenus.
Fixed z-index issues with tooltips and popovers in modals.
Hero unit now sets basic type styles for the entire component, rather than on .hero-unit p { ... }.
Updated JavaScript plugins and docs to jQuery 1.8.1.
Miscellaneous variable improvements across the board.
Miscellaneous documentation typos fixed.
For the full list of issues included in this release, visit the 2.2.0 milestone on GitHub. Otherwise, be sure to visit the docs or download the latest to get your hands on 2.2.0.
As a quick side note, we’re still working on moving Bootstrap to its own organization on GitHub. That will come with a couple other big changes, but more on that soon. We’ll be jumping on the next release shortly for more bugfixes, but until then enjoy the fixes and new hotness!
Lastly, thanks everyone again for submitting issues and contributing—you rock!
Working at Twitter the last two and a half years has been incredible. Both Jacob and I have worked with a lot of amazing people on some pretty amazing projects, but nothing has been more enjoyable or rewarding than working on Bootstrap. Despite us leaving Twitter to go our separate ways, we’ll both be continuing our work on the project.
Bootstrap will remain a Twitter project on GitHub for the time being, but we’ve realized the project has grown beyond us and the Twitter brand. It’s a huge project playing a pretty awesome role in the web development industry, and we’re excited to see it continue to grow. To that end, we’ve begun working to move Bootstrap into its own open source organization. It will take time, but we’re dedicated to making it happen.
In the coming weeks, we’ll release another bugfix update (2.1.2) to address a few things, and then it’s full steam ahead on improving some key areas of the framework (modals, carousels, customizer, etc). We’ll share more info on those updates as plans take shape.
Until then, we have nothing but love for Twitter and the web development community. Thank you all so much for everything.
Two weeks later, we’ve closed another 500 issues against Bootstrap. That includes all the dupes—you nerds like reporting typos—and invalid issues that don’t end up making it on the official release milestone. But, what’s awesome is that we have 2.1.1 ready to rock with 73 bugfixes.
New feature: alert text. We documented these new classes, like .text-success, at the bottom of the Typography section along with the long undocumented .muted.
Fixed a lot of typos in the docs. Spelling is hard.
Made the .box-shadow() mixin more durable. It no longer requires escaping for multiple shadows, meaning you can easily use variables and functions in them once again.
Widened .dl-horizontal dt and .horizontal-form .control-group to better handle the increased font-size.
Dropdown submenus improved: now you only see the next level, not all levels, on hover of the submenu toggle.
Clarified jQuery and Bootstrap template requirements in Getting Started section.
select now utilizes @inputBorder.
.lead now scales up from @baseFontSize instead of being a fixed font-size and line-height.
Fixed the vertical three color gradient in latest Firefox.
Reordered some variables that caused errors in certain Less compilers.
There’s a bunch more, so do run through the 2.1.1 milestone when you can, but those are the big ones.
Next up
More bug fixes, more feature improvements. 2.1.2 will be coming shortly and we’ll work to improve a handful of issues that we punted on for 2.1.1. Beyond that, we’ve scoped out the next few releases around a set of key components like modals and carousels.
We’ll continue to add new features as appropriate, but we’re primarily focused on improving current functionality in the next few months.
Roughly two weeks ago we upgraded the blog to use Jekyll and GitHub Pages instead of WordPress. When we did that, we forgot about the RSS feed. A few awesome folks noted we were missing it and so we’ve added it back. Unfortunately it’s not the same URL, but it’s there nonetheless.
It’s also in the <head> of the blog’s pages, so entering just the root URL should resolve fine for you in most RSS apps. Again, sorry for the oversight and please continue to let us know if we can do anything else to improve the blog.
After a smaller 2.0.4 release, we’ve got another huge update that resolves tons of bugs, improves the flexibility and durability of our code, and introduces a few awesome new features. It’s a big release wrapped in a brand new set of docs and we couldn’t be more stoked to launch it.
tl;dr
New docs, affix plugin, submenus on dropdowns, block buttons, image styles, fluid grid offsets, new navbar, increased font-size and line-height, 120+ closed bugs, and more. Go get it.
Improved documentation
In addition to sporting a fresh visual style, the content of our docs has been overhauled once again. Good-bye long-winded marketing copy and multiple columns, hello succinct and directive single-column documentation. We’ve got a new tagline, new layout and navigation, and (more) clearer examples.
Key changes and new features
We had higher expectations for the number of new features in 2.1, but we toned it back to get this release out the door in a manageable form. We’ve still added some great new features and fixed tones of bugs, so here’s a brief overview of what’s new.
Submenu support on dropdowns. We avoided this for some time as we thought it would unnecessarily complicate things, but we’ve backtracked on that and opted to add them in. See the docs for more info.
Affix JavaScript plugin. Make anything stick to the top of the viewport as you scroll with our newest plugin, built to power our new docs navigation.
Block level buttons. Add .btn-block to a button to make it full-width.
State classes on table rows. Better convey success, warning, and error messages in tables.
Improved disabled states on navs and dropdowns. Where by “improve” we mean actually present—just add .disabled to the li.
The navbar component is now white by default, with an optional class to darken it. In order to have two options for the navbar, light and dark, we needed to have better defaults. Having a lighter default navbar means fewer lines of code as we don’t need to override anything for the basic navbar functionality and the override it again to restore the default styles. Missing the black? Just add .navbar-inverse to get the dark gray navbar back.
Improved prepended and appended inputs. No need to place the input and .add-on on the same line of code (sorry about that by the way). Break them up as you like and they’ll still stick together with some crafty font-size working.
New base font-size and line-height. 13px/18px is out, 14px/20px is in. This also has changed the size, line-height, and margin of our heading elements, buttons, and more.
Added variable for navbar collapse trigger point. Instead of a fixed pixel width of 980px for triggering the collapsed navbar, we now use a variable so you can customize it for your projects.
Fluid grid offsets. Thanks to our contributors, the fluid grid now has offset support to match our fixed (pixel) grid.
Fluid grid system variables are no longer fixed percentages. Instead, they are calculated in LESS with percentage() based on the default, fixed-width grid variables. Math!
Removed LESS docs page. We will no longer document variables and mixins in two places—rewriting that stuff was painful and took too much time. Instead, just checkout the .less files.
Thanks, nerds
Once again, we couldn’t have done this without all you nerds out there supporting us with your contributions, bugfixes, and feature requests. You keep this project going strong and we thank you deeply for your support.
<3
For the full changelog, visit the GitHub wiki page and the 2.1.0 milestone. We’ve already begun slating things for 2.2, but currently have no estimates on when that will be released or what exactly will make it in. We also may do a 2.1.1, but again, no promises at this point. Live in the now!
@mdo
December 10, 2012