The idea of BS3 wasn't so much "flat" as it was a "remove gradients to allow easier customisation". Previously (in BC2) you had to override a ton of stuff to get "sane" buttons again. BS3 just gives you simple buttons that you can add to immediately. Same goes for the nav-bar. I much prefer it this way.
My favorites so far are http://bootswatch.com/cerulean/
Think of Bootstrap as a model car kit. Bootstrap 2 was a Porsche that had just enough paint that people ran with it in their showcase, but that was never Bootstrap's intention. You were meant to complete the kit before showing off. Version 3 is a Tesla, but this time no paint.
Don't you see a problem right there? In my opinion, it should at least come bundled with an optional style (the old Bootstrap2 style would be fine), so that we could at least use it for fast prototyping. In its current state, it's kind of useless since I'm gonna need a designer from day 1 anyway, because it looks terrible by default.
It will. :)
And once we add the theme, it'll become clear :).
Thanks for the feedback! <3
I like v2 because I could just whip out a little internal site/admin console/etc. and it looked as good or better than most other similar things without changing anything. I have some stuff out there with 5-10 custom CSS rules for the whole project.
Now we've got v3 which has all sorts of wack colors and typography, like someone wanted to go "flat" but gave up halfway through.