It's easy to miss things in documentation because there is so much of it. The bootstrap documentation is really a reference utility. This article is great even for stuff that is in the documentation because you might not think to look for it.

Surprised to see this - given the amount of technical detail inherent in common Web libraries (Angular, jQuery, even jQueryUI), Bootstrap is downright lean.

You could read about every grid detail, form & UI element and JS element in less than 20 minutes.

As you know, the problem is the sheer number of libraries we use. Even if they were all as lean as Bootstrap, I will never know every tip and trick in all of them.

Thus, articles like this one have their place, and I for one thought it picked out some nice under-utilized pieces.

Really? When I first heard about Bootstrap I found it pretty easy to look at almost all of the documentation in under an hour, and it covered all of these things, except the hover dropdown, which is simple css, and the media queries.

From the first bullet point in the "Grid System":

>Rows must be placed within a .container (fixed-width) or .container-fluid (full-width) for proper alignment and padding.

Different stacking in mobile and desktop: http://getbootstrap.com/css/#grid-example-mixed Nesting Columns: http://getbootstrap.com/css/#grid-nesting Column Ordering: http://getbootstrap.com/css/#grid-column-ordering Lead class: http://getbootstrap.com/css/#type-body-copy Block Quotes: http://getbootstrap.com/css/#type-blockquotes Inline Lists: http://getbootstrap.com/css/#type-lists Inline Forms (helping screen readers): http://getbootstrap.com/css/#forms-inline Images: http://getbootstrap.com/css/#images

I guess you might not think to look for it in the documentation, but if you don't think to look for it, that means you probably aren't using it, and don't need it... I still wouldn't really call any of these things tips or tricks, it's just actually reading the documentation of what framework you're using, which apparently people don't do?

I agree up until "Different Grid Columns at Different Device Sizes". That section does not qualify as a "tip" or "trick" -- it's perhaps the most fundamental part of using Bootstrap's "grid system" layout.

Completely agree; with the exception of first item (dropdown on hover), all other items are pretty regular, documented things that are easy to understand if you are already using Bootstrap.

This is a case of "the 10000" http://xkcd.com/1053/ to me. I've only been using bootstrap for 9 months, and I learned 4+ extremely useful tips from this article.

Not to be pedantic, but as mentioned elsewhere every tip here (sans the dropdown on hover one) is in the documentation itself.

I'm really not trying to poo-poo the article but you could pluck 10 random things from Bootstrap's relatively simple documentation and have the same thing.

Maybe if it were titled "cool things in Bootstrap" instead of being presented as "tricks."

> What exactly is a "trick" then?

I'd call a trick something that is not part of the documentation core, something that has unexpected effect or behavior that was unintended initially.

None of those would apply here.

"I'd call a trick something that is not part of the documentation core .." I'd call this particular definition a pedantic, artificial nitpick invented soley for the purpose of picking nits in the post.

If on the other hand you use a conventional definition of trick, "a clever or particular way of doing something", then the post is indeed about a set of tricks.

But these aren't clever or particular ways of doing things. You're using Bootstrap's css classes to do exactly what they're designed to do.

The funny thing about your newly defined "trick" is that it would be foolish to rely on such undocumented behavior not changing on the next minor update. :)

Well the same applies to this definition of "trick" so I'm not sure that's a particularly damning point.

Either way, I didn't say such "tricks" are without peril - surely a number of jQuery "tricks," even those that were eventually canonized, have been broken over the years as the library updates.

What exactly is a "trick" then? I would argue that they're useful bits of functionality that a group of people might not know. For instance, if I post "math tips and tricks" to my facebook followers they'd be like "ooh, nice tips" but if I post them on a /r/mathematics I'd be told "they aren't tricks, that's just the way math works". I think you're just basically saying "I know this already so everyone else should too".

Math "tricks" are usually computational in nature (and so not particularly "mathematics") and while it might be obvious how they work to a mathematician, they are unlikely something the mathematician would expect to find in a textbook. (I was a math major for a few years in college, and have a ton of friends who still do research in and around mathematics today.)

+1 for the "10,000" / xkcd.com/1053 reference, that's a great one. :)

Also, for the pedants: in many English-speaking communities, "tips n tricks" is simply slang for "miscellaneous useful bits".

Finally, general props to scotch.io for being a better-than-average blog.

100% agree. Someone is pushing this site.

On HN, we aren't ashamed to "push" things we've done or written up, as long as it's not all we do here. It takes hard work to create something, and if you don't believe in it enough to push it, who will?

who is we?

The HN community.

Right, I didn't learn anything and I don't think I'm a bootstrap master.