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  1. Stackups
  2. Application & Data
  3. Frameworks
  4. Front End Frameworks
  5. Bootstrap vs Next.js

Bootstrap vs Next.js

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Bootstrap
Bootstrap
Stacks57.4K
Followers13.2K
Votes7.7K
GitHub Stars173.6K
Forks79.2K
Next.js
Next.js
Stacks8.0K
Followers5.1K
Votes330
GitHub Stars135.4K
Forks29.7K

Bootstrap vs Next.js: What are the differences?

  1. Key difference 1: Server-side rendering vs. client-side rendering Bootstrap is a front-end framework focused on providing a set of ready-to-use UI components and styles for building responsive web pages. It is mainly used for client-side rendering, meaning that the HTML content is generated on the browser's side. On the other hand, Next.js is a framework for building server-rendered React applications. It allows developers to render React components on the server and send them as HTML to the client, resulting in faster initial page load times and better SEO.

  2. Key difference 2: CSS vs. CSS-in-JS Bootstrap uses CSS to style its components and grids. Developers can customize the styles by overriding the default CSS classes or adding their own stylesheets. In contrast, Next.js embraces CSS-in-JS solutions like styled-components or CSS modules. This allows developers to write component-specific CSS directly in their JavaScript code, providing better modularization and encapsulation of styles.

  3. Key difference 3: Starter template vs. project structure Bootstrap offers a variety of pre-designed starter templates (e.g., landing pages, dashboards, blogs) that developers can use as a starting point for their websites. These templates provide a predefined structure and layout, allowing developers to focus on customizing the content and adding functionality. Next.js, on the other hand, provides a project structure that follows the conventions of a server-rendered React application. Developers have more flexibility to define their own project structure and layout according to their specific needs.

  4. Key difference 4: Enforced UI consistency vs. flexibility Bootstrap provides a set of predefined UI components that are designed to work well together and follow a consistent style. This ensures that the end result has a cohesive look and feel. Next.js, on the other hand, does not enforce a specific UI design or style. It allows developers to freely choose and combine UI components from various libraries or create their own custom components. This gives developers more flexibility in designing unique and customized user interfaces.

  5. Key difference 5: Complexity vs. simplicity Bootstrap is a feature-rich framework with many options and configurations available. This can make it quite complex for beginners or developers who prefer a more minimalistic approach. Next.js, on the other hand, has a simpler and more lightweight setup. It focuses on providing a streamlined development experience and essential features for building server-rendered React applications. This simplicity can be advantageous for developers who want to quickly get started or prefer a less opinionated framework.

  6. Key difference 6: Community and ecosystem Bootstrap has been around for a longer time and has a large and active community of developers. It has a wide range of resources, tutorials, and themes available, making it easier to find support and inspiration for building websites. Next.js, although not as mature as Bootstrap, has been gaining popularity rapidly and has a growing community. While its ecosystem may not be as extensive as Bootstrap's, it offers a range of plugins and libraries specifically built for server-rendered React applications.

In Summary, Bootstrap focuses on client-side rendering with CSS styling, while Next.js is a server-rendered React framework using CSS-in-JS with flexibility in UI design, simplicity in setup, and a growing community.

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Advice on Bootstrap, Next.js

Taylor
Taylor

May 5, 2020

Review

Hey guys,

My backend set up is Prisma / GraphQL-Yoga at the moment, and I love it. It's so intuitive to learn and is really neat on the frontend too, however, there were a few gotchas when I was learning! Especially around understanding how it all pieces together (the stack). There isn't a great deal of information out there on exactly how to put into production my set up, which is a backend set up on a Digital Ocean droplet with Prisma/GraphQL Yoga in a Docker Container using Next & Apollo Client on the frontend somewhere else. It's such a niche subject, so I bet only a few hundred people have got a website with this stack in production. Anyway, I wrote a blog post to help those who might need help understanding it. Here it is, hope it helps!

758k views758k
Comments
Bridget
Bridget

Full Stack Developer at Bridget Sarah

May 29, 2020

Decided

I do prefer to write things from scratch however when it came to wanting to jump-start the frontend, I found that it was taking me a lot longer hence why needing to use something very fast.

Bootstrap was the boom when it came out, I didn't like it, to be honest, set in its way and a pain to over-ride and in addition, you can tell from a distance if you're using boostrap and as everything looks the same.

I came across Tailwind CSS as I wanted more dynamic features, you could say, I've been now doing it for a few days and I love it a lot. I've been practising with the full stack part installed but I an't we wait until I do a new project, and I'll e able to select exactly what I want. Much faster.

681k views681k
Comments
Daniel
Daniel

Frontend Developer at atSistemas

Jun 10, 2020

Needs adviceonNew RelicNew RelicNext.jsNext.jsReactReact

I'm building, from scratch, a webapp. It's going to be a dashboard to check on our apps in New Relic and update the Apdex from the webapp. I have just chosen Next.js as our framework because we use React already, and after going through the tutorial, I just loved the latest changes they have implemented.

But we have to decide on a CSS framework for the UI. I'm partial to Bulma because I love that it's all about CSS (and you can use SCSS from the start), that it's rather lightweight and that it doesn't come with JavaScript clutter. One of the things I hate about Bootstrap is that you depend on jQuery to use the JavaScript part. My boss loves UIkIt, but when I've used it in the past, I didn't like it.

What do you think we should use? Maybe you have another suggestion?

1.07M views1.07M
Comments

Detailed Comparison

Bootstrap
Bootstrap
Next.js
Next.js

Bootstrap is the most popular HTML, CSS, and JS framework for developing responsive, mobile first projects on the web.

Next.js is a minimalistic framework for server-rendered React applications.

Preprocessors: Bootstrap ships with vanilla CSS, but its source code utilizes the two most popular CSS preprocessors, Less and Sass. Quickly get started with precompiled CSS or build on the source.;One framework, every device: Bootstrap easily and efficiently scales your websites and applications with a single code base, from phones to tablets to desktops with CSS media queries.;Full of features: With Bootstrap, you get extensive and beautiful documentation for common HTML elements, dozens of custom HTML and CSS components, and awesome jQuery plugins.
Zero setup. Use the filesystem as an API; Only JavaScript. Everything is a function; Automatic server rendering and code splitting; Data fetching is up to the developer; Anticipation is the key to performance; Simple deployment
Statistics
GitHub Stars
173.6K
GitHub Stars
135.4K
GitHub Forks
79.2K
GitHub Forks
29.7K
Stacks
57.4K
Stacks
8.0K
Followers
13.2K
Followers
5.1K
Votes
7.7K
Votes
330
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 1582
    Responsiveness
  • 1193
    UI components
  • 943
    Consistent
  • 779
    Great docs
  • 677
    Flexible
Cons
  • 26
    Javascript is tied to jquery
  • 16
    Every site uses the defaults
  • 15
    Grid system break points aren't ideal
  • 14
    Too much heavy decoration in default look
  • 8
    Verbose styles
Pros
  • 51
    Automatic server rendering and code splitting
  • 44
    Built with React
  • 34
    Easy setup
  • 26
    TypeScript
  • 24
    Universal JavaScript
Cons
  • 9
    Structure is weak compared to Angular(2+)
Integrations
No integrations available
React
React

What are some alternatives to Bootstrap, Next.js?

Node.js

Node.js

Node.js uses an event-driven, non-blocking I/O model that makes it lightweight and efficient, perfect for data-intensive real-time applications that run across distributed devices.

Rails

Rails

Rails is a web-application framework that includes everything needed to create database-backed web applications according to the Model-View-Controller (MVC) pattern.

Django

Django

Django is a high-level Python Web framework that encourages rapid development and clean, pragmatic design.

Laravel

Laravel

It is a web application framework with expressive, elegant syntax. It attempts to take the pain out of development by easing common tasks used in the majority of web projects, such as authentication, routing, sessions, and caching.

.NET

.NET

.NET is a general purpose development platform. With .NET, you can use multiple languages, editors, and libraries to build native applications for web, mobile, desktop, gaming, and IoT for Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, and more.

ASP.NET Core

ASP.NET Core

A free and open-source web framework, and higher performance than ASP.NET, developed by Microsoft and the community. It is a modular framework that runs on both the full .NET Framework, on Windows, and the cross-platform .NET Core.

Symfony

Symfony

It is written with speed and flexibility in mind. It allows developers to build better and easy to maintain websites with PHP..

Spring

Spring

A key element of Spring is infrastructural support at the application level: Spring focuses on the "plumbing" of enterprise applications so that teams can focus on application-level business logic, without unnecessary ties to specific deployment environments.

Spring Boot

Spring Boot

Spring Boot makes it easy to create stand-alone, production-grade Spring based Applications that you can "just run". We take an opinionated view of the Spring platform and third-party libraries so you can get started with minimum fuss. Most Spring Boot applications need very little Spring configuration.

Android SDK

Android SDK

Android provides a rich application framework that allows you to build innovative apps and games for mobile devices in a Java language environment.

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