Chapter 1. Advanced Bootstrap Development Tools

Although Bootstrap is the most popular CSS framework on the block, which polarizes web developers of all skill levels, one of the main complaints against it is that it's too large and hard to use. The primary goal of this book is to give you an advanced set of tools to make building websites with Bootstrap easier and even enjoyable. We'll start out by showing you how to create a development environment and workflow that is easy to set up and reuse in all your Bootstrap projects. From there on, we'll tackle a number of common website designs to get you comfortable with the advanced techniques. Finally, we'll include some JavaScript libraries and really take our Bootstrap projects to the next level. Sit back, fire up your code editor of choice, and get ready to dive into some advanced Bootstrap blueprints.

In this chapter, you'll learn:

• How to create a development environment with Harp.js
• How to run a localhost server with Node.js to preview your project
• How to write templates with EJS and use variables and partials
• How to set up your theme with Less in the most efficient manner
• How to compile your project for production