Since Twitter released their Bootstrap CSS framework, there has been some backlash among web designers. It tends to be used fresh out of the proverbial box, without any modification, an awful lot. The snide remarks about Bootstrap are largely unfounded, though. While some people may simply keep all of the defaults and use it to throw something together quickly, it is still a framework like any other. It offers an excellent array of features you might want in a CSS framework, and you can customize the look as much as you want.

I was recently looking at the new design of A Small Orange, a hosting company. Would you guess, just looking at it, that it uses Bootstrap?

I didn’t realize at first, until I moused over an image and noticed the popover that appeared. I recognized it as a re-colored Bootstrap feature, and checked the page source to confirm it. Handy, easy to implement, and yet you could even restyle it beyond recognition if you wanted to.

There are already plenty of sites using Bootstrap to create unique designs, rather just as a no-design solution to throw together a quick page. The trick is finding them, since by definition they wouldn’t look like Bootstrap sites…