Twitter is gearing up for the release of Bootstrap 2.0, the second major version of its popular open source front-end toolkit for web developers.
Bootstrap 2.0 will arrive Jan. 31, but if you'd like to take it for a spin today you can help test the pre-release build. Just head on over to GitHub and checkout the branch, 2.0-wip.
Bootstrap is designed to help you get your website up and running as fast as possible. Somewhere between a CSS framework and a "theme," Bootstrap offers an HTML, CSS and JavaScript base for your designs, including built-in forms, buttons, tables, grids and navigation elements. Among Bootstrap's more impressive tricks is the grid layout tool, which is based on the 960 grid system, with support for advanced features like nested and offset columns.
Bootstrap 2.0 will solve one of the bigger complaints about Bootstrap 1.0 – it was not responsive. To embrace a more responsive approach for mobile devices, Bootstrap is moving to a flexible 12-column grid system. The 2.0 release also includes some updated progress bars and customizable gallery thumbnails, but perhaps the best news is that, at just 10kb (gzipped), Bootstrap 2.0 remains an impressively lightweight framework.
While Bootstrap offers good browser support, with all the modern options covered you should be aware that it won't work with Internet Explorer 6. To see some real world examples of what you can do with Bootstrap, head on over to the unofficial showcase, Built with Bootstrap on Tumblr.
Photo by Mike Love/flickr/CC.
