Bootstrap Framework Upgrade
Problems
One of the biggest problems I want to tackle is removing as much custom and unecessary html / css / js as possible. This is not possible with such a large code base and small dev team and will have to take place over the course of the next few years. I decided it would be best to implement a framework to eventually replace most of the custom UI code. Twitter Bootstrap fits the bill nicely.
The Conversion
We've successfully implemented bootstrap and coverted most of the code over to their grid system. From here on out all new html and css will use Bootstrap and anything old that is touched we will do our bests to convert it to Bootstrap markup. I am looking forward to upgrading many of our custom jQuery plugins to utilize the Bootstrap javascript components that are much cleaner visually and code. We are seeing Google Lighthouse score increase from 28 to 45. This is still a failing score but it is good to see an increase of this magnitude from our efforts and gives me hope that we are on the correct path forward out of the mountain of tech debt.
Benefits to Bootstrap:
- Streamlining design process
- Streamlining development process
- Responsive design without customization
- Re-usable css js
- Creating reusable web components
- Removing custom css and html improved Google Lighthouse scores
- Can still be customized when needed
