Setting up and customizing a responsive single page webdesign with Bootstrap

Bootstrap is a UI Framework initially created by Mark Otto and Jacob Thornton at Twitter. It is an amazing source of styles, icons, and behaviors, abstracted to define and enrich components. Bootstrap offers an easy, rational, and unified set of patterns for defining styles. It had no equivalent before. If you have never used it, you will be excited to get so much visual feedback from a quick definition of the DOM.

In June 2014 it was the number 1 project on GitHub with over 73,000 stars and more than 27,000 forks. Their documentation is very fluid and easy to go through.

Getting ready

In this recipe, we will use Bootstrap to set up the web-design basics for our CloudStreet Market project from an existing Bootstrap theme. We will remake the index.jsp page to render a better looking welcome page that can be previewed with the following screenshot.

Getting ready

How to do it...

There are three major steps in this recipe:

  • Installing a Bootstrap theme
  • Customizing a Bootstrap theme
  • Creating responsive content

From the Git Perspective in Eclipse, checkout the latest version of the branch v2.x.x:

How to do it...

Installing a Bootstrap theme

  1. In the chapter_2 directory, you can find a freeme.zip archive. It is a responsive Bootstrap template downloadable for free. This zip comes from the bootstrapmaster.com website.
  2. Inside this archive, you'll see a css directory, a js directory, an img directory, and finally an index.html file. Opening the index.html file with a web browser should render the following home page:
    Installing a Bootstrap theme

    We are using this template as a base for the webapp module.

  3. All the JavaScript files located in the freeme/js directory have been copied over to the /cloudstreetmarket-webapp/src/main/webapp/js directory.
  4. All the CSS files located in the freeme/css directory have been copied over to the /cloudstreetmarket-webapp/src/main/webapp/css directory.
  5. All the pictures located in freeme/img have been copied over to the /cloudstreetmarket-webapp/src/main/webapp/img directory.
  6. The content of the freeme/index.html file has been copied and pasted into the /cloudstreetmarket-webapp/src/main/webapp/WEB-INF/jsp/index.jsp file, as UTF-8.
  7. Also, the freeme/licence.txt has been copied and pasted to the /cloudstreetmarket-webapp/src/main/webapp/WEB-INF/jsp directory.
  8. At this point, calling http://localhost:8080/portal/index with a web browser displayed exactly the same visual you saw earlier, but served by our application.

Customising a Bootstrap theme

We will detail in this section what has been done in order to adapt the downloaded template to our use case.

  1. All the images previously located in cloudstreetmarket-webappsrcmainwebappimglogos have been removed and replaced with six new images representing brands of technical products that we have been using through out this application and this book.
  2. In the index.jsp file located in the cloudstreetmarket-webapp module has been implemented the following changes:
    1. The following two lines have been added to the top:
      <%@ page contentType="text/html;charset=UTF-8" language="java" %>
<%@ page isELIgnored="false" %>
    2. The <!-- start: Meta --> section has been replaced with the following:
      <!-- start: Meta -->
<meta charset="utf-8">
<title>Spring MVC: CloudST Market</title> 
<meta name="description" content="Spring MVC CookBook: Cloud Street Market"/>
<meta name="keywords" content="spring mvc, cookbook, packt publishing, microservices, angular.js" />
<meta name="author" content="Your name"/>
<!-- end: Meta -->
    3. The <!--start: Logo --> section has been replaced with the following:
      <!--start: Logo -->
<div class="logo span4">
  CLOUD<span class="sub">ST</span><span>Market</span>
</div>
<!--end: Logo -->
    4. The navigation menu definition has been changed:
      <ul class="nav">
  <li class="active"><a href="index">Home</a></li>
  <li><a href="markets">Prices and markets</a></li>
  <li><a href="community">Community</a></li>
  <li><a href="sources">Sources</a></li>
  <li><a href="about">About</a></li>
  <li><a href="contact">Contact</a></li>
</ul>
    5. The <!-- start: Hero Unit --> and <!-- start: Flexslider --> sections have been removed and <div class="row"> coming after the navigation menu (<!--end: Navigation-->) has been emptied:
      <!-- start: Row -->
<div class="row"></div>
<!-- end: Row -->
    6. The <!-- start: Row --> section to the <!-- end: Row --> section, which is located after the <!-- end Clients List -->, has been removed along with the <hr> just after it.
    7. The footer section <!-- start: Footer Menu --> to <!-- end: Footer Menu --> has been replaced with the following content:
      <!-- start: Footer Menu -->
<div id="footer-menu" class="hidden-tablet hidden-phone">
  <!-- start: Container -->
  <div class="container">
    <!-- start: Row -->
    <div class="row">
      <!-- start: Footer Menu Logo -->
      <div class="span1">
      <div class="logoSmall">CLOUD<span class="sub">ST</span><span>M!</span>
        </div>
        </div>
      <!-- end: Footer Menu Logo -->
      <!-- start: Footer Menu Links-->
      <div class="span10" >
      <div id="footer-menu-links">
      <ul id="footer-nav" style="margin-left:35pt;">
        <li><a href="index">Home</a></li>
        <li><a href="markets">Prices and markets</a></li>
      <li><a href="community">Community</a></li>
        <li><a href="sources">Sources</a></li>
        <li><a href="about">About</a></li>
        <li><a href="contact">Contact</a></li>
        </ul>
        </div>
        </div>
        <!-- end: Footer Menu Links-->
        <!-- start: Footer Menu Back To Top -->
        <div class="span1">
        <div id="footer-menu-back-to-top">
          <a href="#"></a>
          </div>
        </div>
        <!-- end: Footer Menu Back To Top -->
    </div>
    <!-- end: Row -->
    </div>
  <!-- end: Container  -->	
</div>	
<!-- end: Footer Menu -->
    8. The section: <!-- start: Photo Stream --> to <!-- end: Photo Stream --> has been replaced with:
      <!-- start: Leaderboard -->
<div class="span3">
  <h3>Leaderboard</h3>
  <div class="flickr-widget">
    <script type="text/javascript" src=""></script>
    <div class="clear"></div>
  </div>
</div>
<!-- end: Leaderboard -->
    9. As a last change in the index.jsp file, the copyright section has been adapted.
  3. In the previously copied cloudstreetmarket-webapp/src/main/webapp/css/style.css file, the following classes have been added:
    .logo{
  font-family: 'Droid Sans';	font-size: 24pt; color: 	#666; width:157pt; font-weight:bold; margin-top:18pt; 	margin-left:10pt; height:30pt;
}
.logo span{
  position:relative;float:right; margin-top: 3pt;	font-weight:normal; font-family: 'Boogaloo'; font-	style:italic;	color: #89C236; padding-right: 3pt;
}
.logo .sub {
  vertical-align: super;	font-style:normal;font-size: 16pt; font-family: 'Droid Sans';	font-weight:bold; position: absolute;	color: #888; 	margin:-4pt 0 -4pt 0;
}
.logoSmall{
  font-family: 'Droid Sans';	font-size: 16pt; color: #888;width:80pt;	font-weight:bold; margin-top:10pt;height:20pt; margin-right:30pt;
}
.logoSmall span{
  position:relative;	float:right; margin-top: 3pt;
  font-weight:normal;font-family: 'Boogaloo';	font-style:italic;color: #89C236;
}
.logoSmall .sub {
  vertical-align: super;
  font-style:normal;	font-size: 10pt;font-family: 'Droid Sans';font-weight:bold;position: absolute; color: #666;margin:-2pt 0 -4pt 0;
}
  4. At this point, after all these changes, restarting Tomcat and calling the same URL http://localhost:8080/portal/index resulted in the following state:
    Customising a Bootstrap theme

Creating responsive content

We will focus in this section on the changes that have been made to fill the welcome page with responsive content. By responsive, understand that the content will be rendered under a style appropriate for the device size and orientation.

  1. In the index.jsp file:
    1. The <div class="row"> has been added the following content:
      <div class='span12'>
  <div class="hero-unit hidden-phone"><p>Welcome to CloudStreet Market, the educational platform.</p></div>
</div>
<div class='span5'>
    <div id='landingGraphContainer'></div>
    <div id='tableMarketPrices'>
      <table class="table table-hover table-condensed table-bordered table-striped">
        <thead>
          <tr>
            <th>Index</th>
            <th>Value</th>
            <th>Change</th>
          </tr>
         </thead>
         <tbody>
       <tr>
           <td>Dow Jones-IA</td><td>17,634.74</td>
           <td class='text-success'><b>-18.05</b></td>
            </tr>
            ...
            <tr>
              <td>FTSE MIB</td><td>18,965.41</td>
              <td class='text-error'><b>-182.86</b></td>
            </tr>
            ...
        </tbody>
        </table>
      </div>
</div>
<div id="containerCommunity" class='span7'>
    <div id="divRss3"></div>
</div>

      Note

      In the previously added landingGraphContainer, we have inserted a generated graph that renders the evolution of specific markets during the last opened day. The graph uses the morris.js library (http://morrisjs.github.io/morris.js), which also relies on the raphael.js library (https://cdnjs.com/libraries/raphael).

    2. At the bottom of the file, the <!-- start: Java Script --> section to the <!-- end: Java Script --> section has been added the following content:
      <script src="js/jquery-1.8.2.js"></script>
<script src="js/bootstrap.js"></script>
<script src="js/flexslider.js"></script>
<script src="js/carousel.js"></script>
<script def src="js/custom.js"></script>
<script src="js/FeedEk.js"></script>
<script src="js/raphael.js"></script>
<script src="js/morris.min.js"></script>
<script>
$(function () {
    var financial_data = [
     {"period": "08:00", "index": 66},{"period": "09:00", "index": 62},
	 {"period": "10:00", "index": 61},{"period": "11:00", "index": 66},
     {"period": "12:00", "index": 67},{"period": "13:00", "index": 68},
     {"period": "14:00", "index": 62},{"period": "15:00", "index": 61},
     {"period": "16:00", "index": 61},{"period": "17:00", "index": 54}
    ];
    Morris.Line({
      element: 'landingGraphContainer',
      hideHover: 'auto', data: financial_data,
      ymax: 70, ymin: 50,
      pointSize: 3, hideHover:'always',
      xkey: 'period', xLabels: 'month',
      ykeys: ['index'], postUnits: '',
      parseTime: false, labels: ['Index'],
      resize: true, smooth: false,
      lineColors: ['#A52A2A']
    });
});
</script>
  2. In the cloudstreetmarket-webappsrcmainwebappjs directory, the morris.min.js and raphael.js libraries have been copied and pasted from their respective websites.
  3. Back to the index.jsp file:
    1. The previously created <div id='containerCommunity'> has been filled with the following content:
      <div id="divRss3">
  <ul class="feedEkList">
    <li>
    <div class="itemTitle">
      <div class="listUserIco">
        <img src='img/young-	lad.jpg'>
      </div>
      <span class="ico-white ico-up-arrow   listActionIco 	actionBuy"></span>
        <a href="#">happyFace8</a> buys 6 <a href="#">NXT.L</a> at $3.00
        <p class="itemDate">15/11/2014 11:12 AM</p>
    </div>
    </li>
    <li>
    <div class="itemTitle">
      <div class="ico-user listUserIco"></div>
      <span class="ico-white ico-down-arrow listActionIco actionSell"></span>
      <a href="#">actionMan9</a> sells 6 <a href="#">CCH.L</a> at $12.00
      <p class="itemDate">15/11/2014 10:46 	AM</p>
    </div>
    </li>
      ...
  </ul>
</div>
    2. The section here uses the feedEk jQuery plugin. It comes with its own CSS and JavaScript file.
  4. The cloudstreetmarket-webappsrcmainwebappjs directory includes the FeedEk.js file related to the feedEk jQuery plugin. This plugin can be found online (http://jquery-plugins.net/FeedEk/FeedEk.html).
  5. The cloudstreetmarket-webappsrcmainwebappcss directory also has the related FeedEk.css file.
  6. Still in index.jsp, under the <!-- start: CSS --> comment, the FeedEk css document has been added: 
    <link href="css/FeedEk.css" rel="stylesheet">
  7. In the style.css file, before the first media query definition (@media only screen and (min-width: 960px)), the following style definitions have been added:
    .listUserIco {
    background-color:#bbb;
    float:left;
    margin:0 7px 0 0;
}
.listActionIco {
    float:right; 
    margin-top:-3px;
}
.actionSell {
    background-color:#FC9090;
}
.actionBuy {
    background-color:#8CDBA0;
}
#landingGraphContainer{
    height:160px;
    padding: 0px 13px 0 10px;
}
.tableMarketPrices{
    padding: 13px 13px 0 15px;
}
  8. Finally, two new images (profile pictures) have been added to cloudstreetmarket-webappsrcmainwebappimg.
  9. Try to dynamically resize a browser window that renders: http://localhost:8080/portal/index. You should observe a responsive and adaptive style as in the following picture:
    Creating responsive content

How it works...

To understand our Bootstrap deployment, we are going to review now how it has been installed as a predesigned theme. We will then discover some key features of the Bootstrap Framework—not only the implemented features because, logically enough, only a few features of the Framework can visually be used on one single page example.

The theme installation

The theme we have obtained is no more than a classical static theme, as you can find thousands of them over the Internet. They are made by web designers and distributed for free or commercially. This one is made with the basic structure of HTML files, a JS directory, a CSS directory, and an IMG directory.

The theme installation is quite straightforward to understand, since we have just placed the JavaScript files, CSS files, and images in their expected locations for our application.

Tip

The Bootstrap core features are self-contained in bootstrap.js, bootstrap.css, and bootstrap-responsive.css. You should not really have to tweak these files directly.

Bootstrap highlights

The implemented theme (FreeME) uses Bootstrap 2. We are going to review a couple of features that have been implemented in the template and for the needs of our project.

Bootstrap scaffolding

The Bootstrap scaffolding helps with designing the HTML structure usually built from a grid model. The Bootstrap strategy on this topic is described in the following sections.

Grid system and responsive design

Bootstrap offers a styleframe to handle a page-specific grid system. The key point is in the default grid-system made up of 12 columns and designed for a 940px wide nonresponsive container.

The Bootstrap responsive features are activated with the use of <meta name="viewport"…> tag and with the import of the boostrap-responsive.css file. The container width can extend from 724px to 1170px in that case.

Tip

Also, below 767px, the columns become fluid and stack vertically.

These Bootstrap specifications define quite a drastic set of constraints but Bootstrap somehow creates an easy-to-understand design uniformity for its implementations.

In the case of our template, the viewport metatag is the following:

<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1, maximum-scale=1">

Note

If you are not familiar with this tag, its main purpose is to define device-specific sizes in the document. From these sizes, rules are defined for orientation-specific and device-specific rendering. These rules that are bound to style definitions are called mediaqueries. You can find an example of a mediaquery in the style.css file:

/* Higher than 960 (desktop devices)
================================================================ */
@media only screen and (min-width: 960px) {
...
  #footer-menu {
    padding-left: 30px;
    padding-right: 30px;
    margin-left: -30px;
    margin-right: -30px;
  }
...
}

This media query overrides the style that is specific to the id footer menu only where the device presents a width greater than 960px.

Defining columns

To define columns within the grid system, Bootstrap drives us towards the use of a row div tagged as a row class element. Then, the idea is to define subdivs marked with custom span* class elements where the * characters represents subdivisions of the 12-column grid we have to deal with.

For example, consider the following two possible designs:

Defining columns

The two columns on the left example can be rendered from the DOM definition:

<div class="row">
  <div class="span4">...</div>
  <div class="span8">...</div>
</div>

The two columns on the right example can be rendered from the DOM definition:

<div class="row">
  <div class="span6">...</div>
  <div class="span6">...</div>
</div>

With this in mind, the grid of our welcome page is actually the following:

Defining columns
Offsetting and nesting

Offsetting a column allows you to create a fixed-sized decay corresponding to one or more invisible columns. For example, consider the following snippet:

<div class="row">
    <div class="span6">...</div>
    <div class="span4 offset2">...</div>
</div>

This DOM definition will correspond to the following columns:

Offsetting and nesting

A column can also be nested inside another column redefining a new row. The sum of the newly created columns must correspond to the parent's size:

<div class="row">
   <div class="span6">
      <div class="row">
        <div class="span2">...</div>
        <div class="span4">...</div>
      </div>
   </div>
</div>
Fluid gridding

We were saying earlier that, with Boostrap2, below 767px the columns become fluid and stack vertically. The template gridding can be changed from static to fluid turning .row classes to .row-fluid. Rather than fixed pixels sized columns, this system will use percentages.

Bootstrap CSS utilities

Bootstrap also provides a few pre-designed elements such as buttons, icons, tables, forms and also utilities to support typography or images.

Uniform Buttons

Default styled buttons can be created from the <a> and <button> tags with only addition of the .btn class element. The created default gray button with a gradient can then be declined in different colour variations. For example, by default, the following classes combination:

  • .btn .btn-primary: This produces an intense ultramarine blue button to identify the primary action among other buttons
  • .btn .btn-info: This produces a moderate turquoise blue button
  • .btn .btn-success: This produces a positive green button
  • .btn .btn-warning: This produces a warning orange button
  • .btn .btn-danger: This produces a dangerous red button
  • .btn .btn-inverse: This produces a black button with white text
  • .btn .btn-link: This produces a link while maintaining a button behavior

These buttons are also resizable declaratively by adding a .btn-large class, adding a .btn-small class, or adding a .btn-mini class:

Uniform Buttons

A button can be disabled by adding it as a disabled attribute. Similarly, a <a> tagged button can be disabled with the addition of a .disabled class. We didn't make use of buttons yet, but it is a great feature to be presented at this point.

Icons

Bootstrap 2 comes with an impressive set of 140 dark gray icons available as sprites and provided by Glyphicons:

Icons

Tip

These icons are normally available commercially but they are also usable for free as part of the Bootstrap product. However Bootstrap asks us to provide an optional backlink to http://glyphicons.com.

All these icons can be pulled from the DOM with a simple class within a <i> tag such as <i class="icon-search"></i>.

The amazing thing is that you can actually embed these icons in every suitable Bootstrap component. For example, the button definition: <a class="btn btn-mini" href="#"><i class="icon-star"></i> Star</a>, produces the following:

Icons
Tables

We have implemented a Bootstrap table for the market activity overview. We have basically shaped the following table:

<table class="table table-hover table-condensed table-bordered table-striped">
  <thead>
    <tr><th>Index</th>
       <th>Value</th>
       <th>Change</th></tr>
  </thead>
  <tbody>
      <tr><td>...</td>
       <td>...</td>
       <td>...</td>
    </tr>
  </tbody>
</table>

In the same way as we can define a button class overridden with customization classes, we have defined a generic Bootstrap table with the class .table, and then we have made use of the following customization classes:

  • .table .table-hover: This enables a hover state on table rows within a <tbody>
  • .table .table-condensed: This makes tables more compact
  • .table .table-bordered: This adds borders and rounded corners to the table
  • .table .table-striped: This adds zebra-striping to any table row within the <tbody>

Bootstrap components

The framework has other pre-designed elements identified as Components. Among them, dropdowns, button groups, breadcrumbs, pagination, Navbars, labels and badges, thumbnails, alerts, progress bars, and so on. Here we only present some of them:

Navbars

The Bootstrap navigation bars provide support for a basic navigation menu. They are not by default fixed to the top of the page; they must be included in a .container. The code is as follows:

<div class="navbar navbar-inverse">
  <div class="navbar-inner">
  ...
  <ul class="nav">
    <li class="active"><a href="index">Home</a></li>
    <li><a href="markets">Prices and markets</a></li>
    <li><a href="community">Community</a></li>
    <li><a href="sources">Sources</a></li>
    <li><a href="about">About</a></li>
    <li><a href="contact">Contact</a></li>
  </ul>
...

The most basic feature in the navbar is the activable link:

Navbars

The example above can be designed from the following DOM definition:

<ul class="nav">
     <li class="active"><a href="#">Home</a></li>
     <li><a href="#">Link</a></li>
</ul>

We strongly recommend reading the Bootstrap documentation. More details can be found on how to implement other features. For example, Bootstrap provides tools for:

  • Form elements such as input texts, search fields, and submit buttons.
  • Different positioning variations such as fixed-to-top (with .navbar-fixed-top), fixed-to-bottom (with .navbar-fixed-bottom), at the opposite of the full-width navbar that scrolls away with the page (with .navbar-static-top).
  • Collapsible responsive navbars (.nav-collapse.collapse) that allow significant space savings. With the use of the data-toggle HTML5 attribute, dynamic handling is performed with no extra JavaScript configuration.
Hero units

There was a hero unit defined in the provided template. We've just moved it a bit to suit our responsive needs.

It is a lightweight, flexible component to showcase key content on your site.

Hero units

The example above can be designed from the following DOM definition:

<div class="hero-unit"><p>Welcome to CloudStreet Market, the educational platform.</p></div>
Alerts

Bootstrap alerts are great to quickly generate a predefined style for a warning message or another contextual message. A Bootstrap alert comes with an optional dismiss button (which will hide the alert with no extraJavaScript configuration). The code is as follows:

<div class="alert">
    <button type="button" class="close" data-dismiss="alert">&times;</button>
    <strong>Warning!</strong> Best check yo self, you're not looking too good.
</div>

This definition produces the output presented here:

Alerts

An Alert is defined with the class .alert on a <div> tag , from which contextual color variations can be set up, providing extra overriding classes such as .alert-success, .alert-info, or .alert-error.

Badges and labels

Bootstrap labels are very nice for enriching content. They render particularly well in list or in tables. Find here an overview of the possible contextual variations:

Badges and labels

The labels here would be defined with:

<span class="label">Default</span>
<span class="label label-success">Success</span>
<span class="label label-important">Important</span>
…

The badges would be defined with:

<span class="badge">1</span>
<span class="badge badge-warning">4</span>
<span class="badge badge-important">6</span>
…

There's more...

There is much more to Bootstrap than this tiny overview for enriching official documentation. Again, the official documentation is very well done and very comprehensible.

Visit http://getbootstrap.com for the documentation related to the latest supported version of the framework. Go to http://getbootstrap.com/2.3.2 for the documentation related to the version we use in our project.

We will implement more features in the coming chapters and care will be taken to highlight them wherever possible.

See also

If you like Bootstrap and feel you want to use it in your projects, you must consider Version 3.

Tip

Bootstrap 3 is not directly retro-compatible with Bootstrap 2 but it implements a very similar gridding system and slightly different markups.

  • Bootstrap 3 new features: Here's a preview of important changes from Bootstrap 2 to Bootstrap 3.
  • New flat-styled design: The new design is easily noticeable with the end of 3D and textures on buttons, navbars and other menus. They have now gone for a new flat style with no gradients. It certainly goes along with the actual global design trend.
  • Column naming span* renamed to col-*: In addition to the row-fluid class that is no longer available as such (all rows are now fluid automatically) for less confusion, the column naming pattern has been rethought for more consistency.
  • Mobile-first: The responsive features of the framework are now natively included in the bootstrap.js and bootstrap.css files (there is no more bootstrap-responsive.js or bootstrap-responsive.css). It is now possible to drive media-query duties directly from the DOM using a set of new device-specific classes.
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