Would you use Twitter Bootstrap for an intranet/business app? [closed]

Question

We are about to embark on the development of several complex business/intranet applications (lots of data, many functions, admin panels, doesn't need to be simplified for public use). With the advent of people doing real work on their phone browsers and tablets.. responsive design and 508/ARIA accessibility also creep into the mix of requirements.

We like a lot of what we find in the out-of-the-box Twitter Bootstrap (TB) (x-browser, jQuery, HTML/CSS template, lots of helper functions so we don't need HTML experts to make good looking pages, others). But, its layouts seem to drive us toward minimalistic (few controls/ less data on one screen), narrow (960-width) designs.

Does it make sense for us to even use TB if we're going to bloat and stretch the designs? Or are their better CSS/HTML/JS templates/kits out there for .Net "business applications"? Or any others that are still in favor that we should consider?

Answer 1

You have to choose the framework that you fell must comfortable with.

I like both Bootstrap, jQuery UI and YUI Library and use them a lot. I recently changed work and my first project was to change the entire internal admin application, and for this I have chosen Bootstrap.

Bootstrap with Knockout in ASP.NET MVC to be more detailed...

just as a tease on using Bootstrap... this is view of one of the segments:

and the main navigation menu:

---

to help others, the Main Menu is available on JsBin

it's a normal 3 columns .span2 with a wrapper called .super-menu and that style has only the width as:

.super-menu { width: 480px; } 

witch means: 3 x .span2 + 3 x margin-left = (3 x 140) + (3 x 20) = 480px

Answer 2

Ironically, I think Bootstrap is even more useful for intranet/business apps than public-facing ones.

Some reasons I love using Bootstrap for internal apps:

• Consistent interface (can be a con of public sites seeking a "unique" look)
• Handles all the cross-browser, cross platform (mobile) issues you would have to deal with yourself
• Proven to be efficient and flexible
• Exponentially growing ecosystem ensures stability, support resources
• Can easily be customised to your business' look and feel and then shared across developers or teams for re-usability
• Built-in fluid application layout (addresses your narrow/minimalistic design concern)
• Spend less time on interface concerns and more time on making sure your SQL queries over 3 years of sales history don't take 30 minutes to run
• Components built on jQuery. Who doesn't love jQuery??
• It's awesome :)

Edit:

If you're worried about more fancy plugins and features, the Github repo has almost 30,000 watchers and over 5,000 forks. Anything you can think of is probably being done or already completed - like a datepicker.