Getting Started With Bootstrap Testing

“A small group of developers and I gathered to design and build a new internal tool and saw an opportunity to do more. We saw ourselves building something more substantial than another internal tool through that process. Months later, we ended up with an early version of Bootstrap to document and share common design patterns and assets within the company.”

The above statement was said by Mark Otto, one of the developers of Bootstrap. Jacob Thornton, another developer, and they both worked in the Twitter organization, which is a popular social media website. However, even though we see a beautiful landscape as an end-user, the story differs for the developers responsible for building it. A website accessed by millions of people every day had to be (or needed to be) just perfect for each.

When a website like Twitter is built, many teams contribute in their expert areas so everything is flawless. But a code by one team can hinder the code of another, or the standard followed by one team might differ from others, which can create inconsistencies, increasing maintenance time. This was the problem faced by Mark and Jacob, and they wanted a solution that could quickly sort out these problems without going through heavy protocols. Hence, Bootstrap was born as a standard set of rules for web development.

Its inception makes it an integral part of web development and a compulsory framework for a web developer to learn. This bootstrap testing guide will help you enhance your skills and develop and test websites faster and more efficiently.

What Is Bootstrap?

Bootstrap is a free, open-source CSS framework among the best CSS frameworks that helps create a mobile-first and responsive website by providing a rich library to the developers. This library contains predefined JavaScript and CSS functions that developers can use directly. Any code developers write according to Bootstrap rules will be automatically responsive. So, you don’t have to put in additional effort to achieve the same.

Bootstrap is easy to learn and free to use, i.e., its code is available on GitHub, which, as of December 2022, is the fourth most-starred library and fourteenth most-starred project.

What Does Bootstrap Contain?

Bootstrap contains a lot of pre-defined CSS, SCSS, and JavaScript functions in its library. As developers, we only need to extend them to change or do nothing to apply the defined effects using classes (or sometimes directly without a class, such as those rules that work on the body or root).

Let’s write a small piece of code in HTML that uses a Bootstrap class as follows:

<em><center>
    <br><br>
  <p class="text-success"> This is to see Bootstrap class </p> <br>
  </center></em>

We use the “text-success” class here, and no other CSS is applied. The output of this code is as follows:

Note: the text has turned green without using any colors. How it does that can be checked by right-clicking on the page and choosing the “Inspect” option:

We can see that the “text-success” class was responsible for applying the modern CSS colors, and the color code in hexadecimal is “#3c763d.” On the right, we see the text written as “text-emphasis.less:4,” which means the code for text-success is written in this file on line number four. Hover over this text to get the location of the Bootstrap file:

Click on the text to get the complete code of class “text-success:”

Conversely, we can explore the complete library on their official GitHub page. In these files, you will get the different variables whose values are decided that are then applied on the web page:

A lot of the variables above are initialized using CSS variables. Also, remember that the same effect might not always be actual with the same class as inheritance, and precedence takes power when we implement various elements on the web page.

Life Before Bootstrap

In this short section, let me emphasize the importance of Bootstrap by replacing the Bootstrap code with conventional code. In other words, how we achieved the results before the birth of Bootstrap.

We will make a small login form for the website in this demonstration:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en" dir="ltr">
  <head>
    <meta charset="utf-8">
    <title>The contain style property</title>
    <style>
    * {
      box-sizing: border-box;
    }
        body {
          font-size: 15px;
          font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;
          line-height: 1.42857143;
        }
        label {
          display: inline-block;
          max-width: 70%;
          margin-bottom: 5px;
          font-weight: 700;
        }
        .muted-text {
          color: #777;
          font-size: 13px;
        }
        .box-class {
          padding-right: 275px;
          padding-left: 275px;
          margin-right: auto;
          margin-left: auto;
        }
        .inputblock {
          margin-bottom: 15px;
        }
        input {
          width: 100%;
          height: 40px;
          padding: 6px 12px;
          font-size: 14px;
          line-height: 1.42857143;
          color: #555;
          background-color: #fff;
          background-image: none;
          border: 1px solid #ccc;
          border-radius: 4px;
          box-shadow: inset 0 1px 1px rgba(0,0,0,.075);
        }
        input[type="checkbox"] {
          margin: 4px 0 0;
          margin-top: 1px\9;
          width: 1.5%;
          line-height: normal;
          box-sizing: border-box;
          padding: 0;
          font-family: inherit;
          font-size: inherit;
          vertical-align: middle;
        }
        button {
          color: #fff;
          background-color: #337ab7;
          border-color: #2e6da4;
          display: inline-block;
          margin-bottom: 0;
          font-weight: 400;
          text-align: center;
          white-space: nowrap;
          vertical-align: middle;
          background-image: none;
          border: 1px solid transparent;
          padding: 6px 12px;
          font-size: 14px;
          line-height: 1.42857143;
          border-radius: 4px;
          font: inherit;
        }
    </style>
  </head>
  <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">
<body>
  <center>
    <br><br>
  <div class = "box-class">
    <form>
  <div class = "inputblock">
    <label for="email">Email:</label><br>
    <input type="email" class="" id="email" placeholder="Enter Your Email Address">
    <small id="emailcation" class="muted-text">We'll never share your email with anyone else.</small>
  </div>

  <div class = "inputblock">
    <label for="password">Password</label><br>
    <input type="password" class="form-control" id="password" placeholder="Enter Password">
  </div>
  <div class = "inputcheck">
    <input type="checkbox" id="tnccheckbox">
    <label for= "tnccheckbox">I agree to terms.</label>
  </div>
  <button type="submit">Submit</button>
</form>
</div>
  </center>
</body>
</html>

Output

Now let’s change the code a bit and see how the same page can be achieved using Bootstrap:

<body>
  <center>
    <br><br>
  <div class="container">
    <form>
  <div class="form-group">
    <label for="emaillabel">Email:</label>
    <input type="email" class="form-control" id="email" placeholder="Enter Your Email Address">
    <small id="emailcation" class="form-text text-muted">We'll never share your email with anyone else.</small>
  </div>
  <div class="form-group">
    <label for="passwordlabel">Password</label>
    <input type="password" class="form-control" id="password" placeholder="Enter Password">
  </div>
  <div class="form-check">
    <input type="checkbox" class="form-check-input" id="tnccheckbox">
    <label class="form-check-label" for="tnclabel">I agree to terms.</label>
  </div>
  <button type="submit" class="btn btn-primary">Submit</button>
</form>
</div>
  </center>
</body>

Output

Just take a minute and observe the differences between both codes. You will notice how simple and concise it is to write code in Bootstrap. Conventionally, keeping track of the CSS properties affected while constructing the page was also tough. More properties mean more collisions between elements. Bootstrap also solves this; hence, it becomes essential to perform Bootstrap testing, which is visible in the above example.

Why Should We Use Bootstrap?

The above advantages mentioned in the post are the most attractive ones that encourage you to adopt Bootstrap in your next project. But, it doesn’t end at mobile-first design and responsiveness. There are a few more benefits that come with the adoption of this framework, and they are worth considering:

• Faster code writing: Reduces the time to write code by pre-defining classes and functions.
• Mobile-first design: Works mobile-first, so the developers don’t need to worry about mobile devices that much.
• Customizable: None of the Bootstrap code is forced upon. A developer can modify any class and code on any element. This can be done through explicit CSS styling or JavaScript functions.
• Standardized and accepted rules: It is accepted worldwide as a standard CSS library for customizing web pages that helps collaborate with other community members from different locations.
• Easy integration: Extremely easy to integrate by adding just a single line of code on the web page.
• Open-source: Another advantage of being open-source is that someone will always help you when you get stuck.
• Rich documentation: For someone looking to get started in Bootstrap, loads of rich documentation (including the official ones) are available.

Contents of Bootstrap Library

This section is for developers who wish to study the directory structure and files included in the library.

Note: knowledge of the directory structure is not mandatory to implement Bootstrap and create a web page using it.

The source code of Bootstrap looks as follows:

bootstrap/
├── dist/
│   ├── css/
│   └── JavaScript/
├── site/
│   └──content/
│      └── docs/
│          └── 5.3/
│              └── examples/
├── JavaScript/
└── scss/

The directory structure has the following folder:

• dist: The “dist” folder contains the compiled files that are used directly in the project. The compiled files look like this (inside css/):
  • Bootstrap-grid.css
  • Bootstrap.css
  • bootstrap.rtl.min.css
• And, on the JavaScript side (inside JavaScript/):
  • Bootstrap.bundle.JavaScript
  • bootstrap.JavaScript

Note: These file names are just to familiarize you with the dist folder’s contents. There are many more files with similar nomenclature in this folder.

• site: This folder contains subfolders with documentation to help you write code for the web page.
• JavaScript: The JavaScript folder contains the source code concerning the JavaScript files.
• scss: The scss folder contains the source code for the CSS files.

Everything and anything you wish to do with Bootstrap testing are available in this article.

How To Use Bootstrap on a Web Page

To use Bootstrap in our web pages, we need to fetch the above-defined source code entirely or the required files so they can be extended to web elements.

This can be achieved in three ways:

1. Downloading Bootstrap manually from the official website.
2. Downloading Bootstrap using a package manager.
3. Using CDN.

Download From the Official Website

To download Bootstrap from its official website, visit the download page. Here, we have two options:

1. Download only the compiled files that can be used directly on the projects.
2. Download the source code as well. 

You can choose to go ahead either way. Although, it is recommended to use compiled files to reduce the size of the project.

Download From GitHub

Bootstrap is an open-source and free project open for contribution on GitHub, its official repository hosting website. Developers can download, fork, or clone the repository directly from GitHub from its official link. Since we focus on downloads, click “Code” and “Download Zip” to download the code to the local system:

Extract this zip in your project repository to use it on the web pages. However, when Bootstrap is downloaded from GitHub, it will download the source and compiled files (and everything else there is). You will need to delete a few files according to the need.

Using a Package Manager

The next option we have is to use a package manager and download Bootstrap by running a single simple command on the shell. By choice, different developers prefer different package managers. We will consider a few of those to get you started:

• Using the npm package manager: Run the following command to download Bootstrap using npm:
  • npm install bootstrap


    Once the download completes, you need to provide require(‘bootstrap’) to load jQuery objects.

• Using the RubyGems package manager: Run the following command to download Bootstrap using RubyGems:
  • gem install bootstrap -v 4.0.0

  • If you are using Bundler, add the following to your Gemfile:

    gem 'bootstrap', '~> 4.0.0'


    Among these two, the second method is recommended by Bootstrap’s official documentation.

• Using the Composer package manager: Run the following command to download Bootstrap using Composer:
  • composer require twbs/bootstrap:4.0.0

• Using the NuGet package manager: Run the following command to download Bootstrap using NuGet:
  • Install-Package bootstrap


    If the developer chooses the download option using a package manager, they need to have a Sass compiler and Autoprefixer to run Bootstrap successfully. It should match the Bootstrap setup; otherwise, the source files downloaded cannot be extended to the web elements.

Using CDN

As a developer, the most recommended method I feel to use Bootstrap is through CDN.

CDN refers to Content Delivery (or Distribution) Network that can fetch the data to the client according to need from the closest servers. It is fast (although not as fast as downloaded files), light on project size, vital, and easy to use.

To use Bootstrap using CDN, all we need to do is add these two lines in the < head > tag of the web page:

<link href="https://cdn.JavaScriptdelivr.net/npm/bootstrap@5.3.0-alpha1/dist/css/bootstrap.min.css" rel="stylesheet" integrity="sha384-GLhlTQ8iRABdZLl6O3oVMWSktQOp6b7In1Zl3/Jr59b6EGGoI1aFkw7cmDA6j6gD" crossorigin="anonymous">

<script src="https://cdn.JavaScriptdelivr.net/npm/bootstrap@5.3.0-alpha1/dist/JavaScript/bootstrap.bundle.min.JavaScript" integrity="sha384-w76AqPfDkMBDXo30JavaScript1Sgez6pr3x5MlQ1ZAGC+nuZB+EYdgRZgiwxhTBTkF7CXvN" crossorigin="anonymous"></script>

This will include CSS and JavaScript files that can now be used directly with the web elements.

Which One Should You Choose to Download Bootstrap?

With so many ways to choose from, selecting a method and working on Bootstrap might be confusing and need clarification. So, are there some parameters by which we can judge which way will suit you the best?

First, downloading Bootstrap means increasing the project size, as all the files will now settle under the project directory. This would mean that your server will be loaded with more content, whose impact can be seen in the loading speed and the charges for server rent.

Secondly, an update to Bootstrap means downloading and re-writing all the files. Since it is open-source, more minor updates can be expected regularly, which may increase maintenance overheads.

There are only two reasons to download Bootstrap on the local system. A significant advantage is that it can be used offline, which is great if there is no regular Internet and you are currently just developing or testing. Organizations also download Bootstrap and save it on their servers/data centers from where their internal project picks it up.

If you download Bootstrap (which will also download source files), you can modify them according to the standards you follow in projects. Then they can be saved on the server, and people can directly use Bootstrap functions usually, and changes will be reflected on the web page.

If you do not fall into these categories, the best way to use Bootstrap is by using CDN, which is fast and helps optimize SEO. It will also take lesser space, which will help in increasing loading speeds and utilizing lesser bandwidth.

How To Create a Web Page Using Bootstrap

Now that we know Bootstrap’s content and usage, we can dissect the login page above to understand how to use Bootstrap to create a web page.

To use Bootstrap, first, we need Bootstrap. In this demonstration, I am using CDN for the same in the head tag:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en" dir="ltr">
  <head>
    <meta charset="utf-8">
    <title>The contain style property</title>

  <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">
<link rel="stylesheet" href="https://maxcdn.bootstrapcdn.com/bootstrap/3.4.1/css/bootstrap.min.css">
<script data-fr-src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/3.6.1/jquery.min.JavaScript"></script>
<script data-fr-src="https://maxcdn.bootstrapcdn.com/bootstrap/3.4.1/JavaScript/bootstrap.min.JavaScript"></script>
  </head>

Next, as a general rule, we use the container class that helps us get good padding and a box structure where our web page will be contained:

• < div class="container" >

Now, we need to create the form. For this, we consider each element as a separate div so we can control each of them more flexibly and group our elements that make one unit in the form. Bootstrap’s “form-group” class is used exactly for this purpose:

• < div class="form-group" >

Inside this div, we need two elements;

1. The label representing the name of the field.
2. The field itself. 

The label can be used as it is used in HTML directly. We use the form-control class for the input field and Bootstrap’s class for textual fields such as input, textarea, and select:

• < input type="email" class="form-control" id="email" placeholder="Enter Your Email Address" >

It helps customize these elements as per need.

We can repeat the same structure for “Password” as well.

After this, we need a checkbox for terms and conditions. For such inputs that are taken through checkboxes and radio buttons, Bootstrap uses the “form-check” class. This class has other similar classes with small modifications to be used according to the tag. For instance, “form-check-input” is used for input tags and label elements, “form-check-label.” This helps in the proper arrangement and spacing of checkboxes and is very important as these small elements are often out of alignment on a web page:

• < input type="checkbox" class="form-check-input" id="tnccheckbox" >
< label class="form-check-label" for="tnclabel">I agree to terms.

Finally, we need a button that can be modified using btn class with “btn-lg,” “btn-md”, etc., for sizes and “btn-success,” “button-failure,” etc., for customization.

The final web page you can use directly by copying a .html file and customizing yourself is:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en" dir="ltr">
  <head>
    <meta charset="utf-8">
    <title>The contain style property</title>

  <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">
<link rel="stylesheet" href="https://maxcdn.bootstrapcdn.com/bootstrap/3.4.1/css/bootstrap.min.css">
<script data-fr-src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/3.6.1/jquery.min.JavaScript"></script>
<script data-fr-src="https://maxcdn.bootstrapcdn.com/bootstrap/3.4.1/JavaScript/bootstrap.min.JavaScript"></script>
  </head>
<body>
  <center>
    <br><br>
  <div class="container">
    <form>
  <div class="form-group">
    <label for="emaillabel">Email:</label>
    <input type="email" class="form-control" id="email" placeholder="Enter Your Email Address">
    <small id="emailcation" class="form-text text-muted">We'll never share your email with anyone else.</small>
  </div>
  <div class="form-group">
    <label for="passwordlabel">Password</label>
    <input type="password" class="form-control" id="password" placeholder="Enter Password">
  </div>
  <div class="form-check">
    <input type="checkbox" class="form-check-input" id="tnccheckbox">
    <label class="form-check-label" for="tnclabel">I agree to terms.</label>
  </div>
  <button type="submit" class="btn btn-primary">Submit</button>
</form>
</div>
  </center>
</body>
</html>

Alright! Now, we have developed our page using Bootstrap. The next step in this Bootstrap testing tutorial is to test it for anomalies and bugs. Before that, let’s know why Bootstrap testing is important.

Why Is Bootstrap Testing Essential?

From the introduction of Bootstrap until now, we have focused on two important properties of the framework:

1. Responsive
2. Mobile-first

This means a developer can do something other than additional work to make a web page responsive or perfect for a mobile device. In such a case, why bother talking about Bootstrap testing?

Lesser Coverage

Bootstrap’s official website states, “Bootstrap supports the latest, stable releases of all major browsers and platforms.” But, when we consider the latest browser usage just for Google Chrome, we see that only a little over 11% of people use that version:

When we see overall Google Chrome usage, it is almost 39%:

This means we are risking 27% of Google Chrome users, and this is just the story of one browser.

No Support for Internet Explorer

Another essential point is that Bootstrap is not responsive on the Internet Explorer browser. If your target matrix contains Internet Explorer, then not testing the web page would mean ignoring 28 million people still operating this 28-year-old browser. No developer or organization should move on this path.

No Support for Alternate Browsers

Bootstrap clearly states that “it supports all the major browsers,” but no “browser engines” is mentioned. Considering browser engines are open-source and used to develop and release alternate browsers, the Bootstrap web page is not guaranteed to be supported. These browsers can be hugely popular and often become the secondary browsers in the local system.

The best example of this is the Brave browser, which is not in the list of supported browsers of Bootstrap. The browser has more than 50+ million active monthly users as of August 2022. It has only increased in the past couple of years. Similarly, there are other browsers developed on Chromium or Gecko engines that the end-user might be using and may face some challenges navigating the website.

Image/Screenshot Responsiveness

The responsiveness of an image is one of the key points to check off the list when releasing a website. As a developer, we face many difficulties with Bootstrap and images.

For Peace of Mind

Finally, when advanced tools can point out various bugs and glitches in a web application from various angles, why not use them? By giving some more time and spending a little more money, organizations can have peace of mind that the web application will always be perfect no matter what the user is operating on. It will also help cut down maintenance time and costs that may come with post-production bugs.

Can Bootstrap Be Used With JavaScript Frameworks?

A web application will consume HTML, CSS, and JavaScript code in the majority. Recently, in the last decade, various best JavaScript frameworks have popped up in the market because of JavaScript’s ability to provide functionality and dynamism to the application. These include React, Vue, and Angular. By looking at these frameworks’ adoption today, I am sure the question will arise of whether we can use Bootstrap with JavaScript frameworks or not.

The answer to this question is NO; we cannot. Bootstrap contains JavaScript functions that it ships in JavaScript files. Using other JavaScript frameworks will affect the complete DOM, including the elements Bootstrap affects. As a result of this collision, bugs may arise in the most visible application in dynamic elements like dropdowns.

As a precautionary note and recommendation from Bootstrap, the entire JavaScript libraries should not be used with JavaScript frameworks like Vue and React.

How To Use Bootstrap With JavaScript Frameworks

A lot of the time, Bootstrap and JavaScript frameworks will be used together to create a web page. In such cases, instead of using Bootstrap JavaScript, the developers should opt for Bootstrap’s framework-specific packages that are compatible with these technologies. For a specific framework, you can find a package online.

For instance, for React developers, React Bootstrap is available. For Vue developers, BootstrapVue is available, and similarly, ng-bootstrap is for Angular developers. Using these packages as an alternative will suit your project well in development and release.

Things To Remember While Bootstrap Testing and Development

Before concluding this post on Bootstrap testing, a few points are a must to discuss that can act as best practices or cautionary things for Bootstrap testing or something you can put off in a list to verify the Bootstrap testing quality before releasing the application to the user:

• Accessibility: An essential part of Bootstrap testing is to perform accessibility testing. The application should be accessible to people who face challenges interacting with the web application, such as people with special abilities, etc. W3 has published guidelines that should be followed while developing or Bootstrap testing for accessibility. Bootstrap provides an accessible website, but since we use multiple technologies, testing for accessibility is one of the key features that should be checked off in the list.
• Overflow: Hidden: The overflow property is activated when the content overflows outside the element box. The value passed in this property determines the action to take when encountering such a scenario. With Bootstrap applications, overflow: hidden does not seem to work very well on iOS and Android. If this property is present in the code, it should be tested with priority, and workarounds should be applied.
• Hovering on iOS: Many websites provide the hovering effect for desktops where an element can hover over, and action is associated with this effect. For example, hovering to get a pop-up on Wikipedia like this:

• Since mobile devices work on touch-only technology, as they do not have a mouse attached, hovering is impossible in the browsers installed on them. However, iOS tries to emulate this behavior for the user and create a hovering effect. Bootstrap websites have faced challenges in dealing with this. As Bootstrap puts it, “This behavior results in “sticky” hover styles that persist after tapping one element.” To remove them, users have to tap another element. If your application has a hovering effect, it should provide validations when opened in an iOS browser.

• Safari printing issue: For developers and testers working on a website that may involve printing the web page (such as ticket booking systems), Bootstrap’s container class (used in the example above) may break on the Safari browser. Due to this, the font size of the web page may become extremely small and sometimes leave large spaces along the border. Start Bootstrap testing for your web pages for this issue, and if this exists, the workaround would be to set the width to “auto” while printing so Safari can pick it up from there:

@media print {
  .container {
    width: auto;
  }
}

• The code above uses media queries that are one of the best ways to deal with such problems and create a workaround for different-sized devices as per need. 

• Handling Android stock browser: Android operating system-enabled mobile devices (all till 4.1 and some after newer releases) ship with a default browser with many CSS-related bugs. The Bootstrap-based website can easily break with simple elements such as side controls if the user uses it. Although it would be hard to fix them all by workarounds, as many workarounds will depend on screen size or OS, we should always check whether we can resolve the simple elements to make the browsing experience convenient.

Wrapping Up!

Bootstrap is an integral part of web development today. And, more likely, the terms HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and Bootstrap all go together today. Organizations also use CSS and Bootstrap as a single term and often expect this from the candidate if they have written CSS in their resume. When a framework blends so deep into the web development field, it becomes essential to discuss its complexities, mixes with other frameworks, and bugs you may face in the journey.

In this article on Bootstrap testing, we tried to enlighten the reader with Bootstrap, not as a theoretical subject but as a practical guide with compelling examples. From its inception, and the contents shipped along with the framework, we demonstrated how a beginner could develop a web page in Bootstrap. Once the development is complete, the web page needs to be tested using Bootstrap testing and check if it is an imperfect framework, like any other technology.

For this, we can rely on the cloud-based platform LambdaTest, which helps us uncover all the hidden glitches on more than 3000+ browsers and devices.

Concluding with the best practices to keep in mind while performing Bootstrap testing, I hope this tutorial on Bootstrap testing will serve you well in your web dev endeavors. Thank you for giving this Bootstrap testing tutorial your valuable time.

Happy Testing!