Issues with bootstrap navbar - css

Question

I am not very adept at styling websites and have trouble with css and responsive design. As such, at the suggestion of a co-worker, I've decided to give the Bootstrap toolkit a try and so far I've been very happy with it. However, I am having trouble understanding a few things about the navbar components of the kit and so far have been unsuccessful in customizing this portion of the templates.
One of my sources of confusion stems from the pervasive inclusion of a toggleable button for collapsing the navigation bar. It seems like no matter what example they show of the navigation bar, they've included the collapse classes and toggle button, even where that button doesn't appear to be displayed anywhere and the navigation bar is not collapsed. For example, take a look at the following link: http://getbootstrap.com/examples/navbar-fixed-top/
If you view the source here, there you see the button and the collapse classes, but the navbar is missing said button and it is not collapsed. When I view the CSS I do see that it has display: none; specified, but then why include it at all?
<!-- Fixed navbar -->
<nav class="navbar navbar-default navbar-fixed-top">
<div class="container">
<div class="navbar-header">
<button type="button" class="navbar-toggle collapsed" data-toggle="collapse" data-target="#navbar" aria-expanded="false" aria-controls="navbar">
<span class="sr-only">Toggle navigation</span>
<span class="icon-bar"></span>
<span class="icon-bar"></span>
<span class="icon-bar"></span>
</button>
<a class="navbar-brand" href="#">Project name</a>
</div>
<div id="navbar" class="navbar-collapse collapse">
<ul class="nav navbar-nav">
<li class="active">Home</li>
<li>About</li>
<li>Contact</li>
<li class="dropdown">
Dropdown <span class="caret"></span>
<ul class="dropdown-menu">
<li>Action</li>
<li>Another action</li>
<li>Something else here</li>
<li role="separator" class="divider"></li>
<li class="dropdown-header">Nav header</li>
<li>Separated link</li>
<li>One more separated link</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
<ul class="nav navbar-nav navbar-right">
<li>Default</li>
<li>Static top</li>
<li class="active">Fixed top <span class="sr-only">(current)</span></li>
</ul>
</div><!--/.nav-collapse -->
</div>
</nav>
Finally, I believe this issue is interrelated to the second issue I'm having, which is, I am trying to right justify the links of my customized navbar with the navbar-right class, but when I do so, the links don't move to the right. Does this have something to do with my removal of the toggle button and collapse classes? Here is my attempt which has failed miserably. I am using the base jumbotron template and have included the jumbotron and min bootstrap css files. The jumbotron css file is very minimal and only includes some body stylings for a margin and a color, I believe. I can't see where that would be preventing my navigation links from showing up on the side.
Instead, the image appears on the left, and the links appear just below it, with no styling whatsoever, just a jammed together list of links. The dropdown does not work because I was experimenting with a different method used on the angular site by specifying the uib-dropdown so I should mention that - the dropdown portion was working when I had the bootstrap classes and attributes specified.
For a jsfiddle example of what is happening when I attempt to get the links to show up on the right: https://jsfiddle.net/1jehsp5r/
In fact, I have yet to find a single working example of the right alignment in the navbar. I have re-done this code about 10 times now and not a single combination of classes and divs have yeilded a simple fixed top navigation bar with an element on the left and a set of links on the right. Take this tutorial for example: https://www.tutorialspoint.com/bootstrap/bootstrap_navbar.htm - They have a screenshot of it working, but when you click the "try-it" button and it loads into an interactive screen, their OWN example doesn't even work right. Everything aligns on the left, which is exactly what I am experiencing.
Can anyone show me the right way of simply making a simple navigation bar similar to the one here: https://angularjs.org/

Answer 1

For the collapse button, it is set to appear in small screen for most of the cases. It's there for responsiveness (or the art of display well on all screen size).
Here is an example of collapse button : Bootstrap navbar external-content
To align items on the right side of the row, you could use the ml-auto (margin-left: auto;) class on the <ul> element.
Here is an example of a bootstrap navbar with links align on the right side.
<nav class="navbar navbar-toggleable-md navbar-light bg-faded">
<button class="navbar-toggler navbar-toggler-right" type="button" data-toggle="collapse" data-target="#navbarSupportedContent" aria-controls="navbarSupportedContent" aria-expanded="false" aria-label="Toggle navigation">
<span class="navbar-toggler-icon"></span>
</button>
<a class="navbar-brand" href="#">Navbar</a>
<div class="collapse navbar-collapse" id="navbarSupportedContent">
<ul class="navbar-nav ml-auto">
<li class="nav-item active">
<a class="nav-link" href="#">Home <span class="sr-only">(current)</span></a>
</li>
<li class="nav-item">
<a class="nav-link" href="#">Link</a>
</li>
<li class="nav-item">
<a class="nav-link disabled" href="#">Disabled</a>
</li>
</ul>
</div>
</nav>
Hope it helps.
EDIT :
Those examples was build for Bootstrap 4 alpha 6.