Rails - Removing default stylesheets - css

New to rails. I'm experimenting with adding the Twitter Bootstrap CSS to my project to make my layout look nicer.
However, I think some of the CSS rules from my default Rails app is interfering with the Twitter Bootstrap CSS.
Is there a way where I can remove the existing CSS assets, and just keep using the Bootstrap ones?

If you generated a scaffold (which I assume you did), you can remove the default styling by clearing app/assets/stylesheets/scaffold.css.scss. If you delete the scaffold.css.scss file and you generate a new scaffold, the default stylesheet will be added again, this can be alleviated by simply clearing the file of its contents.
Do not delete application.css

You should find where the default css files located(assets/stylesheets),remove them.
...of course don't remove the application.css

Related

Bootstrap and CSS

I got a Bootstrap template that was built by a company and I am doing a bunch of coding and additions to it but I am new to Bootstrap and I am having a problem. I added the vendor.css and theme.css files to my php header and I added the bootstrap.css file as well. My problem is when I try and use some of the bootstrap classes they dont work because of the vendor and theme css files being used. Some of them work but the appearance and functions are different. Is there any way around this so I can still use some of the bootstrap classes. I put the css files in the header in this order. theme, vendor, bootstrap and then my own css file at the bottom. Is the only way to do this by adding my own css file and make the changes. Any advice would be great. Thanks
As far as I understand from your question that, some of your bootstrap classes are working and some of the them are not working.
In that case, I think it is bootstrap version issue. Obviously updated version class will not work in older version class.

Data tables css issue?

I've been working on site using bootstrap. Rather than calling the unedited bootstrap.css and creating a seperate .css file for customisation I added my css changes directly to the bootstrap.css.
My question is - will this cause problems when it comes to using datatables?
Not necesserily. Depends on which classes are used in datatables. You either search in the source of datatables which classes are used or , what i recommend, make your own css, include it after the bootstrap css and change only what you need. For example with the !important markup.

Bootstrap and grocery_CRUD css priority

I'm on a web project using bootstrap style, then I incorpored the grocery_CRUD framework and I started having problems with the css.
It seems the grocery_CRUD has priority on the css files, when it renders a table, all style changes.
I want all web site has the bootstrap css and only the tables rendered with grocery_CRUD has its style.
Any solution?
I think you are looking for the "bootstrap" theme at grocery CRUD. Just be aware that it is still in BETA phase. You can simply have a bootstrap theme like this:
$crud->set_theme('twitter-bootstrap');
I answer my question:
It's all about order of loading CSS... just didn't think about it, need to load first grocery_crud theme and then my css file. I had backwards overwriting my style

Should I change the css style in my file or in the original file

When I want to change for example the style of a bootstrap button how should I do that:
Remove the css class in the bootstrap file and create a class in my css file with my settings
Leave the original css file and create a class in my css file with !important to overwrite the original file settings.
There are surely other ways...
What is the best my also considering upgrading to new bootstrap.css file?
The best way is to:
Leave the bootstrap file untouched
Modify the class in your own stylesheet
Load your own stylesheet after the bootstrap CSS
You have the benefit of not having to use !important and you can still update bootstrap.
Note: although you can update the bootstrap-file, you still have to test your page to see whether the update broke something, but this will at least assure you that you didn't lose any work
1.) Make a backup of the file and just edit the file as you please. I wouldn't create multiple files with !important since you'll lose track of things pretty fast.

Customizing Bootstrap CSS template

I am just getting started with Bootstrap from Twitter and am wondering what the ‘best practices’ is for customization. I want to develop a system that will take advantage of all the power of a css template (Bootstrap or other), be completely (and easily) modifiable, be sustainable (ie – when the next version of Bootstrap is released from Twitter I don’t have to start over.
For example, I want to add background images to the top navigation. It looks like there are 3 ways to go about this:
Modify the .topbar classes in bootstrap.css . I don’t particularly like this because I will have lots of .topbar items and I don’t necessarily want to modify them all the same way.
Create new classes with my background images and apply both styles (the new and the bootstrap to my element). This may create style conflicts, which could be avoided by stripping the .topbar class into separate classes and then only using the pieces that are not stepped on by my custom class. Again this requires more work than I think should be necessary and while it is flexible, it won’t allow me to easily update bootstrap.css when Twitter releases the next installment.
Use variables in .LESS to achieve the customization. Offhand this seems like a good approach but having not used .LESS I have concerns about compiling css on the client and about code sustainability.
Though I am using Bootstrap, this question can be generalized to any css template.
The best thing to do is.
1. fork twitter-bootstrap from github and clone locally.
they are changing really quickly the library/framework (they diverge internally. Some prefer library, i'd say that it's a framework, because change your layout from the time you load it on your page). Well... forking/cloning will let you fetch the new upcoming versions easily.
2. Do not modify the bootstrap.css file
It's gonna complicate your life when you need to upgrade bootstrap (and you will need to do it).
3. Create your own css file and overwrite whenever you want original bootstrap stuff
if they set a topbar with, let's say, color: black; but you wan it white, create a new very specific selector for this topbar and use this rule on the specific topbar. For a table for example, it would be <table class="zebra-striped mycustomclass">. If you declare your css file after bootstrap.css, this will overwrite whatever you want to.
Bootstrap 5 (update 2021)
As explained in the Bootstrap docs, modifying the existing "theme" colors is done using SASS. As with prior versions, you can also override the Bootstrap CSS by adding CSS rules that follow after the bootstrap.css and use the correct CSS specificity.
Bootstrap 5 - change theme colors
Bootstrap 4
I'm revisiting this Bootstrap customization question for 4.x, which now utilizes SASS instead of LESS. In general, there are 2 ways to customize Bootstrap...
1. Simple CSS Overrides
One way to customize is simply using CSS to override Bootstrap CSS. For maintainability, CSS customizations are put in a separate custom.css file, so that the bootstrap.css remains unmodified. The reference to the custom.css follows after the bootstrap.css for the overrides to work...
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="css/bootstrap.min.css">
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="css/custom.css">
Just add whatever changes are needed in the custom CSS. For example...
/* remove rounding from cards, buttons and inputs */
.card, .btn, .form-control {
border-radius: 0;
}
Before (bootstrap.css)
After (with custom.css)
When making customizations, you should understand CSS Specificity. Overrides in the custom.css need to use selectors that are the same specificity as (or more specific) the bootstrap.css.
Note there is no need to use !important in the custom CSS, unless
you're overriding one of the Bootstrap Utility
classes. CSS
specificity
always works for one CSS class to override another.
2. Customize using SASS
If you're familiar with SASS (and you should be to use this method), you can customize Bootstrap with your own custom.scss. There is a section in the Bootstrap docs that explains this, however the docs don't explain how to utilize existing variables in your custom.scss. For example, let's change the body background-color to #eeeeee, and change/override the blue primary contextual color to Bootstrap's $purple variable...
/* custom.scss */
/* import the necessary Bootstrap files */
#import "bootstrap/functions";
#import "bootstrap/variables";
/* -------begin customization-------- */
/* simply assign the value */
$body-bg: #eeeeee;
/* use a variable to override primary */
$theme-colors: (
primary: $purple
);
/* -------end customization-------- */
/* finally, import Bootstrap to set the changes! */
#import "bootstrap";
This also works to create new custom classes. For example, here I add purple to the theme colors which creates all the CSS for btn-purple, text-purple, bg-purple, alert-purple, etc...
/* add a new purple custom color */
$theme-colors: (
purple: $purple
);
https://codeply.com/go/7XonykXFvP
With SASS you must #import bootstrap after the customizations to make them work! Once the SASS is compiled to CSS (this must be done using a SASS compiler node-sass, gulp-sass, npm webpack, etc..), the resulting CSS is the customized Bootstrap. If you're not familiar with SASS, you can customize Bootstrap using a tool like this theme builder I created.
Custom Bootstrap Demo (SASS)
Note: Unlike 3.x, Bootstrap 4.x doesn't offer an official customizer tool. You can however, download the grid only CSS or use another 4.x custom build tool to re-build the Bootstrap 4 CSS as desired.
Related:
How to extend/modify (customize) Bootstrap 4 with SASS
How to change the bootstrap primary color?
How to create new set of color styles in Bootstrap 4 with sass
How to Customize Bootstrap
I think the officially preferred way is now to use Less, and either dynamically override the bootstrap.css (using less.js), or recompile bootstrap.css (using Node or the Less compiler).
From the Bootstrap docs, here's how to override bootstrap.css styles dynamically:
Download the latest Less.js and include the path to it (and Bootstrap) in the <head>.
<link rel="stylesheet/less" href="/path/to/bootstrap.less">
<script src="/path/to/less.js"></script>
To recompile the .less files, just save them and reload your page. Less.js compiles them and stores them in local storage.
Or if you prefer to statically compile a new bootstrap.css with your custom styles (for production environments):
Install the LESS command line tool via Node and run the following command:
$ lessc ./less/bootstrap.less > bootstrap.css
Since Pabluez's answer back in December, there is now a better way to customize Bootstrap.
Use: Bootswatch to generate your bootstrap.css
Bootswatch builds the normal Twitter Bootstrap from the latest version (whatever you install in the bootstrap directory), but also imports your customizations. This makes it easy to use the the latest version of Bootstrap, while maintaining custom CSS, without having to change anything about your HTML. You can simply sway boostrap.css files.
You can use the bootstrap template from
http://www.initializr.com/
which includes all the bootstrap .less files. You can then change variables / update the less files as you want and it will automatically compile the css. When deploying compile the less file to css.
The best option in my opinion is to compile a custom LESS file including bootstrap.less, a custom variables.less file and your own rules :
Clone bootstrap in your root folder : git clone https://github.com/twbs/bootstrap.git
Rename it "bootstrap"
Create a package.json file : https://gist.github.com/jide/8440609
Create a Gruntfile.js : https://gist.github.com/jide/8440502
Create a "less" folder
Copy bootstrap/less/variables.less into the "less" folder
Change the font path : #icon-font-path: "../bootstrap/fonts/";
Create a custom style.less file in the "less" folder which imports bootstrap.less and your custom variables.less file : https://gist.github.com/jide/8440619
Run npm install
Run grunt watch
Now you can modify the variables any way you want, override bootstrap rules in your custom style.less file, and if some day you want to update bootstrap, you can replace the whole bootstrap folder !
EDIT: I created a Bootstrap boilerplate using this technique : https://github.com/jide/bootstrap-boilerplate
I recently wrote a post about how I've been doing it at Udacity for the last couple years. This method has meant we've been able to update Bootstrap whenever we wanted to without having merge conflicts, thrown out work, etc. etc.
The post goes more in depth with examples, but the basic idea is:
Keep a pristine copy of bootstrap and overwrite it externally.
Modify one file (bootstrap's variables.less) to include your own variables.
Make your site file #include bootstrap.less and then your overrides.
This does mean using LESS, and compiling it down to CSS before shipping it to the client (client-side LESS if finicky, and I generally avoid it) but it is EXTREMELY good for maintainability/upgradability, and getting LESS compilation is really really easy. The linked github code has an example using grunt, but there are many ways to achieve this -- even GUIs if that's your thing.
Using this solution, your example problem would look like:
Change the nav bar color with #navbar-inverse-bg in your variables.less (not bootstrap's)
Add your own nav bar styles to your bootstrap_overrides.less, overwriting anything you need to as you go.
Happiness.
When it comes time to upgrade your bootstrap, you just swap out the pristine bootstrap copy and everything will still work (if bootstrap makes breaking changes, you'll need to update your overrides, but you'd have to do that anyway)
Blog post with walk-through is here.
Code example on github is here.
Use LESS with Bootstrap...
Here are the Bootstrap docs for how to use LESS
(they have moved since previous answers)
you can start with this tool, https://themestr.app/theme , seeing how it overwrites the scss variables, you would get an idea what variable impacts what. its the simplest way I think.
example scss genearation:
#import url(https://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Montserrat:200,300,400,700);
$font-family-base:Montserrat;
#import url(https://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Open+Sans:200,300,400,700);
$headings-font-family:Open Sans;
$enable-grid-classes:false;
$primary:#222222;
$secondary:#666666;
$success:#333333;
$danger:#434343;
$info:#515151;
$warning:#5f5f5f;
$light:#eceeec;
$dark:#111111;
#import "bootstrap";

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