{"id":5473,"date":"2021-03-19T12:04:06","date_gmt":"2021-03-19T09:04:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/flatlogic.com\/blog\/?p=5473"},"modified":"2021-07-29T19:13:38","modified_gmt":"2021-07-29T16:13:38","slug":"top-24-free-essential-plugins-to-extend-bootstrap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/flatlogic.com\/blog\/top-24-free-essential-plugins-to-extend-bootstrap\/","title":{"rendered":"Top 24 Free Essential Plugins to Extend Bootstrap"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Everybody is familiar with Bootstrap. It is the most popular, fast, and convenient framework for developing mobile-first responsive websites and apps. Bootstrap is famous thanks to its flexible and fully responsive grid system, that allows building apps both for mobile and desktop. Nowadays Bootstrap offers much more than a grid system, it contains its own SVG icon library, typography, tables, dozens of components, like a carousel, close button, dropdowns, and much more.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Other than that, you can find UI packages, libraries, components, and plugins on the Internet to improve your app. Developers from all over the world try to contribute to the development of Bootstrap and make the framework better. Although these developers are not from the Bootstrap development team, sometimes they make quality libraries and components that are fully compatible with the original Bootstrap library and extend it. Such libraries and plugins get their recognition on GitHub with a lot of stars and contributors. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We are going to speak about essential Bootstrap plugins that can be helpful to your next project. Before we start, it would be good to discuss the difference between such concepts as plugins and components. They may sound similar and sometimes they are confused or misused indeed, so we define these concepts to clarify what this article is about (about plugins). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Plugins and components the difference <\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Plugins<\/strong> are small program codes that extend the functionality of the main application for which they work. They add specific features to an existing application. In the official documentation<\/a>, Bootstrap offers a list of plugins that you can use for your app. The list includes 12 custom jQuery plugins like modal, dropdown, alert, button, carousel, etc.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Components<\/strong> are reusable blocks of code. <\/em>Components<\/strong> are typically more complex, with extensive functionality and capabilities. They vary depending on the complexity of the functionality they provide: it can be a simple and lightweight UI element like a button or a little separate application with its own functionality, database, and representation. According to the official Bootstrap documentation<\/a>, Bootstrap offers a huge list of components, such as dropdowns, alerts, buttons, input groups, page header, etc. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Buttons, alerts, dropdowns are both plugins and components? Is there any mistake? <\/em><\/p>\n\n \"Professional <\/a>\n\n\n

Well, no. As we have mentioned, components vary from very simple tools such as buttons and alerts to very complex libraries that even can be named small applications. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But in that case what is the difference between a button as a plugin and a button as a component? <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The main difference lies in the functionality of an element you are going to use. A plugin is a software that adds<\/strong> additional features to an application. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many plugins are simple code snippets. For example, a Google sign-in plugin<\/a> is a basic UI wrapper on an API call. Or let’s take a look at the Yandex social sharing buttons<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another famous example of a plugin is the outdated Flash player<\/a> that allowed to play videos and other flash content in the browser. Flash player wasn’t embedded in the web browser and was made by a company, that didn’t participate in the development of browsers. However, you could install it on your browser and got the opportunity of playing media content inside the browser window.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All these three examples are plugins without complex logic. For example, the Google sign-in plugin allows users to log in, but it has no functions to store and track the information, so you have to write that block of code on your own.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Components also can be quite simple, that is why there are doubts about whether code is a plugin or a component. But when we come to the complex logic of an element with a lot of functions and methods, maybe even a database, most likely we deal with a component. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A good set of complicated components can be found on Onymos<\/a>. The list includes bio-authentication, chat, a component for work with Bluetooth devices, geolocation identification, in-app purchases, payments. Each of them is a stand-alone complex system that you can use in the app. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

How to choose plugins for Bootstrap? <\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

First of all, you need to ask yourself a question whether you need to use a third-party plugin? If you use Bootstrap, it will be good to learn an official Bootstrap documentation<\/a>. Learn it thoroughly and you will see that it covers many use cases. There is a high probability that embedded plugins and components Bootstrap offers will satisfy most of the needs you have. If your task can be solved within what they offer, I encourage you to use them. Here is a good article to find out more about bootstrap standard plugins<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you familiarize yourself with the official Bootstrap documentation, but understood, that you need more than that, be ready to add jQuery to your project because almost all plugins use it. If the project is built with jQuery, there will be no difficulties. However, if the project is jQuery-free it’s good to think whether you are ready to plug jQuery into the project<\/a>.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let’s keep moving, there are thousands of cool plugins that extend Bootstrap possibilities. Furthermore, several plugins may do the same job, but in different ways.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Cool” is OK, but it is still not a strong reason to use a plugin. Each plugin you use should extend or add something significant to the app, that will be useful for app users. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As highly specialized programs, plugins perform a single function. Multifunctional plugins are rare and unnecessary. It would be more appropriate to install three plugins that implement different functions than to install a three-in-one plugin and use only one function, while the other two will only burden the system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To get started with Bootstrap plugins you don’t need to be an experienced developer. Using Bootstrap Data API most plugins can be run without writing a single line of code. Due to a large number of plugins for Bootstrap, it would be good to define criteria for how we are going to evaluate them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The criteria: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The date of the last update<\/strong>. Technologies don’t stand still, the plugin that was developed ten years ago and hasn’t been updated since hardly meets the needs of modern apps. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Compatibility with the latest Bootstrap version<\/strong>. The latest version is v.5 that was officially released on June 16, 2020. However, many plugins were built for earlier versions of Bootstrap, while new plugins for the 5th version haven’t got their recognition yet or just haven’t appeared, so you don’t see plugins built on top of the latest version. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Developers team support<\/strong>. The essential part of every product is the support of the development team. Since we consider free plugins in the article, free support doesn’t come around very often. Most supports ends with a GitHub issues page.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Documentation<\/strong>. If the documentation is well organized and provides a lot of information for developers, it will be enough to start using a plugin. The product with no or lacking documentation is not viable. Good documentation doesn’t replace effective support, but it’s better than nothing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rating<\/strong>. A plugin with a lot of positive reviews is more reliable than one without a lot of happy users under the belt. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dependencies<\/strong>. Some plugins require extra dependencies, some of them don’t. It’s better to pick the ones that don’t need additional libraries. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

To simplify the navigation, we divide the list into several groups: <\/p>\n\n\n\n