M
Mark Otto
markdotto.com · Personal blog · on HN since 2011
Mark Otto, co-creator of Bootstrap and a GitHub designer, writes about front-end design, CSS toolkits, and GitHub interface work.
What HN saysHN mentions it as the blog of the Bootstrap creator, and quotes his posts on GitHub's Primer toolkit and design and development overlapping.
48HN people shared it
23linked it in comments
32stories submitted
645story points
8 months agolast shared
2011people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1Bootstrap.less6 people · 4 points · first shared 2011 · discussion on HN
- 2Shipping system fonts to GitHub.com4 people · 2 points · first shared 2018 · discussion on HN
- 3Homepage4 people · first shared 2011
- 4Twitter's Bootstrap 2 ready for testing and feedback3 people · 310 points · first shared 2012 · 85 comments on HN
- 5Shipping the new GitHub Issues3 people · 10 points · first shared 2014 · discussion on HN
- 6Bootstrap 23 people · 2 points · first shared 2012 · discussion on HN
- 7Introducing (Unofficial) GitHub Buttons2 people · 99 points · first shared 2011 · 12 comments on HN
- 8Better code reviews with Blended Diffs2 people · 13 points · first shared 2024 · discussion on HN
- 93D Text Using Just CSS2 people · 10 points · first shared 2011 · discussion on HN
- 10Stop the cascade2 people · 3 points · first shared 2012 · discussion on HN
- 11Introducing primer2 people · first shared 2015
- 12Less2 people · first shared 2012
- 13Bootstrap 2.0.2 released1 people · 99 points · first shared 2012 · 17 comments on HN
- 14Learnings from open-sourcing Bootstrap1 people · 45 points · first shared 2012 · 2 comments on HN
- 15GitHub's CSS1 people · 22 points · first shared 2014 · 1 comments on HN
What HN people wrote when they linked it
Wolfr · 2011-11-28
Bootstrap is great and would be my top recommendation, I see Mark Otto from Twitter is working on v2. See his blog at http://www.markdotto.com/ .
fulldecent2 · 2020-02-08
Here is my list of solo developer blogs. Usually they are on topic. This does not include personal blogs I follow that happen to be developers.
@mdo (Bootstrop) - http://markdotto.com/
Keith Cirkel - https://www.keithcirkel.co.uk/
Coding – Corbin's Treehouse - https://www.corbinstreehouse.com/blog
Aaditya Purani – Ethical Hacker - https://aadityapurani.com/
Ben Balter - http://ben.balter.com/
fulldecent - https://privacylog.blogspot.com
Orange - http://blog.orange.tw/
Cocoa with Love - http://www.cocoawithlove.com/
Mark Otto - http://markdotto.com/
Moxie Marlinspike's Blog - http://www.thoughtcrime.org/blog/
hueniverse - http://hueniverse.com/
techpeace · 2015-03-23
Indeed. From the announcement blog post: "It will always be GitHub’s internal toolkit first, designed to help build GitHubby things. That said, we love to share." [1]
[1]: http://markdotto.com/2015/03/23/introducing-primer/
wasd · 2014-08-27
I'm a fan. Reminds me of mdo's http://markdotto.com/ theme (which isn't open source). Slight nitpick, I find the navigation bar to be too small/unreadable.
jongold · 2013-05-05
I really loved Mark Otto's sentiment here — design and development aren't separate jobs like, say, deep-sea oil drilling and copyright lawyering are. We're all working on the same spectrum with an increasing amount of overlap. http://markdotto.com/2013/04/22/designer-developer-spectrum/
There's definitely room for specialisation but our work is so much richer when we learn about the full stack. If you want to know more about design — just ask a designer :). We don't bite, we've just been a bit lazy with learning resources recently. HackDesign is a great start but the design community are well aware that learning to design at the moment is a mix of formal education, figuring shit out over years of making mistakes and a sprinkling of black magic. There's no Railscast to grok typography, and that sucks. We're working on it though :)
dcchambers · 2021-05-27
Miscellaneous technical stuff:
- https://danluu.com/
- https://blog.jessfraz.com/
- https://adamwathan.me/
- https://jvns.ca/
- https://rachelbythebay.com/w/
- https://dankim.org/
- https://mtlynch.io/
- https://rgz.ee/
- https://markdotto.com/
- https://thorstenball.com/
- https://sarahdrasnerdesign.com/writing/
- https://lukesmith.xyz/ - Quirky minimalist linux & free software stuff. I don't agree with many of his opinions but his rants are entertaining + offer a refreshing view on certain things.
Non-technical:
- https://bernoid.com/
city41 · 2021-05-06
You don't need custom style sheets. One font-family declaration can hit them all: https://markdotto.com/2018/02/07/github-system-fonts/#the-stack
zichy · 2019-04-10
1. Please do not import external resources from Google Fonts if you don’t have to. (Hint: You never really have to.)
2. If you want to use as little CSS as possible, simply use `sans-serif`. Otherwise try this font stack: http://markdotto.com/2018/02/07/github-system-fonts/
2. Fira Sans is actually quite nice, but please do not use `font-weight`s below `400` for continuous text. That’s really hard to read.
3. Since only the `300` weight is imported, the entire text will be thin – even headlines and `strong`.
4. Please leave the link text underlines for accessibility: https://webaim.org/techniques/hypertext/link_text#underlining
bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com did a better job.
hswolff · 2015-03-23
Related blog post: http://markdotto.com/2015/03/23/introducing-primer/
leoalves · 2013-03-01
One of the authors of bootstrap also released, today, a version of the Bootstrap framework (with another name since he left twitter) using mixins and mobile first.
But built with less and not sass.
http://markdotto.com/2013/02/28/reintroducing-preboot/
jscheel · 2012-05-08
Good work on this. Personally, I tend to use Preboot (http://markdotto.com/bootstrap/), which was the precursor to bootstrap, before they tacked on the kitchen sink.
EthanEtienne · 2012-01-26
And seriously, why not a responsive design instead of having 3 different versions of the same site (normal, mobile, mini)?
Checkout Twitter Bootstrap 2 (uut next week) or Foundation. It will make your live so much easier, and the site will be a lot more readable.
http://www.markdotto.com/2012/01/24/bootstrap-2-ready-for-testing-and-…
and
http://foundation.zurb.com/
SkyMarshal · 2012-01-25
Try Twitter Bootstrap, it's perfect for circumstances like this.
http://www.markdotto.com/2012/01/24/bootstrap-2-ready-for-testing-and-…
Here's another bitcoin site made with bootstrap, fwiw:
http://bitcoinica.com/
scorpion032 · 2012-01-25
`@primaryButtonColor`, a less variable is by default set to `@blue`: http://markdotto.com/bs2/docs/less.html#Conponents .
You can always change and recompile.
jmoiron · 2012-01-24
http://markdotto.com/bs2/docs/less.html
Odd, it says that lessc can take --compress, but using the most recent version of less in npm says that there's no such flag.
Maybe it's on the way, or the bootstrap authors know something we don't.
aaronbrethorst · 2012-01-24
The docs offer more details: http://markdotto.com/bs2/docs/index.html
Here's my quick (and probably incomplete) list:
- new 12 column grid
- responsive layout
- tons of new JS plugins
- stacked forms are now the default
- lots of new 'controls', like split buttons, new tabs, toolbars, highly styled radio buttons and check boxes.
- icons(!)
Dachande663 · 2012-01-24
Does anyone know if there are more detailed upgrade docs available? The ones provided in the repo (http://markdotto.com/bs2/docs/upgrading.html) mainly cover features and I don't fancy finding all the various classes that have changed since 1.4.
hmigneron · 2012-01-24
Not quite a concise summary, but looking at the documentation, the biggest changes I noticed were :
- Responsive design using media queries
- CSS Progress bars
- A few new javascript plugins (Carousel, Typehead)
- Icons
The documentation is online here in case you missed the link the article : http://markdotto.com/bs2/docs/index.html
Maybe someone has a better summary
jpadvo · 2011-12-07
Hi Nick! Thanks for making this, I'm going to add it to a project right now.
One quick note -- it'd be cool if you had a big "find me on Github" button near the top, just for convenience. And so that people understand right away that it is a project they can easily download and mess around with.
You could even go for something snazzy like an unofficial Github watch or fork button:
http://www.markdotto.com/2011/11/26/introducing-unofficial-github-butt…
aditya42 · 2011-09-02
Eh.
What was wrong with Preboot[1]?
[1]: http://markdotto.com/bootstrap/
bretthopper · 2011-08-19
Main dev is Mark Dotto who previously released Bootstrap.less: https://github.com/markdotto/Bootstrap.less
http://markdotto.com/bootstrap/
joeshaw · 2011-08-19
What is the relationship between this and Bootstrap.less (http://www.markdotto.com/bootstrap/), other than it appears to be by the same person? What about Skeleton (http://www.getskeleton.com/)? Are they just 3 different visual approaches to the same problem, or is there an evolutionary progression among them?
rgbrgb · 2011-04-22
This might also be of interest to anyone looking for less boilerplate code... http://markdotto.com/bootstrap/