Still the most comprehensive rebuttal to this common (and I feel, badly mistaken) complaint:

"About HTML semantics and front-end architecture" (from March 2012):

http://nicolasgallagher.com/about-html-semantics-front-end-a...

It's all well worth reading, but the conclusion is particularly to the point:

"The experience of many skilled developers, over many years, has led to a shift in how large-scale website and applications are developed. Despite this, for individuals weaned on an ideology where “semantic HTML” means using content-derived class names (and even then, only as a last resort), it usually requires you to work on a large application before you can become acutely aware of the impractical nature of that approach. You have to be prepared to disgard old ideas, look at alternatives, and even revisit ways that you may have previously dismissed.

...

When you choose to author HTML and CSS in a way that seeks to reduce the amount of time you spend writing and editing CSS, it involves accepting that you must instead spend more time changing HTML classes on elements if you want to change their styles. This turns out to be fairly practical, both for front-end and back-end developers – anyone can rearrange pre-built “lego blocks”; it turns out that no one can perform CSS-alchemy."

We need a better word for this than "semantic". We're just passing the complexity back and forth between the HTML and the CSS, and the only "semantics" or meaning that arise are to the author/editor. Users don't care, machines don't care, and I've never, ever seen a large-scale site design that doesn't involve some reworking of both the HTML and the CSS.

The point of using bootstrap is a reusable set of classes. I really dont care wether class names are semantic or not,it doesnt change anything,except for pedantic people looking at your source code.

SEO doesnt care , users dont care, accessibility doesnt care either. Using new HTML5 tags is good enough and was designed for that specific purpose. If i want semantics I use nav,aside,section instead of div,and so on.

Not going to waste my time and wrap bootstrap mixins in more LESS mixins and loose theme portability and modularity,because semantics...

It's like inobstrusive javascript, trends that make little sense today in the webapp era.

I appreciate the comparison to the ancient Web, but this article doesn't say much more that I can't find in Bootstrap's documentation.

Anyone who has used Bootstrap's mixins with semantics in mind knows there are some bigger issues to address than the layout. Some questions off the top of my head:

* How do you build semantic forms with Bootstrap without going to markup fluff hell?

* How can you avoid the unsemantic class names for components that are tied too closely with child components (I'm looking at you, .panel)?

* What is the semantic purpose of a row element? It seems purely presentational to me.

* How do I add icons without peppering span.glyphicon.glyphicon-X's all over my markup?

* How should I organize/maintain all of my LESS files as my stylesheets scale? I'm not looking for any one "right" way, but suggestions are always nice.

* Are there any optimizations I can consider when I'm only using a bit of Bootstrap's functionality?

* How can I extend Bootstrap's mixins for my own needs?

I think this would be more semantic (with or without the classes)

     <section>
          <main> </main>
          <aside> </aside>
     <section>

  main > section > main

  main.semantic-class

    <section class="body">
        <main class="content"></main>
        <aside class="sidebar"></aside>
    </section>

  main
    > section
      > main
        text-decoration blink

We do div soup because CSS is still not good enough to do all of your styling there. When you can trivially make an element 6 columns in CSS we'll all stop treating Bootstrap like this. Maybe Flexbox version 6 (or whatever we are on now) finally fixes this but who can keep up and find out.

Be very wary, though, if you are using mixins to define these columns in a case-by-case basis, as this could lead to huge generated CSS (the properties of the column will be defined in each class the mixin has been used).

    .column {
      width: 100px;
      display: inline-block;
    }

    .cool-sidebar {
      @extend .column;
    }

    .column, .cool-sidebar {
      width: 100px;
      display: inline-block;
    }

I build web "apps". I don't treat HTML and CSS like a semantic document; it's just a declarative layout engine. Yes, I often use HTML elements and structure to define layout instead of CSS classes. My CSS class names often have little "semantic" meaning outside their single purpose, that is to define layout and style. Am I doing something wrong? We don't have these discussions when building native GUIs.

Perhaps if I were building a CMS or some other document-oriented site I would approach things differently.

Here is a LESS mixin that will go a long way in making semantic Bootstrap easy to actually do:

.make-column(@large, @medium, @small, @tiny: 12) { .make-xs-column(@tiny); .make-sm-column(@small); .make-md-column(@medium); .make-lg-column(@large); }

Then use it with: section#main-content { .make-column(8,8,9,12); }

I've used Bootstrap and been forced to use it on existing projects already engulfed in it. It isn't pretty on a large project. I've sworn off using Bootstrap in any new project that isn't a prototype for a hack day. The only things I borrow from Boostrap these days are some of the JavaScript niceties like modal, tooltip, and scrollspy. And when I do that I'm very explicit in what code I pull in to use those.

Build the CSS for your next project using mixin libraries like Bourbon/Neat or Compass/Susy. You'll be glad you did.

This is one of the main reasons I like AngularJS directives. If used properly (huge caveat) they allow your template markup to take on far more semantic meaning.

I also agree with the idea that we should use Mixins to allow for more semantic meaning in our plain HTML. As an added bonus, this can make things a lot more maintainable down the road.

I just noticed that this article is laid out with a table, with a single td. Glasshouses, stones etc.

One of the strengths of BS is mobile-first responsive design. You can chain classes like this: class-name="col-xs-6 col-md-3"

If you try this with the method outlined by the OP, you'll end up with a giant css file.

What are current options to optimize LESS files and remove unused mixins? And for the generated CSS, what are current options to merge shared rules and remove unused classes reported against a sample HTML?

Related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7247054

This increases the number of css styles dramatically, which affects page speed on large sites.

Couldn't disagree more with your statement. What if you have a sidebar that appears 20+ times throughout your application in different contexts. You might decide it is too wide. Are you going to go through all your templates and change class="col-md-blah" or are you going to change one mixin?

Also, if you are providing a theme, I don't see how you lose portability. Your mixins will be relying on base bootstrap anyway?

You will start caring the day you want to update to Bootstrap 9000 and need to change the class names of all the properties that have changed. A counterargument could be that one could stick with the version already deployed, and that's fine too I guess.

For me it's about being in control of the situation. I will find myself changing things just for them to look as they are supposed to look like, and soon realizing that is not CSS anymore, just another framework being in between and making the work sometimes easier and sometimes harder. Using LESS at least gives you a bit more of control on the hidden spots, and opens room for sane customization.

I do personally prefer to not use a CSS framework at all, but if Bootstrap is a requisite on a project, using LESS is a no brainer.

This sounds exactly like the complaints lodged against structured programming[1] by traditional GOTO-based programmers.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structured_programming

Perhaps the term "semantic" is overloaded, but there are good reasons why presentational classnames are bad, even though users don't care and machines don't care. Your fellow developers should care. When done well, semantic markup is much easier to maintain and reason about. There's far less duplicated template logic and design changes are much easier because it's easier to understand where your changes will have an effect. The generated CSS might be slightly heavier, but possibly not. Poorly architected CSS tends to get very bloated and heavy very quickly. And there are better preprocessors like Sass or Stylus give you more options for keeping you generated CSS to a minimum. Less is really the worst preprocessor out there.

Every non-semantic bootstrap site I've seen has far more templates than would be necessary the templates only spit out minimal markup with classes that say what each element is instead of what it looks like.

But now we have tons of developers whose primary skill is backend development that are able to mash together a reasonable looking site without understanding how to create maintainable front end code. When the design changes, they just keep piling on more markup and more classes. This works for a while, but as designs get iteratively tweaked and changed, and kludges pile on top of kludges, the markup and CSS become a huge tangled mess. Making changes can have unpredictable effects on other parts of the site.

And then the back end developers throw up their hands and say, "CSS is stupid." But users don't care if the code is a mess, right? Machines don't care either. But the front end dev -- the one who's tasked with getting the new design to work without breaking anything else on the site -- he cares. And he's gonna have a bad time.

Insert an anecdote about the carpenter and the quality of the back of the cabinet there. Except in this case it matters a bit more as others pointed out already.

I'm hardly a pro at using bootstrap, but we have been dealing with a few of these things, and I can tell you how we've handled some of these questions:

* How do I add icons without peppering span.glyphicon.glyphicon-X's all over my markup?

This one's fairly simple--you still need to add a class to the span, but you can extend the glyphicon.glyphicon-X bit into a particular icon and call it a day:

    .foo-icon {
      &:extend(.glyphicon);
      &:extend(.glyphicon-foo);
    }

* How should I organize/maintain all of my LESS files as my stylesheets scale?

I'm not sure there is a "right" way, but I'd suggest keeping like things together. You're going to end up with a number of rules that are either dependent upon each other, or at least similar in goal, and they can live near each other. In theory, future refactorings will be easier that way.

* Are there any optimizations I can consider when I'm only using a bit of Bootstrap's functionality?

http://getbootstrap.com/customize/

^ Do that :)

Good luck. If you find answers to the rest of those questions, pass them to me!!

questions 1-4: "Semantic" css is a waste of time. Either you're putting information into the html or you're putting it in the css. Use what works well.

question 5: I'll usually put bootstrap into its own folder, have a style.less outside of the folder that imports bootstrap.less, import stylesheets with custom mixins after bootstrap.less, and import straight up custom styles after that.

question 6: go into bootstrap.less and comment out the stuff you're not using. For the js, use something like gulp-include to concatenate.'

question 7: Load my-mixins.less after bootstrap.less, copy and paste mixins from bootstrap into there, and modify them.