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I am considering using Twitter Bootstrap (TB) for a mobile web app. The next version of TB, version 3, claims to be "mobile-first". However, looking at the included Javascript files, I see almost exclusively "click" events, hardly any "touch" events used. TB relies on Jquery to handle the events. Also, there are lots of "hover" definitions in the CSS, which don't work on touch screens. Even so, I find lots of recommendations and tutorials about using TB in mobile web apps when Googling.

My question is: How well does Twitter Bootstrap work on touch screens in terms of performance (primarily with regards to speed and response time)?

Per Quested Aronsson
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    I have used Twitter Bootstrap in number of mobile web applications and it works pretty cool. Hover definitions anyway will not make sense for mobile device. – Ashish Chopra May 26 '13 at 13:19
  • There are a lot of issues listed here related to the nav dropdown menu on the Bootstrap Github page: https://github.com/twitter/bootstrap/issues/4550 I personally wouldn't use Bootstrap for this purpose, but if I did, I'd have to spend a lot of time using Media Queries to hide incompatible Bootstrap components (see the link above for the offending items). My advice is to look elsewhere. NB: However, as you said, Bootstrap 3 is coming at - I haven't yet looked at the spec for it, so there may be improvements – adaam May 26 '13 at 19:38
  • Twitter Bootstrap is a great tool and I have found it works well with mobile but when it comes to load times it does have alot of features that depending on your requirements you might just not need. And perhaps a more custom approach would save you some load time and help with the speed of things. – Daimz May 26 '13 at 21:38

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I've been developing with Twitter Bootstrap (v2) for a range of web applications that are also used on mobile platforms. You must keep in mind that Twitter Bootstrap is not a full on solution for all design needs. It "bootstraps" your project into not having to worry about certain things.

Bootstrap v3 has promised to do more "bootstrapping" for mobile platforms, but this doesn't mean you will not have to do certain pieces of development for any platform you wish to deploy for.

In case of working with Bootstrap v2, you can easily move around certain elements with the given CSS and a custom style. It's speed is marvelous and pretty much all modern mobile devices have excellent support for @media queries that allow you to easily target specific mobile sizes. For example; I use media queries in a specific file to make all buttons take up full width for more easy access on a touch device.

As far a Bootstrap v3 goes, I'm very curious as the Release Candidate hasn't really shown me anything that really changed the way I developed for mobile, yet.

Hope this helps you out.

Bjorn 'Bjeaurn' S
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