Bootstrap 2.3.0 Added

Bootstrap 2.3 was released yesterday, and I am happy to announce that it is now the default version used for BootSwatchr.  Bootstrap versions back to 2.0.4 continue to be supported and I am working on the version 3.0 upgrade so that hopefully BootSwatchr will be ready the day that drops.

Bootstrap 2.2.2 is Live in BootSwatchr

Bootstrap 2.2.2 brings a lot of bug fixes for bootstrap into play, and is now the default version of Bootstrap used by BootSwatchr.  The RTL version of 2.2.2 is still on the way, but the 2.2.1 CSS is still completely compatible with the 2.2.2 javascript.

This one took a little longer to get done done, but no to actually do.  I spent this weekend working at a hackathon, the goal of which was to get highschool and middle-school kids more interested in programming.  While Bootstrap released 2.2.2 on the 8th, I was pretty slammed that day, and basically asleep all day on the 9th.  Hackathons are a blast, but they definitely take a toll on the ammount of sleep you are going to get that weekend.

Swatch-on Swatchers!

Gallery is Back

It may seem silly, but as part of the new Gallery, I had to do an admin section.  Took a little bit of time, but absolutely worth it.

Want to get your Bootswatch in the Gallery?  There’s a button in the top right corner of the create tool that will let.  You’ll need to provide a theme name and an email address, but the email address will only be used in reviewing your Bootswatch.

Return of the Gallery

Several of you have pointed out the disappearance of the gallery in BootSwatchr.  Long story short, I did it wrong the first time, and it was causing all sorts of problems for everyone.

Very soon, I will have a much better version of the gallery to release.  The one caveat is that you won’t be able to immediately send a theme to the gallery.  the process I use to generate thumbnails of the themes, and full size renderings, takes up quite a bit more RAM then the server allows, and this is unfortunately the biggest server BootSwatchr can afford.

To that effect, the new process is that you nominate your own theme to the gallery, I will pick it up, review it, and generate the images for it locally, and upload them to the site.  I have put a lot of time and thought into this, and it seems to me to be the ideal solution.

TL;DR:  Gallery is coming back.  Stay tuned.

Gradients in BootSwatchr

Twtterist Jason (@mp3tricord) got a hold of me to ask a question with a pretty straight forward answer. “How would you go about adding a gradient background color or texture to a bootswatchr theme? Seems bootstrap not compat?”

Glad you asked Jason.  The short answer is that there is no obvious way of doing this.  The long answer, append LESS.

In the bootswatchr tool, I have provided you with two open text fields, Append LESS and prepend LESS.  Essentially, you want to define an override for a class inside of append LESS so that it gets tacked on to the bottom of the style sheet.  For example, this snippet adds a green gradient to the hero-unit.

.hero-unit{
  background-image: linear-gradient(bottom, rgb(101,164,81) 7%, rgb(132,197,114) 54%, rgb(159,237,149) 77%);
  background-image: -o-linear-gradient(bottom, rgb(101,164,81) 7%, rgb(132,197,114) 54%, rgb(159,237,149) 77%);
  background-image: -moz-linear-gradient(bottom, rgb(101,164,81) 7%, rgb(132,197,114) 54%, rgb(159,237,149) 77%);
  background-image: -webkit-linear-gradient(bottom, rgb(101,164,81) 7%, rgb(132,197,114) 54%, rgb(159,237,149) 77%);
  background-image: -ms-linear-gradient(bottom, rgb(101,164,81) 7%, rgb(132,197,114) 54%, rgb(159,237,149) 77%);

  background-image: -webkit-gradient(
    linear,
    left bottom,
    left top,
    color-stop(0.07, rgb(101,164,81)),
    color-stop(0.54, rgb(132,197,114)),
    color-stop(0.77, rgb(159,237,149))
  );
}

For help building cross browser CSS3 gradients, see http://gradients.glrzad.com/

Bootstrap 2.2.1 Added

In reality, the LESS from Bootstrap 2.2.0 didn’t change for Bootstrap 2.2.1, so instead we dropped support for 2.2.0 and added 2.2.1 instead.  That being said, a 2.2.1 theme is completely compatible with 2.2.0

Previews

For a while now I have been kicking around the idea of adding a “custom preview” option to the tool, so that you could preview your BootSwatchr theme against any Bootstrap based page you can hit with your browser.  This means the page doesn’t even have to be public yet, but as long as your browser can get to it, you can use it to for a preview.

Any other previews that should be added whil I’m at it?  I’m looking for suggestions from the community, and every suggestion will be considered.  Ultimately, I will only add a few, but if you know of a really good Bootstrap page, and you think it would make a good preview, let me know, leave a comment.

Bootstrap 2.2.0 Added

BootSwatchr received a quick update this morning for the release of Bootstrap 2.2.0. 2.2.0 will now be the default version of Bootstrap used for all new BootSwatchr themes.

To upgrade your theme, simply load it and go to the settings tab, then switch the theme version to 2.2.0.  For users looking for RTL for 2.2.0, that should be available some time tomorrow.  Right now, the RTL for 2.2.0 is actually the RTL for 2.1.1.

So far I think this is the fastest I have put together a version upgrade.  I would have had this done yesterday, but I was very busy volunteering my time to help with the Hurricane Sandy situation on the east coast.  I sincerely hope that everyone affected by this disaster has made it out okay, and that you with family and friends in that part of the country have been able to connect with your loved ones.

Going forward I hope to continue this trend of quick version upgrades, but we never know what curve-balls the Bootstrap team might throw at us.  To those of you waiting for this upgrade, thanks for your patience.

Unsaved Changes

@kemie brought this too my attention this morning, and Christian has experienced similar problems.

Bottom line, your changes to individual themes were all saved, but because the database was under incredible load due to a huge influx of traffic from Russia, writes were happening, but they were taking minutes.  I threw together a quick write-through cache layer for this and everything seems to be working perfectly.

While the speed has greatly improved (a single write now takes less than a second, as it should) the speed isn’t quite where I would like it to be yet, so with that in mind I will focus on increasing the database performance.

For those interested, the major change that happened to kick off this chain of events was the switch to CouchDB on Sunday.  Couch is a great product, I simply haven’t used it in such a write-heavy application before, so there’s a little growing pain to be had.