Bootstrap is great, but there will be times where I don’t want to use everything. Recently, I needed to implement a modal dialog box. It didn’t need to be complicated and needed to look nice. Bootstrap has one, and it fit all of my criteria. Alas, I can’t just shove a gigantic CSS sheet that overrides (probably) everything I have already implemented on an existing app.

Fortunately, Twitter Bootstrap is written with LESS. LESS is a superset of CSS that adds all kinds of gorgeous dainties (Variables! Mixins! Nested Rules!) to CSS that makes life in Webdevland more awesome. Bootstrap is modular, so it can be easily modified to remove components that aren’t needed.

My modified Bootstrap includes only the CSS styling for the UI/Javascript components. You can find it here. If you’d like to use it, clone the repository and include the bootstrap-js.min.css stylesheet and the Javascript components you want in your HTML and you’re good to go.

You can customize Bootstrap yourself. It’s simple. You will need to install npm and LESS first.

Installing npm and LESS

npm is a package manager for node. Other than installing it, that’s about all you need to know about npm for this exercise. It won’t set nuclear missiles on a trajectory targeted to your house. I promise. If you have the latest version of Ubuntu, you can open up a terminal and install npm with apt-get:

sudo apt-get install npm

If you’re not on a recent iteration of Ubuntu and you’re on a modern UNIX-like platform, the following line will work given you have curl installed:

curl http://npmjs.org/install.sh | sh

Follow the instructions. If everything installed successfully, you should have a copy of npm installed on your machine.

Now we need to install LESS. npm makes this easy for us. Pop open an ice-cold and refreshing terminal and run this:

npm install less

If everything went as expected, if you haven’t been paying attention this always means successfully, then we’re almost setup to start hacking on Twitter Bootstrap.

Making Modifications to Twitter Bootstrap

We need a copy of Twitter’s Bootstrap repository, which is hosted on Github. I’m assuming you have Git installed. If you don’t, go install it right now. You can either fork it on Github or clone it to make your modifications only local to your machine. For this tutorial, let’s just clone their repository:

git clone git://github.com/twitter/bootstrap.git

Now, you should have a directory named bootstrap containing its project files. The files we interested in are located in the lib directory of the bootstrap project. This directory contains all of the LESS files needed to generate the bootstrap CSS. Open up bootstrap.less and you should see a bunch of imports. It looks like this:

/*!
 * Bootstrap @VERSION
 *
 * Copyright 2011 Twitter, Inc
 * Licensed under the Apache License v2.0
 * http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
 *
 * Designed and built with all the love in the world @twitter by @mdo and @fat.
 * Date: @DATE
 */

// CSS Reset
@import "reset.less";

// Core variables and mixins
@import "variables.less"; // Modify this for custom colors, font-sizes, etc
@import "mixins.less";

// Grid system and page structure
@import "scaffolding.less";

// Styled patterns and elements
@import "type.less";
@import "forms.less";
@import "tables.less";
@import "patterns.less";

Since I just want the UI components, namely the modal box, I only really want the patterns.less file. Since the patterns.less file references variables and mixins in variables.less and mixins.less, you must keep the references to these files. Remove all references except variables.less, mixins.less, patterns.less My modified bootstrap.less file looks like this:

/*!
 * Bootstrap-js @VERSION
 *
 * Copyright 2011 Twitter, Inc
 * Licensed under the Apache License v2.0
 * http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
 *
 * Designed and built with all the love in the world @twitter by @mdo and @fat.
 * Modified by @seabre to remove everything except what is needed for the extra UI components.
 * Date: @DATE
 */

// Core variables and mixins
@import "variables.less"; // Modify this for custom colors, font-sizes, etc
@import "mixins.less";

@import "patterns.less";

Save the file. Now we need to build it. You can build this two different ways. You can either build it directly with LESS, or you can use make. I’ll show both.

Building with LESS

Run the following in a terminal within the lib directory of the bootstrap project:

lessc bootstrap.less > my-customized-bootstrap.min.css --compress

You can also leave out the --compress flag if you don’t want minified CSS:

lessc bootstrap.less > my-customized-bootstrap.css

If you want to keep the original bootstrap.less file and create another one for your modified bootstrap, you will have to use this method unless you customize the Makefile. You can use the Makefile I edited as a reference in my project if you wish.

Building with Make

Go to the parent directory of the bootstrap project and run:

make

It will generate bootstrap.css (not minified) and bootstrap-min.css (minified). You may find this method easier.

This should get you going on modifying Twitter Bootstrap. You should include a note in the less source about your changes and that it was you who made them. This is a requirement of the Apache license.

I’m about to send 10 tweets about Twitter.

Evan Williams warned an hour ago as the world waited to hear the next big announcement from the company. Like a countdown, he moved from big picture to statistic to the kind of definitions that would make Emily Dickinson proud.  She was great at saying a lot with very few words and would have thrived in a 140-character environment. 

10. Twitter is getting better—and bigger.

9. Twitter mobile users are up 250% this year.

8. Twitter is a real-time information network.

7. Twitter levels the playing field between creators and consumers of content.

6. You don’t need to tweet to get value from Twitter any more than you need to make a web page to use the web.

5. A lot of people are tweeting, though. flic.kr/p/8B132d

4. Twitter is the best way to discover what’s new in your world.

3. Infrastructure and performance are our biggest investment. They provide the foundation for new things.

2. Twitter.com has always been the most popular Twitter client. 78% of active users have used it in the last 30 days. flic.kr/p/8B12ZY

1. Today we’re launching a new Twitter.com—a faster, easier, and richer way to discover what’s new in your world. #NewTwitter

Check out the video that does the best job of visualizing the changes in functionality and integration with photo, video, and follower sharing:

We start by examining one tool that has the ability for dynamic growth and impact of one site in particular and that is- twitter. You may have or have not heard about this site, but with close to 19% of all Internet users using this medium according to a Pew Internet & American Life report, it’s difficult for some to see business potential. Of course, to understand its potential, we first must establish what it is exactly and how to best use it for your business.

First off, Twitter is a social media site. Social media as searchenginewatch.com defines is, “a category of sites that is based on user participation and user-generated content.” However, while they share these same qualities, they’re different in their approaches on how to share information.

Twitter describes itself as a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to “one simple question: What are you doing?” That may sound vague and unclear so think of Twitter as mashable.com describes it: just conversation in a new shape and being able to listen to the conversation of others in new ways.

While the Age of Information is in full swing, there is often an overload of information as opposed to timely, relevant information for the person attempting to stay current with what’s going on in the world. Twitter filters this information by allowing for only the pertinent information to be seen. It does this by limiting the number of written characters to 140 for every post. With such little amount of writing space, it forces users and businesses to expose the meat of an idea and often with links and sources to offer more defined details.

Generating such specific content, Twitter gives users the chance to see only the information they value and can easily stay current with what is happening in that chosen field or market.  This presents a great opportunity to use Twitter to connect your business to its clientele.

“When you combine messages that are quick to write, easy to read, public, controlled by the recipient and exchangeable anywhere, you’ve got a powerful, real-time way to communicate. And real-time communication is turning out to be ground-breaking for users and businesses alike,” www.business.twitter.com.

Look out for our next installments >> “The Twonderful Tworld of Twitter”

To be followed by>> specific examples of successful business strategies on Twitter.

Western media says Twitter had a large role in recent Iranian protests. The facts say that’s only part of the story.

The Election

Less than two hours after the polls closed, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced that he won 63 percent to Mir Hossein Mousavi’s 34 percent. Mousavi’s supporters say he won 60 percent. While Iranian elections were never fair and private, voters were enraged that Iran did not even make a pretense to count all the votes. Urban intellectuals, students, women from all backgrounds and others are contesting over ten million votes, while most rural Iranians are happy with the results.

The Powder Keg

Westerners who claim Twitter as the coup de gras fail to account for a more important variable – demographics. During and following Iran’s eight year war with Iraq, Iranian clerics urged high birth rates to supply the military. When the resulting 1980s baby boom caused a crisis for the war-torn population, clerics reversed their council. Around the same time, literacy rates in Iran escalated. Coupled with the tremendous death toll from war, political executions and an earthquake, most urban Iranians alive today are educated twenty-something’s – a common recipe for protests.

As a BBC timeline shows, Ahmadinejad’s 2005 election ushered in a conservative lock-down at the same time most Iranians were becoming politically aware. Unlike their parents, younger Iranians don’t remember the 1979 Islamic Revolution. They didn’t live under the Shah’s oppression, but they do know journalists imprisoned today. It was only a matter of time before this simmering anger erupted.

How Iranians used Twitter

Twitter let the world in on the protests. Its 140 character format was perfect for tiny updates, and Iranians can tweet with a cell phone while on the street. With grainy pictures and blunt descriptions of police brutality, Iranians supply Western media with information free from clerical propaganda. However, most on-the-ground communication is simpler: text messages, quickly scribbled notes and word of mouth. Furthermore, Twitter isn’t just a minority protest tool: Ahmadinejad used Twitter in his election campaign, and his supporters use Twitter to defend the election. The information sharing portal only gained significance once traditional journalists were no longer permitted into the flurry of activity.

The Significance

While only 8,600 Twitter users say they are from Iran — and many of these cannot navigate their government’s blocks — the site is one more step away from so called “traditional” journalism (for better or worse) and all those in “information disseminating” roles, albeit marketing, public relations, news, sales, advertising or otherwise would do well to respond.

It can’t be denied that Twitter is a powerful tool for information sharing from a few to many. While the focus should remain on people, not their tools, knowing the tools available often allows for greater focus on the people themselves.

Oh, and if you want to follow the Twitter News Coverage, check out http://iran.twazzup.com/

Click: Twitter CEO tells his story.

And some facts about Twitter:

Neville Hobson on the Growth of Twitter
How Much Is Twitter Worth (in 2008)
Twitter in 2009

So, the question is, how does this work in Northwest Georgia? How do we encourage lucky accidents, patient investors, techno-social savvy?
Please feel free to respond.