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Design

Kent Hefley
Kent Hefley
11,217 Points
Posted by Kent Hefley
Kent Hefley
11,217 Points

Design Question

I have been asked to design a responsive, desktop-app template that will be used for an antivirus program. Is Bootstrap or similar open source platform the best place to start?

Rebecca Riley
Rebecca Riley
Courses Plus Student 2,265 Points
Rebecca Riley
Rebecca Riley
Courses Plus Student 2,265 Points

It depends on your skill level, project needs, and time. If you want to code it all yourself using a library, Bootstrap or similar platform is a good option - however, be aware that these often come in a large packages that contains a number of components that you may not use in your project. This can create a bulky site (slower performance) if you aren't careful. The benefit is that they are pretty easy to setup and have themes you can install or customize with some effort. If it's a simple site, another option is to buy a responsive HTML template on a site like ThemeForest, Template Monster, or the like and then customize it to your needs - just be sure to pay attention to licensing (like attribution) and reviews. These are a huge time saver and usually easy to customize, but again, try to find a "lean" one or make sure you remove unnecessary pages and styles to preserve performance. The downside is that many times these templates look the same and your website will seem like all the other cookie-cutter websites that are common today. Sometimes that's ok, and you just need a good looking, high performance site.