Project 2 and i'm thrown in the deep end - Bootstrap CSS & JS and JQuery ahoy!

Hi, total newbie here, and I’m not asking for help, just making an observation.

I’m dutifully ploughing through the first two projects. Tribute page - no problem. Arnie, you’re the man, my hero etc. Easy.

But the personal portfolio page? Whoa there!

I’m taking it a logical step at a time, and building the base content for three sections - then I decided to add a navigation bar at the top, as per good bootstrap practice, and that’s where I’ve spent my last two hours.

  • Sure, adding it is no problem; i’m doing it the right way and reading the Bootstrap docs and only adding in the bits I think i’ll need…
  • Until I resize the page and it disappears. Back to the docs? Ah, I need to add more bootstrap code to support a menu in a collapsed state. Done that…
  • Still doesn’t work. What’s this? the docs sort of mention that I need a collapse.js - well, actually, I need transitions.js - oh sod it, I’ll just add the full bootstrap.js library. How do I do that? disappear down a rabbit hole for 20 mins, find the right CDN link, add that…
  • Still doesn’t work. Oh, the transition library needs Jquery? OK, how do I add that? Another 20 mins…
  • Download it, add it in, test my menu…
  • Success! It works!

The odd part is that in any other walk of life, having to do all that would have been massively irritating, but while i’m learning, it’s incredibly satisfying, especially when I got it to work at the end, but blimey - I hope I don’t have to dive off into the woods on all the projects, or I’m never going to get them done!

Sure, I could have made my life easier by just copying the code off the bootstrap page, but I’d have got it working in one step and never understood why it broke in the first place. By going through all that, I have a much deeper understanding of how it all links together.

I’m really enjoying my journey so far, just thought I’d add that observation. Now back to finishing off my portfolio!

Cheers
John.