Everybody is familiar with Bootstrap. It is the most popular, fast, and convenient framework for developing mobile-first responsive websites and apps. Bootstrap is famous thanks to its flexible and fully responsive grid system, that allows building apps both for mobile and desktop. Nowadays Bootstrap offers much more than a grid system, it contains its own SVG icon library, typography, tables, dozens of components, like a carousel, close button, dropdowns, and much more.
Other than that, you can find UI packages, libraries, components, and plugins on the Internet to improve your app. Developers from all over the world try to contribute to the development of Bootstrap and make the framework better. Although these developers are not from the Bootstrap development team, sometimes they make quality libraries and components that are fully compatible with the original Bootstrap library and extend it. Such libraries and plugins get their recognition on GitHub with a lot of stars and contributors.
We are going to speak about essential Bootstrap plugins that can be helpful to your next project. Before we start, it would be good to discuss the difference between such concepts as plugins and components. They may sound similar and sometimes they are confused or misused indeed, so we define these concepts to clarify what this article is about (about plugins).
Plugins and components the difference
Plugins are small program codes that extend the functionality of the main application for which they work. They add specific features to an existing application. In the official documentation, Bootstrap offers a list of plugins that you can use for your app. The list includes 12 custom jQuery plugins like modal, dropdown, alert, button, carousel, etc.
Components are reusable blocks of code. Components are typically more complex, with extensive functionality and capabilities. They vary depending on the complexity of the functionality they provide: it can be a simple and lightweight UI element like a button or a little separate application with its own functionality, database, and representation. According to the official Bootstrap documentation, Bootstrap offers a huge list of components, such as dropdowns, alerts, buttons, input groups, page header, etc.
Buttons, alerts, dropdowns are both plugins and components? Is there any mistake?
Well, no. As we have mentioned, components vary from very simple tools such as buttons and alerts to very complex libraries that even can be named small applications.
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