How and Why to Enable Bootstrap in ASP.NET Core MVC Projects

Good news! The ComponentOne Studio for MVC controls are designed to work with Bootstrap right out of the box. In this blog, we'll walk through how to enable Bootstrap in your ASP.NET Core MVC project in both the standard Visual Studio template and in our custom ComponentOne templates.

How to enable Bootstrap in the standard Visual Studio template

Navigate to the bower.json file in your project.

Add “Bootstrap”: “3.3.7” to the list of dependencies.

That’s it!

How to enable Bootstrap in the ComponentOne templates

Trick question: it’s already done! The ComponentOne Studio templates automatically enable Bootstrap in the bower.json. If you’d like to check or if you’d like to disable Bootstrap instead, follow the same steps as shown above to find the line in your bower.json to enable/disable it.

7 reasons you should enable Bootstrap in your ASP.NET Core MVC project

So many reasons!

Reason #1: It’s very easy to get started.

Whether you’re an expert or a beginner with web development, Bootstrap's easy to integrate into your project. If you're already experienced with Bootstrap, you can download the LESS files, but beginners can easily access the standard CSS files so it’s more easy to experiment with.

Reason #2: Bootstrap gives you a great responsive grid system.

Bootstrap's responsive grid system makes it much easier to create your content in a responsive layout. The grid allows for offsetting and nesting of columns, as well as classes, to make different elements appear on differently-sized screens.

Reason #3: Bootstrap provides some default styling for commonly used HTML elements.

Bootstrap's default styling saves you time when you’re working on the most basic styling aspects of your new project.

Reason #4: Bootstrap includes many pre-styled components and plugins.

Bootstrap's pre-styled components include drop-downs, buttons, progress bars, navigation bars, sliders, and more.

Reason #5: Bootstrap has excellent documentation.

It’s very easy to find anything you need to know about Bootstrap. Also, since it’s so widely used, thousands of guides exist all over the internet.

Reason #6: Bootstraps speeds up your development.

All the things I mentioned above go hand-in-hand with speeding up your development process.

Reason #7: Nothing is set in stone!

You can leave all the Bootstrap styling as it is if you’re a beginner and your project will still look great, but if you’re good with CSS already, it’s easy to customize all the Bootstrap styling to make everything exactly the way you want it.