Bootstrap 5.0- What’s New?

TryCatch Classes
5 min readApr 5, 2021
Bootstrap 5 Logo

Bootstrap is one of the most popular front-end frameworks among web designers. The new version of bootstrap is now available. In the new version, The Bootstrap team has announced several changes. Many of these are minor developments. So let’s take a look at what’s new in the latest version of bootstrap.

1. Internet explorer support removed:

Internet explorer support has been dropped, which results in the use of features like CSS custom properties.

Also, there is a decline in the popularity of Internet explorer. Newer browsers like edge browser with an open-source chromium engine allow having all the modern JavaScript and CSS features on par with the latest version of Chrome and Firefox. So the Bootstrap team decide to remove support for internet explorer.

2. No jQuery:

Free jQuery libraries are included in bootstrap. Many designers & developers used these to simplify working with JavaScript. In Bootstrap 5, users no longer can get access to those libraries. You don’t need to worry as even without jQuery, the effects can be generated very quickly with the framework.

To generate those effects, you can either use more advanced JavaScript code or move towards HTML & CSS.

This move considerably reduces the number of projects implemented with Bootstrap. The file size will be lower so as load times which will improve the user experience.

3. Custom CSS Properties:

As mentioned above, dropping support for internet explorer is the paved way for new custom CSS properties.

In Bootstrap 4, root variables were present for only color and fonts. Bootstrap 5 now offers CSS variables in a handful of components and layout options.

In practice, If an aspect of the design uses CSS custom properties, you can simply drop in code to override it without setting up a Sass-based workflow where you override the framework variables. Besides, they allow for variations of modern layouts. With this new feature, Bootstrap 5 can now focus even more on modern web design techniques.

4. SVG Icon Library:

Bootstrap 5 introduces its own open-source SVG icon library. So we don’t have to use third-party icon libraries. There are 1000+ icons available in the icon library and those are easily integrated with our code. We can add these icons by inline code or SVG spirit. Also, Web font version will also be introduced with the stable release of this icon library.

Bootstrap 5 SVG Icon Library

5. Hugo Over Jekyll For Site Generation:

Bootstrap switched documentation static site generator from Jekyll to Hugo. Jekyll, a static site generator has been attached with bootstrap for a long time. But in recent years, we‘ve seen Hugo as the fastest and most flexible static site generator.

Jekyll has its own disadvantages like:

  • It requires the installation of Ruby
  • Site generation was slow

To overcome these disadvantages bootstrap development team moved towards Hugo in the new version. As it is written in Go (Golan) language, it does not require any additional software in the background. Also, it much faster than its peers.

6. Documentation:

Bootstrap 5 improved customizing documentation. Customize sections now have a new look and feel, which results in an improvement in readability.

As the project grows bootstrap requires proper documentation of everything. It not only helps new users but also experienced developers who are working on bootstrap for years now. So bootstrap development team makes clearer documentation which will become helpful for all. A new color palette has also been added, providing even more possibilities for design directly to the code base.

Bootstrap 5.0

7. New Utility & New Utility API:

The latest version of bootstrap comes with a brand new utility API to remove or modify the default utility classes. A new utility API has been built into Bootstrap 5. We can use Sass to create our utilities. We can also use the utility API of Bootstrap to modify or remove the default utility classes.If required state option can be used to generate pseudo-class variations such as :hover and :focus.

8. Enhanced Grid System:

Bootstrap 5 is built on top of the existing grid system. Instead of replacing the current grid system with something completely new. The development team has made several improvements to it. So that everyone could upgrade to the upcoming version without any hassle.

Changes in Bootstrap 5 grid system:

  • A new grid tier added
  • .g* utilities replace .gutter classes.
  • The new grid system replaces the form layout options.
  • Addition of vertical spacing classes.
  • By default, columns no longer have position: relative.

9. Navbar Optimization:

The navbar component is a principal part of Bootstrap, which developers utilize regularly. In Bootstrap 5, we can optimize the navbar through following way:

  1. Removing unnecessary “display: inline-block” from Flex child components
  2. Removing line-height: inherit;

Besides this, the bootstrap development team introduce a dark dropdown via the dropdown-menu-dark class, which turns the dropdown menu into a black background.

Bootstrap 5 Dropdown Menu

Bootstrap 5 came with many noticeable improvements and new features. The bootstrap team is focusing on business tools that become future-friendly. As we all know Bootstrap remains a solid choice as a technical base for web applications, especially for projects with limited resources. It is the right time to switch to Bootstrap 5 as it offers more features, more improvements, and bug fixes and You can always connect with Trycatch Classes, to get a better understanding of Bootstrap 5.

So the question is have you switched to Bootstrap 5 yet?

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