Question

What should be the best thing to do with Twitter’s bootstrap css/javascript library?

link (online), clone, fork or download it?

I would like to always have the latest updates on my website but I would like to customize small things like width size of a the tabbed navigation feature, some colors, etc.

Answer 1

Fork it. You will be able later to easily update to the new version, and merge in case you changed something. I suppose you are using github, so also push watch button, so you will always be aware of issues, updates, fixes of this project on your dashboard. Also you will be able to contribute to that awesome project.

Don’t link directly, because one day they will change something, and this could break your app.

Also I suggest to look at LESS, and not compiled CSS version of library, in my opinion it’s easier to customize everything there.

Update:

Probably easily update was too strong expression, and was referred only to bug fixes and minor updates. In a case of major version updates with breaking backwards compatibility there couldn’t be easy and perfect solution. In this case, only if you really think you need this update, you can create new branch, update twitter bootstrap there, and than start a painful process of fixing your code. With branches you will be able work on your main app with old and working bootstrap, while part of your team will refactor code to become compatible with the new version of the bootstap(even if you only one person on the project, it’s also good idea to test new solutions in the test branches, to not mess up working code).