Bootstrap 5 ’s very first alpha has arrived! they have been working hard for several months to refine the work they started in v4, and while they’re feeling great about our progress, there’s still even more to do.
they’ve been focused on making the migration from v4 to v5 more approachable, but they’ve also not been afraid to step away from what’s outdated or no longer appropriate. As such, they’re very happy to say that with v5, Bootstrap no longer depends on jQuery and they’ve dropped support for Internet Explorer.
they’re sharpening our focus on building tools that are more future-friendly, and while they’re not fully there yet, the promise of CSS variables, faster JavaScript, fewer dependencies, and better APIs certainly feel right to us.
Before you jump to updating, please remember v5 is now in alpha—breaking changes will continue to occur until our first beta. they haven’t finished adding or removing everything, so check for open issues and pull requests as you have questions or feedback. they’ve built on the improvements to our docs homepage in v4.5.0 with an updated look and feel for the rest of our docs.
Our docs pages are no longer full-width to improve readability and make our site feel less app-like and more content-like. In addition, they’ve upgraded our sidebar to use expandable sections (powered by our own Collapse plugin) for faster navigation.
Inspired by the CSS that created the very beginnings of this project, our logo embodies the feeling of a rule set—style bounded by curly braces. they love it and think you will, too. Expect to see it roll out to v4’s documentation, our blog, and moreover time as they continue to refine things and ship new releases.
jQuery brought unprecedented access to complex JavaScript behaviors to millions (billions?) of people over the last decade and a half. Personally, I’m forever grateful for the empowerment and support it gave me to continue writing front-end code, learning new things, and embracing plugins from the community.
Perhaps most importantly, it’s forever changed JavaScript itself, and that in itself is a monument to jQuery’s success. Thank you to every jQuery contributor and maintainer who made that possible for folks like me.
Thanks to advancement made in front-end development tools and browser support, they’re now able to drop jQuery as a dependency, but you’d never notice otherwise. This migration was a huge undertaking by @Johann-S, our primary JavaScript maintainer these days.
It marks one of the largest changes to the framework in years and means projects built on Bootstrap 5 will be significantly lighter on file size and page load moving forward.
In addition to dropping jQuery, they’ve made a handful of other changes and enhancements to our JavaScript in v5 that focus on code quality and bridging the gap between v4 and v5. One of our other larger changes was dropping the bulk of our Button plugin for an HTML and CSS only approach to toggle states. Now toggle buttons are powered by checkboxes and radio buttons and are much more reliable.
You can see the full list of JS related changes in the first v5 alpha project on GitHub. Interested in helping out on Bootstrap’s JavaScript? they’re always looking for new contributors to the team to help write new plugins, review pull requests, and fix bugs. Let us know! As mentioned, they’ve begun using CSS custom properties in Bootstrap 5 thanks to dropping support for Internet Explorer.
In v4 they only included a handful of root variables for color and fonts, and now they’ve added them for a handful of components and layout options. Take for example our .table component, where they’ve added a handful of local variables to make striped, hoverable, and active table styles easier.
Alongside new docs pages, they’ve redesigned and de-duped all our form controls. In v4 they introduced an extensive suite of custom form controls—checks, radios, switches, files, and more—but those were in addition to whatever defaults each browser provided. With v5, they’ve gone fully custom.
If you’re familiar with v4’s form markup, this shouldn’t look too far off for you. With a single set of form controls and a focus on redesigning existing elements vs generating new ones via pseudo-elements, they have a much more consistent look and feel.
they still have more work to do in v5, including some breaking changes, but they’re incredibly excited about this release. Let the feedback rip and they’ll do our best to keep up with y’all.
Our goal is to ship another alpha within 3-4 weeks, and likely a couple more after that. they’ll also be shipping a v4.5.1 release to fix a couple of regressions and continue to bridge the gap between v4 and v5.
