Styling Buttons with Bootstrap: Creating Visually Appealing and Consistent Buttons
Learn how to easily style buttons using Bootstrap's predefined classes. This tutorial covers various button styles (primary, secondary, etc.), sizes, states (active, disabled), and provides examples for creating visually appealing and consistent buttons across your website.
Styling Buttons with Bootstrap
Bootstrap Button Styles
Bootstrap provides a variety of predefined styles for buttons, making it easy to create visually appealing and consistent buttons across your website. These styles are applied using CSS classes. The examples below are illustrative; you'll need to include the necessary Bootstrap CSS to see the effects. These classes are added to a button element (`<button>` or `<a>` element).
| Class | Description |
|---|---|
.btn-default |
Default button style. |
.btn-primary |
Primary button style (often blue). |
.btn-success |
Success button style (often green). |
.btn-info |
Info button style (often light blue). |
.btn-warning |
Warning button style (often yellow). |
.btn-danger |
Danger button style (often red). |
.btn-link |
Link-style button (appears as a text link). |
.btn-secondary |
Secondary button style (often gray). |
.btn-dark |
Dark button style. |
.btn-light |
Light button style. |
Bootstrap Button Sizes
Bootstrap offers different button sizes:
.btn-lg: Large button..btn-md: Medium button (default)..btn-sm: Small button..btn-xs: Extra small button.
These classes are added to the button element along with a style class.
Button States: Active and Disabled
You can style buttons to indicate their state (active or disabled) using CSS classes:
.active: Styles a button as if it's currently pressed..disabled: Disables a button (makes it unclickable).
These classes are typically used in conjunction with Javascript to dynamically change the button's state based on user interaction.
Block-Level Buttons
To make a button span the full width of its container, use the .btn-block class. This is helpful for creating buttons that fill available horizontal space.
Using Button Classes with Other Elements
Bootstrap button classes can be applied to other HTML elements (like anchor tags) to create button-like styles for links or other elements.
Button Outline Styles
Bootstrap 4 (and later) provides outline button styles, adding a visually distinct border around the button instead of a filled background. These classes use the pattern `.btn-outline-*`