Plugins & Addons for Extending the Bootstrap Framework

Ahhhh, the much-loved Bootstrap. No other front-end framework has revolutionized the web design world in the way that Bootstrap has. Put simply, it has allowed us to create consistent, mobile-first, and cross-browser layouts much faster and much better than ever before. And on top of that, every single aspect of it can be completely customized to our needs.

One great thing that separates Bootstrap from other frameworks is that it comes bundled with a selection of reusable components and jQuery plugins. You may use them; you may not. That is the beauty of Bootstrap; you have the choice.

Now you wouldn’t exactly say that Bootstrap’s components and plugins are limited, but sometimes you may need something that will extend its functionality. And, as you would expect, there are hundreds of plugins and addons available for extending Bootstrap, and no, I’m not going to list them all here. Instead, I have focused on just a selection of both free and premium Bootstrap extensions that I feel would be the most useful to you and your next project.

Bootstrap Image Gallery is a touch-enabled, responsive and customizable image and video gallery. The images and videos are displayed via Bootstrap’s modal dialog and comes with support for swipe, mouse and keyboard navigation, full-screen display, transition effects, and on-demand content loading.

Bootslider is a responsive slider plugin that combines the beauty of Bootstrap with the power of a fully-featured content slider. It comes packaged with many eye-catching animations and is completely customizable.

Strapslide is a fully-featured and fully-customizable responsive and mobile-optimized Bootstrap slider plugin. It comes with support for displaying images, videos, HTML markup and captions. Out of the box it doesn’t come with any preset animations, thus allowing to create your own.

Not every project needs a fully-featured slider extension. So if you’re looking for something a little bit more lightweight, then the Bootstrap Media Lightbox would be a good choice. It comes with support for single images, image galleries, videos, and iframes.

Icons Animator is an extension for adding subtle animations to all Bootstrap navigation elements, not just icons and buttons. It comes packaged with 18 different hover effects and 5 display modes.

CSS3 Microsoft Modern Buttons is an extensive library of buttons that have been built in the same style as Microsoft uses on their websites.

Based on Bootstrap and Font Awesome, Social Buttons is a pure CSS library of elegant and versatile social signin buttons.

As the name suggests, the Bootstrap Buttons Bundle are a huge (and I mean huge!) selection of buttons that come in flat, 3D and neon styles, 5 varied shapes (basic, rounded, simple, circle & square), and also in four handy sizes (large, normal, small and extra small).

Yamm! is a free mega menu addon that uses the standard navbar markup and the fluid grid system classes from Bootstrap. It works for both fixed and responsive layouts and supports the inclusion of almost all Bootstrap elements.

Bootstrap Sidebar is a responsive sidebar plugin for Bootstrap 3. If your menus are too big to fit into a horizontal menubar, or you need to have a responsive sidebar that is compatible with Bootstrap, then this is the plugin for you.

BootstrapTreeNav is a JS plugin for Bootstrap that helps to create tree-style navigation menus.

jqBootstrapValidation is a popular jQuery validation framework for Bootstrap forms that displays validation warnings and errors as the user inputs information.

flavr is a beautifully designed Bootstrap compatible popup dialog box. It has been animated using animate.css and works on any modern browser.

The CSS3 Responsive Forms Pack is a simple and professional Bootstrap form framework that strikes a balance between simplicity and elegance. It has been built using no Javascript, just pure CSS. It comes with built-in support for Google Web Fonts and Font Awesome icons, and also comes packaged with templates for login and registration forms.

Formicon is a collection of flat-designed form templates built on top of Bootstrap. It comes packaged with templates for login, registration, checkout and contact forms.

Tabcollapse is small plugin that changes the Bootstrap tabs component to a collapse component for smaller devices.

Tokenfield is an elegant and advanced tagging system for Bootstrap (and jQuery), with it’s primary focus on keyboard and copy & paste support.

Multi-Suggest is a useful addon for extending the default Bootstrap Typeahead component. It supports: multiple datasources; RESTful services (AJAX/JSON); dynamic filtering; custom, per-datasource list formatters; separate visible & hidden select values.

Bootstrap Combobox is a really easy plugin that transforms a select box into an autoselecting combobox.

ClockPicker is a feature-rich ‘clock-style’ timepicker for Bootstrap (or jQuery).

Based on Bootstrap styles, Acc-Wizard is, as it’s name suggests, an accordion-based wizard system.

Calendar is a template based full-view calendar system for Bootstrap.

Building off Bootstrap, Tablecloth is a jQuery plugin that helps you to quickly and easily style HTML tables. It comes packaged with 3 pre-designed styles (default, dark and stats).

To avoid interupting a user’s workflow, Bootstrap Confirmation is an addon that replaces confirmation dialogs with popovers.

Bootbox.js is a small JavaScript library that allows you to create programmatic dialog boxes using Bootstrap modals, without having to worry about creating, managing or removing any of the required DOM elements or JS event handlers.

Pricely is an extension for Bootstrap for creating elegant price charts and tables.

SelectBoxIt will replace ugly HTML select boxes with gorgeous and feature rich drop-downs. Bootstrap, jQueryUI, and jQuery Mobile themes are supported out of the box.

Star Rating is a simple jQuery star rating plugin for Bootstrap that supports advanced features like fractional star fill and RTL input support.

Rpage is a highly responsive pagination plugin for Bootstrap.

Paypal Shopping Cart is a fairly easy-to-use jQuery based shopping cart system for Bootstrap. All you have to do is configure your inventory and store the meta data in a simple structured JSON file.

DMSS is a useful Bootstrap-based jQuery plugin that allows you to quickly change the style of a particular web page.

The X-editable library allows you to create editable elements on your page. It can be used with Bootstrap or jQuery-UI, and includes both popup and inline modes.

Tocify.js is a jQuery plugin for creating a table of contents section. It can be themed with either Bootstrap or jQueryUI.

The Grid Extension Generator is an application that generates CSS files that extends the core grid functionality of Bootstrap. The vanilla grid system is restrictive with only 12 columns and four somewhat arbitrary view-port sizes. This app changes that by allowing the user to easily generate as many columns as they like, across user-defined viewport widths.