navbar color in Twitter Bootstrap

How can I change the background color of the navbar of the Twitter Bootstrap 2.0.2? How can I change color of all the elements of the navbar to reflect the background color?

You can overwrite the bootstrap colors, including the .navbar-inner class, by targetting it in your own stylesheet as opposed to modifying the bootstrap.css stylesheet, like so:

.navbar-inner {
  background-color: #2c2c2c; /* fallback color, place your own */

  /* Gradients for modern browsers, replace as you see fit */
  background-image: -moz-linear-gradient(top, #333333, #222222);
  background-image: -ms-linear-gradient(top, #333333, #222222);
  background-image: -webkit-gradient(linear, 0 0, 0 100%, from(#333333), to(#222222));
  background-image: -webkit-linear-gradient(top, #333333, #222222);
  background-image: -o-linear-gradient(top, #333333, #222222);
  background-image: linear-gradient(top, #333333, #222222);
  background-repeat: repeat-x;

  /* IE8-9 gradient filter */
  filter: progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.gradient(startColorstr='#333333', endColorstr='#222222', GradientType=0);
}

You just have to modify all of those styles with your own and they will get picked up, like something like this for example, where i eliminate all gradient effects and just set a solid black background-color:

.navbar-inner {
  background-color: #000; /* background color will be black for all browsers */
  background-image: none;
  background-repeat: no-repeat;
  filter: none;
}

You can take advantage of such tools as the Colorzilla Gradient Editor and create your own gradient colors for all browsers and replace the original colors with your own.

And as i mentioned on the comments, i would not recommend you modifying the bootstrap.css stylesheet directly as all of your changes will be lost once the stylesheet gets updated (current version is ^v2.0.2) so it is preferred that you include all of your changes inside your own stylesheet, in tandem with the bootstrap.css stylesheet. But remember to overwrite all of the appropriate properties to have consistency across browsers.

An excellent resource to see how to theme bootstrap is: bootswatch.com. It has nice examples and shows code as well. In short, they use lessc to recompile the bootstrap.css to your new color-theme.css. The nice thing of their approach is that is build on top of bootstrap, so when bootstrap is updated, you just recompile.

Links about using lessc and bootstrap:

Using bootstrap with less
Lessc.org

If you havent got time to learn "less" or do it properly, here's a dirty hack...

Add this above where you render the bootstrap nav bar HTML - update the colours as required..

<style type="text/css">   

.navbar-inner {
    background-color: red;
    background-image: linear-gradient(to bottom, blue, green);
    background-repeat: repeat-x;
    border: 1px solid yellow;
    border-radius: 4px 4px 4px 4px;
    box-shadow: 0 1px 4px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.067);
    min-height: 40px;
    padding-left: 20px;
    padding-right: 20px;
}

.dropdown-menu {
    background-clip: padding-box;
    background-color: red;
    border: 1px solid rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.2);
    border-radius: 6px 6px 6px 6px;
    box-shadow: 0 5px 10px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.2);
    display: none;
    float: left;
    left: 0;
    list-style: none outside none;
    margin: 2px 0 0;
    min-width: 160px;
    padding: 5px 0;
    position: absolute;
    top: 100%;
    z-index: 1000;
}

.btn-group.open .btn.dropdown-toggle {
  background-color: red;
}

.btn-group.open .btn.dropdown-toggle {
  background-color:lime;
}

.navbar .nav li.dropdown.open > .dropdown-toggle,
.navbar .nav li.dropdown.active > .dropdown-toggle,
.navbar .nav li.dropdown.open.active > .dropdown-toggle {
  color:white;
  background-color:Teal;
}

.navbar .nav > li > a {
    color: white;
    float: none;
    padding: 10px 15px;
    text-decoration: none;
    text-shadow: 0 0px 0 #ffffff;
}

.navbar .brand {
  display: block;
  float: left;
  padding: 10px 20px 10px;
  margin-left: -20px;
  font-size: 20px;
  font-weight: 200;
  color: white;
  text-shadow: 0 0px 0 #ffffff;
}

.navbar .nav > li > a:focus,
.navbar .nav > li > a:hover {
  color: white;
  text-decoration: none;
  background-color: transparent;
}

.navbar-text {
  margin-bottom: 0;
  line-height: 40px;
  color: white;
}

.dropdown-menu li > a {
  display: block;
  padding: 3px 20px;
  clear: both;
  font-weight: normal;
  line-height: 20px;
  color: white;
  white-space: nowrap;
}

.navbar-link {
  color: white;
}

.navbar-link:hover {
  color: white;
}

</style>

You can download a custom version of bootstrap and set @navbarBackground to the color you want.

http://twitter.github.com/bootstrap/customize.html

navbar color in Twitter Bootstrap

Related

Recent Posts