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CSS frameworks are a great way to quickstar...
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I want a banana 🍌, I know.. I'll import the jungle 🍌🦍🐦💦🌴. That's my feels towards CSS frameworks, I used to be the opposite.
I was a big css framework person for a long time. But I’ve started writing all css from scratch for my side projects and I feel so much power! Plus, it’s nice to remember how things actually work rather than relying on framework components.
This. Writing your own css is so much more satisfying and CLEAN. Having to hack away at a framework to overwrite countless styles is so unproductive and leads to some serious bloat.
When I do need to do some quick scaffolding, I've been using modules from Bass CSS recently for side projects. It's very low level and modular so you can include just the pieces you want to get you past some of the basic boilerplate stuff like typography.
I think you should invest in smaller compile time only frameworks, such as a scss grid (do we even need grids anyway?) Maybe something lean and minimal to kick-start. But after that do it yourself.
Yes, the future of "CSS Frameworks" are Web Components that expose Named Parts for author styling.
Tailwind is great. I prefer Bulma though.
I think as with most things, it's circumstantial. Also opting for a less do all the things framework is beneficial. Bulma seems a reasonable balance between useful stuff and not overly in the way. Similarly, buefy for some starting point Vue components that can still be pretty easily styled however you wish.
My colleague just started using tailwind with buefy and says it's great, haven't tried that yet myself.
But yeah.. entirely depends on the circumstances I think. Are you building something totally custom? Plain vanilla css or something like tailwind is probably a good option, prototyping a more do everything framework will probably save time. Honestly though tailwind largely seems like mostly a prototyping tool too...
I agree on Bulma. I'm currently working on a project that uses the Buefy component lib (based on Bulma). For the most part, Bulma stays out of the way until you actually want to use its styles.
material-ui for react seems ok, even if you have to override some things, but yeah, reading documentation for API and how it should be used is crucial part of it. Recently started to use styled components and I like it a lot. Writing my own styles without css frameworks.
Ever try shadow DOM? It's been liberating for me. Nowadays I just apply styles as needed - no need for baroque classes or
!important.Will give it a try!
Emotion and react has been made incredibly flexible and extendable, but agreed that css frameworks are more trouble than they are worth. How long does it take to code a good looking button and import it everywhere?
There are upsides to using a CSS library such as Material, which applies best practices out front and doesn't require the use of the entire library. Often I find it to be the fault of designer/developer teams who find it easier to import an entire framework into an app when only 15% to 40% of it gets used.
I found that together with LitElement created web components I can choose specifically what I want to include as shared CSS across all components and adding only what I need keeping the components light while enjoying shadowDOM isolation and reusability. It's great to have options, but I'm very sensitive about just how many bytes we have to deliver to a screen.
As you said, Bootstrap-like frameworks are a good alternative when you don't have a designer in the project or even when you don't have time to create a styleguide properly.
After thinking a lot about the need of those big CSS frameworks in my projects, these ones crossed my path:
As a front-ender, I love to create the styles and optimize it until it breaks. Excluding Bulma and Primer, the above are considered micro-frameworks or even CSS starter packs; and they helped me to save time while developing.
You could even use CSS itself. No 2nd DSL to learn and will continue to work for the longest of times. I'm sort of partially kidding. The JIT removal thing in TW is pretty sweet. Certainly it's viable and folks are building great stuff with it. Same for BS too though. Great stuff can be built with it.
My thoughts on modern CSS frameworks? I know most call them frameworks. But shouldn't we be calling them libraries? Well, I've created my own such library and it will help me next time I need to build a design system for a company and they only want to give me 3 months to do it. Writing a custom framework from scratch probably takes about 9 months to a year imo. So I've elected to waste a bunch of my extra time creating AgnosticUI lol. Hopefully it'll pay off.
I was using uikit, I know that's not utility CSS like Tailwind but the idea, that you don't write CSS and apply styles using class attributes, is similar.
I was using twig templates and found that I was forced to make almost identical templates with just different class attributes for margin and padding, which seemed a lot more potentially problematic than slipping in a few lines of custom CSS. So I wonder if there is a case for blended solution of mostly use utility CSS with a use case for specific overrides when it would help keep complexity low
This is a great thought to have. The key things I've found is when using frameworks :
I also found that you can use frameworks to help promote and control consistency when working with multiple devs. Bad patterns are easier to spot, and in-eficciencies are noticeable if you follow the above guides.
Style-agnostic lightweight framework/library without dependencies that solves tough UI problems (iOS modal, accessible drop down nav etc): github.com/radogado/natuive
Re-writing those components for every project is impossible.
Thanks for checking it out. Regards.
This isn't really a case against frameworks, it's a case against frameworks that aren't Tailwind. Or at least, frameworks that aren't lightweight/functional.
Yea, basically CSS frameworks that are based on a JS component library/framework like vue or react. Is there a term for such frameworks?
Yes, those are JS Component Libraries. If you can't use it without the JS framework, it's not really a CSS framework like Tailwind, Bootstrap, Bulma, etc. e.g. Vuetify is a Vue component library.
Have you had a look at skeleton.css? It mostly stays out of your way
Nuff said
I switch from Bulma to TailwindCSS. And it's great! The best tool in the CSS game.
I feel like you really need to check out TailwindCSS...
@mzanggl is amazing!
I'm like "oh hey I'm gonna go find away to automate that thing over there!" or "let me see that backend, yo". I enjoy the non-JS aspects of front-end design a lot less than I used to.
That's interesting, you have a point man!