Tailwind CSS - The Top 5+ Component Libraries
Tailwind CSS is a utility-first, mobile-first CSS framework that helps you rapidly create applications. Utility-first frameworks provide low-level utility classes to build out custom designs within your HTML.
The utility classes are named according to their intended purpose such that they’re easily understandable to the average person. With the utility classes, you can control the colours, spacing, typography, shadows, and everything else that makes up a well-engineered design system.
A well-optimised framework! Tailwind automatically removes all unused CSS when building for production, which means your final CSS bundle is the smallest it could possibly be. In fact, most Tailwind projects ship less than 10kB of CSS to the client.
CSS states? Simply add the component state like hover: followed by the utility classes that will take effect when the state is triggered. Works for focus, active, disabled, focus-within, and focus-visible, also Tailwind CSS has custom states like group-{modifier} that allows you to style an element based on the state of some parent element and much more!
Highly customizable! Tailwind comes with a configuration file tailwind.config.js file that enables you to craft your own design system.
Tailwind CSS Pros and?Cons
Advantages
Tailwind CSS is performance focused and aims to produce the smallest possible CSS file on production by purging unused CSS and combining that with compression leads to files that are less than 10kB. For example, Netflix uses Tailwind for Netflix Top 10 and the entire website delivers only 6.5kB of CSS over the network.
With the configuration file that tailwind comes with, you can craft your own custom colours, spacing, typography, shadows and more. That makes the framework highly customizable without any restrictions when it comes to building applications.
If you were using CSS to style your application you had to write your CSS in a CSS file that would continue to grow as your application grows. On the other hand, by using Tailwind CSS utility classes directly in the HTML files the CSS files are kept small.
With the utility classes, you don’t have to write any media queries for other screen resolutions in your CSS files. Tailwind CSS gives you the option to use the default breaking points of Tailwind CSS or define your own in the Tailwinds configuration file.
Disadvantages
If you don’t have a solid understanding of how CSS works the use of the framework might be overwhelming, getting familiar with CSS will increase your understanding of the framework and unveil the benefits of using it.
Since utility classes are used directly in the HTML files, the size of the HTML files increases. The difference is not significant after compression since repetitive data tend to compress very easily.
Since Tailwind CSS is a utility framework there are no components out of the box to use. That leads to using UI libraries to speed up the development process.
Is Tailwind CSS future-proof?
This chart shows each technology’s satisfaction ratio (or interest ratio) over its total user count. It can be divided into four quadrants:?
ASSESS: Low usage, high satisfaction. Technologies worth keeping an eye on.?
ADOPT: High usage, high satisfaction. Safe technologies to adopt.?
AVOID: Low usage, low satisfaction. Technologies are probably best avoided currently.
ANALYZE: High usage, low satisfaction. Reassess these technologies if you’re currently using them.
On the CSS 2021 survey 2765 users voted for TailwindCSS with 78.16% of them being satisfied with using the framework in their applications. On the other hand, one of the most popular libraries, bootstrap shows a significant decrease in satisfaction.
Usage of Tailwind CSS skyrocketed in 2021! In 2019 usage in applications was at 6%, in 2020 rose to 26% and in 2021 the usage increased by 13% based on the preview year.
Tailwind CSS Made Component Examples
Following with some Tailwind CSS-created components let’s see how a button would look like if it was created using Tailwind CSS classes.
Another example is a Tailwind CSS Alert to display a brief, important message in a way that attracts the user’s attention without interrupting the user’s task.
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Tailwind CSS libraries
If you are searching for ready-to-use Tailwind CSS components in order to speed up the development process, the following Tailwind CSS libraries draw my attention.
Starting with the official library from Tailwind Labs. With over 500 custom components. Tailwind UI has about 100+ free components but if you want to gain full access you will need to cough up around $150. An awesome library if you are willing to spend some $$.
Tailwind UI is compatible with React, and Vue, and has support for native HTML.
WindUI is a free Tailwind CSS library mainly focused on delivering accessible components to its users. WindUI provides 600+ variations on its growing library and a theme picker with 21 colours. What fascinated me is the ease of getting a component, you just have to find the component that you like and click to get the source code in your clipboard, after having that done you can paste it into your project. It seems that soon they will have their own templates in the library.
Tailwind UI has components in React and native HTML.
This library is meant to be used as a plugin for Tailwind CSS. All the components are written and specified in vanilla CSS. This means that daisyUI can be integrated into any workflow as long as you are using the base Tailwind library. DaisyUI has 20 custom themes and each theme adjusts the style and appearance of each of the 45 components.
Daisy works on all frameworks that have the Tailwind CSS plugin installed.
MAMBA UI is a free, open-source collection of UI components and templates based on Tailwind CSS. Mamba UI has 41 Categories that encompass 157 component variations available in light or dark mode. Also, they offer 2 business templates and 1 portfolio template for free! Overall an easy-to-use UI library to get components or a template to kickstart your project.
MAMBA UI has components available in HTML, Vue and React.
Flowbite provides 450+ free and premium UI components built with utility classes from Tailwind CSS. If you decide to go premium you will have to spend some $$ but in return, you get access to their Figma design system with 1000+ components variants and a bunch of other goodies! A pretty huge library in my opinion!
Flowbite has components available in React, Vue, Svelte and Angular.
Meraki UI is Tailwind CSS Components that support RTL languages & fully responsive based on flexbox & CSS grid with elegant dark mode. Meraki has 139 components and a couple of free Tailwind CSS themes that you can grab and use.
Meraki UI has components in native HTML.
A free repository of open-source Tailwind CSS components and templates to bootstrap your new apps, projects or landing sites! Tailwind Components have more than 600+ components and premium themes that you can purchase.
Tailwind Components has components in native HTML.
Conclusion
Tailwind CSS based on the statistics shows growth in popularity year after year and users are satisfied with using the framework in their projects. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s the next big thing when it comes to CSS frameworks.
If you want to speed up the development process use a UI library that better suits your needs, there are many more libraries out there that you can try out, feel free to mention them in the comments section below.
Hope this article gives you a good overview of what is Tailwind CSS and useful tools to kickstart your Tailwind CSS journey!