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Tailwind and slop apps

briandouglas.ie

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Re: Tailwind and slop apps

#11

Post by finjo »

I don’t think tailwind or its templates are the issue (and believe me, I am the furthest thing from a tailwind advocate).

Just shipping a tailwind template is lazy and trite. But LLMs are made to optimize for the lazy and trite. They can only choose the lowest-common denominator.

LLMs don’t really know how to give designs personality. Most of the time I see attempts to improve the situation that basically just boil down to vibe-coded slop that’s prettier. I’m sure better designs exist, but the ones that do exist are almost certainly about the person who drove the LLM, not the LLM itself.

Re: Tailwind and slop apps

#12

Post by finjo »

SkiFreeWin3 wrote: post #9
finjo wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know this may be a bit dismissive, but I think the need to ask that is the problem. AI can definitely build a design for you. But is no substitute for design skill. The best way to figure out how to prompt an LLM is to develop design skills so you know what to tell it.

I totally hear what you’re saying. I’ve been in the industry a long time. Even before LLMs, I think web design would get stuck in cycles. So I just want it to spit out something that looks novel and interesting, which pushes me to coach it even better.

Oh definitely. I don’t think bad design is something created by LLMs. LLMs just amplify the problem.

Re: Tailwind and slop apps

#13

Post by stackghost »

avindrag wrote: post #3
gibbitz wrote: post #2

Tailwind is the latest bootstrap. These frameworks were designed to allow people with no skill in design/UI to produce something that passed for attractive. Since most clients are more concerned about time and cost than quality and originality, this approach effectively killed bespoke landing pages and led a lot of UI devs to move away from hand-coding styles to glomming on class names and using a "best practice" fra…

> Tailwind is the latest bootstrap Bootstrap ships components. AFAIK you need another library if you want that in Tailwind.

>Bootstrap ships components.

I haven't used it in ages, but it used to be that Bootstrap also shipped drop-in CSS that would give you decent-looking styles on all the common elements, so a single minified style sheet would give you that classic "2010s startup" look.

Re: Tailwind and slop apps

#14

Post by crowcroft »

Tailwind just happens to be a common way to write CSS.

If Tailwind didn't exist people would just be writing the same article about {{ insert most common css tool here }}

Most people create generic similar looking websites, and most people that making a new website today use Tailwind. Correlation is not causation, and linking the two in any meaningful way is just a pointless discussion.

Re: Tailwind and slop apps

#15

Post by alexchantavy »

stackghost wrote: post #13
avindrag wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Tailwind is the latest bootstrap Bootstrap ships components. AFAIK you need another library if you want that in Tailwind.

>Bootstrap ships components. I haven't used it in ages, but it used to be that Bootstrap also shipped drop-in CSS that would give you decent-looking styles on all the common elements, so a single minified style sheet would give you that classic "2010s startup" look.

I miss that 2010s startup look

Re: Tailwind and slop apps

#17

Post by ookblah »

uh, that aesthetic was there long before tailwind, they didn't have a monopoly on rounded corners and that spaced out look lol. Much more ability to adapt than say trying to re-skin a bootstrap template back in the day.

the entire industry has always been converging toward "cookie-cutter" ui, and tailwind is just this cycle's flavor and now on steroids with AI. Honestly for 90% of the stuff out there that's literally fine and probably better. There was a time when being extra creative in FE work was rewarded. If your product is very brand dependent then yeah maybe try to find your "voice" but for the vast majority of them, esp dev focused, they just need to work on other things and not try to re-invent solutions to solved problems.

i know we all like to pretend our meticulously engineered button and drop shadow animations are actually moving a needle, but you're optimizing the last few percent at that point. most saas FE devs should be solving other problems like the UX and performance and not worry about more creative landing pages.

Re: Tailwind and slop apps

#18

Post by asp_hornet »

simonw wrote: post #10
SkiFreeWin3 wrote: post #5

Anyone have good lines to include in a prompt to direct LLMs from their default tailwind/Linear/etc. design modes on the first shot?

"No dependencies. Vanilla HTML/JS/CSS".

This might sound like a joke but it’s a surprisingly good take. RSCSS provides a great set of principles to structure and isolate against unintended change. Open Props can be added for design tokens and Open UI has some great examples of components.

Re: Tailwind and slop apps

#19

Post by girvo »

alexchantavy wrote: post #15
stackghost wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Bootstrap ships components. I haven't used it in ages, but it used to be that Bootstrap also shipped drop-in CSS that would give you decent-looking styles on all the common elements, so a single minified style sheet would give you that classic "2010s startup" look.

I miss that 2010s startup look

That lobster font we all used for our startup names was legendary
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