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The Overcomplexity of the Shadcn Radio Button

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Re: The Overcomplexity of the Shadcn Radio Button

#121

Post by socalgal2 »

ehnto wrote: post #52

I don't touch frontend very often anymore, but you could see the writing on the wall for complexity when React took over and newer devs were working exclusively in that abstraction. Unlike other abstractions where things get tidied up and more simple, React is much more complex than the technology it's building on. Necessarily, to enable it's features, but none the less it is a consequence of this that when all someo…

Is this the same with everything? In the past, a hard drive, a mouse, or a web camera was a dumb piece of hardware and a driver that ran on your PC. Now, IIUC, each of those has it's own computer (SoC) running an entire OS. Your phone probably has ~20+ SoC. One for USB, one for Wifi, One for Bluetooth, one for each of the 4 cameras, one for lidar, one for SSD, one for cellular, one for the secure enclave, one for audio, Each of them is an entire computer, more powerful than most 1980s general purpose computers, running an entire OS with multiple abstractions internally and all of that to make that device appear as yet another abstraction.

Am I wrong?

Re: The Overcomplexity of the Shadcn Radio Button

#124

Post by archerx »

yen223 wrote: post #98

This is the kind of stuff we have to do because almost all browser elements are terrible in terms of customisability. Especially radios and selects If you're one of those who think we should just use the default, bear in mind that the default radio button has poor usability for mobile users.

The only that is annoying to style is the “select” one because it’s hard to style the “options”. The rest seem reasonable and quite customizable in my experience.

Re: The Overcomplexity of the Shadcn Radio Button

#125

Post by hanspeter »

rpastuszak wrote: post #83
mastermedo wrote: post #6

The shadcn radio button in action: https://ui.shadcn.com/docs/components/radio-group

Protip: the space between the UI control and the label should be done using padding (or achieved via label nesting) so that the entire area is clickable. [ x ] some long label ꜛꜛꜛ padding here, not margins or gaps (clicking between the control and the label does nothing now)

Calling this a "Protip" is generous.

That the combined element has any surface area that doesn't toggle the radio setting is a straight-up bug.

It is laughable for a component this heavily refined to have such a basic usability flaw.

Re: The Overcomplexity of the Shadcn Radio Button

#126

Post by gustavorg »

As I was reading this text, my hands started sweating, my head began to ache, and I felt the anguish and terror of reliving a traumatic experience all over again. I can’t even count how many times I’ve been stuck in a project that’s already behind schedule, where the client (I’m a freelancer, working directly with the person who has the requirement) throws in a ‘simple’ request like: change the style of that radio button so it matches this other one. The problem isn’t that—because of reasons like the ones explained in the article—I end up spending hours and hours on what looks like a trivial task. The real nightmare is when the client asks me: ‘Why are you taking so long to do something so dumb?’ It’s a nightmare. That’s why I ran away from React, because of this and countless similar situations, and went back to WordPress, where the world is so much simpler, the clients are happy, and so am I.

Re: The Overcomplexity of the Shadcn Radio Button

#127

Post by Tade0 »

jcgl wrote: post #113
realusername wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also have the same somewhat controversial opinion, the frontend community wasn't ready and (still isn't) to organise a functional codebase. The second problem is that React has a "draw the rest of the owl" mindset. Sure you have nice frontend components but now what about caching? data transfers? static rendering? bundle size & spliting? routing?

Yeah, as a solo dev quite new to frontend, that made me nope out of React almost immediately. Having to choose a bunch of critically important third-party dependencies right out of the gate? With how much of a mess frontend deps seem to be in general? No thanks. I settled on Svelte with SvelteKit. Other than stumbling block that was the Svelte 4 -> 5 transition, it's been smooth sailing. Like I said, I'm new here in…

I've been doing frontend since 2012 and I still don't understand why React became so popular.

No two React projects are the same. Like, even the router has at least three different mainstream options to choose from. It's exhausting.

Re: The Overcomplexity of the Shadcn Radio Button

#128

Post by TheCapeGreek »

WA wrote: post #86
ehnto wrote: post #52

I don't touch frontend very often anymore, but you could see the writing on the wall for complexity when React took over and newer devs were working exclusively in that abstraction. Unlike other abstractions where things get tidied up and more simple, React is much more complex than the technology it's building on. Necessarily, to enable it's features, but none the less it is a consequence of this that when all someo…

> when all someone knows is React or other frameworks, things get overengineered The next level annoyance is that everybody just assumes React to be the default for everything. Check the Shadcn website. The landing page doesn’t mention that this is a React-only UI library at all. Same with Radix. The marketing sounds like a general-purpose UI lib. You gotta dig around a bit to realize that this is React-only.

I've started straight up being doubtful of every UI kit until I see in the docs a HTML or non-React example.

Re: The Overcomplexity of the Shadcn Radio Button

#129

Post by techpression »

Surac wrote: post #30

Im not in web development. Reading this article makes me think: is it realy neccersary to use all those complex frameworks? Isn't html/css enough? People always say "every line not written can't be a bug" but moving those lines into a library was not the idea behind the words

A lot of frontend developers today (my experience) does't even know where to look for CSS updates or what vast amount of HTML element exists, they just know to look for frameworks and that's how they see the world. Like is foreign to them, they only know of .

Sometimes you do need a framework, but the question is being asked way too seldom.

Re: The Overcomplexity of the Shadcn Radio Button

#130

Post by trueno »

WA wrote: post #86
ehnto wrote: post #52

I don't touch frontend very often anymore, but you could see the writing on the wall for complexity when React took over and newer devs were working exclusively in that abstraction. Unlike other abstractions where things get tidied up and more simple, React is much more complex than the technology it's building on. Necessarily, to enable it's features, but none the less it is a consequence of this that when all someo…

> when all someone knows is React or other frameworks, things get overengineered The next level annoyance is that everybody just assumes React to be the default for everything. Check the Shadcn website. The landing page doesn’t mention that this is a React-only UI library at all. Same with Radix. The marketing sounds like a general-purpose UI lib. You gotta dig around a bit to realize that this is React-only.

my brain for whatever reason won't accept react it's just instant ejection. i was there in the before times all the way up till jquery became uncool and i just tuned out of front end entirely once react and all the stuff driven by facebook became so ubiquitous, my soul just does not want to dabble in any of it. i think im mostly just appalled at what feels like over complexity that might've made sense over a decade ago but perhaps im waiting for a more satisfying paradigm to come along. i dunno. i had some sparks of joy tinkering with golang to build ssr stuff, i dont keep up with wasm at all but i hope its cruising along.

i wonder if what im after is like some kinda dead simple easy to use declarative front end api that can be built from a backend, something like streamlit or nicegui that has great ergonomics and is easy to maintain but scales better and has better state mgmt than streamlit & puts all the power of a general purpose programming language right there with it. i love compiled things i hate setting up environments with runtimes and stuff.

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