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Tailwind and slop apps

briandouglas.ie

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Re: Tailwind and slop apps

#31

Post by Barrin92 »

tptacek wrote: post #22

These pages look fine. I'm not seeing the problem. Most landing pages don't need to be creative statements; in fact, I'd wager the majority are hurt by creativity; real creativity is risky! Which of these applications want an artistic statement on their brochure pages?

>I'd wager the majority are hurt by creativity; real creativity is risky!

yes, and who wants creativity and risk when everything can look like the interior of a McDonalds. I'd much rather look at someone's terrible and scuffed attempt at designing their own page, because it at least signals that there is a human who isn't afraid to try something out rather than the Instagram filter version of a webpage.

Re: Tailwind and slop apps

#32

Post by WatchDog »

For all the complaints like this that I see about AI generated websites, the complaints rarely come with counter examples of what a good human generated alternative should look like.

The authors blog design is perfectly functional, and I'm not suggesting that it needs any changes, but it also isn't a particularly impressive piece of web design.

Re: Tailwind and slop apps

#33

Post by tptacek »

Barrin92 wrote: post #31
tptacek wrote: post #22

These pages look fine. I'm not seeing the problem. Most landing pages don't need to be creative statements; in fact, I'd wager the majority are hurt by creativity; real creativity is risky! Which of these applications want an artistic statement on their brochure pages?

>I'd wager the majority are hurt by creativity; real creativity is risky! yes, and who wants creativity and risk when everything can look like the interior of a McDonalds. I'd much rather look at someone's terrible and scuffed attempt at designing their own page, because it at least signals that there is a human who isn't afraid to try something out rather than the Instagram filter version of a webpage.

There are times and places where I want to see a lot of humanity and imperfection in transactions, and there are times I don't. You're dunking using McDonalds as an example, but there's a reason they all look like that, and it's one of the most successful businesses in the world.

If you're building the application equivalent of JP Graziano or La Chaparrita Taqueria, make it human, scuffed up even. I'd like JP Graziano less if it looked like a Cheesecake Factory. Right there with you. But if you're building a tool, for developers, one that will mostly be used to conduct some kind of business? Boring competence wins hands down. Users and customers are scouting for competence. Most of the time, their antennae are not in fact up for individual artistic expression.

Re: Tailwind and slop apps

#34

Post by distalx »

I think we only notice this 'sameness' because we're swimming in it all day. I recently helped a non-tech friend with a vibe-coded site for his cafe. He had the pure enthusiasm of a kid showing off a drawing. He didn't care that it looked like a thousand other Tailwind sites.To him, the magic was simply that he had nothing, and now he has a website.

I think it's slop to many of us, but to a general user, they just aren't seeing it as slop.

Re: Tailwind and slop apps

#35

Post by uproarchat »

And then there's folks that see the prevailing trends, do their best to make something similar because it looks "pro" and get accused of being slop. Sometimes I want to just make an abomination of HTML 2.0 humanslop for the authenticity :)

Re: Tailwind and slop apps

#36

Post by edoceo »

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?

I include either "use reset.css" or "use bootstrap" on the prompt. And even say "use fontawesome 6" and it follows.

Same as you have to be explicit about instructions to humans.

Even humans use their default assumptions w/o clear directions

Re: Tailwind and slop apps

#37

Post by crooked-v »

crowcroft wrote: post #14

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.

Tailwind is just the latest iteration of people trying "real" CSS, discovering that it still sucks, and coming up with something with better abstractions than the last iteration of attempts to replace CSS.

Everything else is just people using a default configuration instead of building their own.

Re: Tailwind and slop apps

#38

Post by crooked-v »

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…

Writing CSS from scratch sucks. I'm glad we've left those days far behind.

Re: Tailwind and slop apps

#39

Post by emodendroket »

Barrin92 wrote: post #31
tptacek wrote: post #22

These pages look fine. I'm not seeing the problem. Most landing pages don't need to be creative statements; in fact, I'd wager the majority are hurt by creativity; real creativity is risky! Which of these applications want an artistic statement on their brochure pages?

>I'd wager the majority are hurt by creativity; real creativity is risky! yes, and who wants creativity and risk when everything can look like the interior of a McDonalds. I'd much rather look at someone's terrible and scuffed attempt at designing their own page, because it at least signals that there is a human who isn't afraid to try something out rather than the Instagram filter version of a webpage.

Everyone says that but in aggregate they don't act like they believe it. Having "personality" means some people will love it and others will hate it, rather than everyone finding it acceptable and moving on to the actual content.

Re: Tailwind and slop apps

#40

Post by xkcd-sucks »

tptacek wrote: post #22

These pages look fine. I'm not seeing the problem. Most landing pages don't need to be creative statements; in fact, I'd wager the majority are hurt by creativity; real creativity is risky! Which of these applications want an artistic statement on their brochure pages?

Brand differentiation, not art
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