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Shopify acquires Tailwind

tailwindcss.com

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Re: Shopify acquires Tailwind

#381

Post by what »

onion2k wrote: post #213
dlisboa wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I made this point at the time but Tailwind Labs' business model shouldn't exist. It irks people because they wanna blame AI for it but they were coasting and should be happy it lasted this long. Tailwind's business model existed due to a massive inefficiency in the frontend industry not being able to come to terms with CSS or native components. They surfed the wave of JS frontends becoming ever more complicated. If i…

Providing ready-made UI components and templates has never been a million-dollar business, nor should it be. Arguably many websites and apps desperately need a good component library because it's very clear the UI sucks without one. Lots of people spending a few thousand dollars on their UX is not unreasonable at all , so the best-in-class library (whether that's Tailwind is a separate point) should be able to make a…

The pain point tailwind supposedly solves is that people who are supposed to be front end web developers don’t understand CSS.

Re: Shopify acquires Tailwind

#383

Post by what »

jmull wrote: post #165
dlisboa wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I made this point at the time but Tailwind Labs' business model shouldn't exist. It irks people because they wanna blame AI for it but they were coasting and should be happy it lasted this long. Tailwind's business model existed due to a massive inefficiency in the frontend industry not being able to come to terms with CSS or native components. They surfed the wave of JS frontends becoming ever more complicated. If i…

Nah. Tailwind provides an actual simplifying layer for the (over-)complicated practice of front-end web development. By being well-though-out, well-designed, and very well documented, it actually made web app styling easier/simpler (without hiding or otherwise making it hard to drop into CSS as needed). And it slotted right into the place most web apps have for a CSS/class mechanism. The paid templates extend the app…

> AI can generate the components now at the same time it's doing everything else, so no reason to pay for their templates

So the AI can do a better job than the average front end web developer? Maybe you should take it a step further from “no reason to pay for templates”…

Re: Shopify acquires Tailwind

#384

Post by _heimdall »

ryanbrunner wrote: post #203
fg137 wrote: post #42

Serious question: is there a need to reach for tailwind if you are building a new site? Won't using vanilla CSS while taking advantage of the latest features be pretty good, since humans are not manually making edits (which removes many of the pain points of maintaining CSS), while simplifying dependency and the build pipeline?

In my experience, if you're going to aggressively componentize whatever you're building (i.e. a button isn't a css class on a simple `a` tag but a distinct component that exists in it's own file somewhere) there's huge advantages to having your styling be associated directly with your components, and Tailwind is a great option (among many) for that. If you're building something where your unit of organization looks m…

Why are your buttons `a` tags?!?

Buttons should be `button` tags. Links should be `a` tags.

Re: Shopify acquires Tailwind

#385

Post by _heimdall »

vazark wrote: post #88
fg137 wrote: post #42

Serious question: is there a need to reach for tailwind if you are building a new site? Won't using vanilla CSS while taking advantage of the latest features be pretty good, since humans are not manually making edits (which removes many of the pain points of maintaining CSS), while simplifying dependency and the build pipeline?

IMO, Tailwind is just inline CSS with standardised defaults. I think it found its place because most React devs didn't want to bother with CSS

It was/is inline styles, not inline CSS. It isn't a stylesheet at all, just a single style property.

Re: Shopify acquires Tailwind

#386

Post by _heimdall »

andix wrote: post #356
vazark wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO, Tailwind is just inline CSS with standardised defaults. I think it found its place because most React devs didn't want to bother with CSS

It's inline CSS, but with all the limitations of inline styles removed. There is a lot of stuff that can't be done with inline styles, like media queries.

It's inline styles, not online stylesheets. Though yes, inline styles are limited.

Re: Shopify acquires Tailwind

#387

Post by _heimdall »

stephbook wrote: post #157
fg137 wrote: post #42

Serious question: is there a need to reach for tailwind if you are building a new site? Won't using vanilla CSS while taking advantage of the latest features be pretty good, since humans are not manually making edits (which removes many of the pain points of maintaining CSS), while simplifying dependency and the build pipeline?

Believe me, I try all the time. But HTML and CSS are not made for the modern web. Styling radio buttons, working date inputs, forms that POST automatically, typeahead and server-side validation (eg username already taken.) You spend all your time reinventing the wheel and then it's buggy and looks like a dog. To say nothing of the inevitable poly fills and Cross-Browser issues.

How does this relate to Tailwind though?

Tailwind does ultimately compile down to CSS. Anything you can do in Tailwind can be done in CSS.

Re: Shopify acquires Tailwind

#388

Post by ngmc »

Glad to hear the team found a successful exit. Adam bought the tailwindlabs.com domain from me when they started out and he seemed genuinely cool. Hope they keep building tools so many people enjoy using.

Re: Shopify acquires Tailwind

#390

Post by stefan_lec »

dlisboa wrote: post #380
hamdingers wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> do LLMs change the calculus for DRY? Yes it makes it insanely easy to refactor duplicated logic into shared and tested modules. Why would you go the other way?

Components as in React, Vue, etc requires a complete overhaul in frontend rendering, many dependencies, changes in deployment and even have an impact in organizational structure. If one wants to do server side rendering with HTML templates like the old days there is no real “components” way of doing it (although declarative Shadow DOM is coming along). Partials are not the same thing. In that scenario some repetition…

Have you tried Astro? It lets you do exactly that: server-side rendering with HTML templates in component form, with css scoped to the component. No shadow dom needed, no JS frameworks either.
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