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Why Tailwind CSS Won

matt-rickard.com

511–520 of 559 posts

Re: Why Tailwind CSS Won

#511

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm talking about the design aesthetics included in Tailwind as default. Keep the values and the names if you want. Like this, for example: "blue-500" becomes --blue-500. That's it. This is a far cry from using Tailwind as a whole while keeping the good-looking aesthetics.

Sure now do the same for: whitespace (margins and padding), border radiuses, shadows, opacities, font sizes, font weights, and continue playing whack-a-mole as you run into new cases. Or just use the extremely complete, well-considered, well-defaulted, well-documented, well-supported, always-improving set of classes that took you zero hours of initial setup and will cost you zero hours of maintenance outside of your…

mt-100 vs. margin-top: var(--100);

And the IDE will help you autocomplete it all. The same is true for all the other properties you enumerated. If it's a Tailwind design token, it can be a pure CSS design token. No "whack-a-mole" needed here.

Still, you're right about having documentation. And there has been a loooot of these kinds of doc (BEM, SMACSS, ITCSS, etc.) in the last 15 years. Nonetheless, a more modern-oriented one is indeed needed. And that's why I'm working on something like this.

As for the "15 seconds", I mean, really? If so, I beg to disagree. There is a lot to take in. And that is why numerous colleagues still have to open the Tailwind docs to know how to write a class that's not 1:1 CSS.

And lucky you if you haven't had any update and dependency issues in the medium to long term. But I know we had.

> Or just use the extremely complete, well-considered, well-defaulted, well-documented, well-supported, always-improving set "of CSS features".

The sentence above is every bit as true as yours. Add a beautiful design language and you are in business.

Re: Why Tailwind CSS Won

#512
post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 20 minutes is enough to use Tailwind's defaults in pure CSS not 20 minutes, more. Plus all the boilerplate around @media rules > no need to wait for implementation of new CSS features What CSS features are you waiting for with Tailwind? > better performance possibilities It's very hard to beat Tailwind's performance since it's a fixed set of css classes (and a very small set in production, since it only includes cl…

Boilerplate? What do you mean? Any IDE can autocomplete 90% of any media query. And, on a sidenote, I was only talking about using Tailwind's default aesthetics in pure CSS, here. That's what the 20 minutes refers to. And I think it was a conservative estimate. As for features, it took months before grid was included in Tailwind. New powerful and useful selectors aren't there. It took years for Tailwind to support "g…

What are you building where CSS and the "weight" of HTML is a real performance consideration?

Re: Why Tailwind CSS Won

#513
post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, sure. But that's not what you were saying in the comment I responded to.

Because you moved the goalposts. First you said that it “almost never” happens, then that it “won't actually happen”.

Its hard keeping track of different usernames on here.

From my perspective, "almost never" and "won't actually happen" aren't that different. Both indicate that the probability of success is very low. It seems to be, if the probability is already really low, is not worth extending effort maintaining it.

Re: Why Tailwind CSS Won

#514

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And for those that prefer a different editor? A plugin is likely available for that, too. I use PHPStorm a lot; https://www.jetbrains.com/help/phpstorm/tailwind-css.html Panic's Nova? https://extensions.panic.com/extensions/jasonplatts/jasonpla... Vim? https://vimawesome.com/plugin/coc-tailwindcss etc.

If I made a hammer but you need a special glove to use it proficiently, then I didn’t make a very good hammer

I don't think that analogy holds. If my special hammer let's you go 10x as fast as a regular one, but you need to wear special gloves because otherwise it'll cause blisters, I think I still made a good hammer, just wear the gloves!

Re: Why Tailwind CSS Won

#515

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And for those that prefer a different editor? A plugin is likely available for that, too. I use PHPStorm a lot; https://www.jetbrains.com/help/phpstorm/tailwind-css.html Panic's Nova? https://extensions.panic.com/extensions/jasonplatts/jasonpla... Vim? https://vimawesome.com/plugin/coc-tailwindcss etc.

Missed the underlying point but I'll make it explicit - if a plugin is "needed" that is also a red flag for me.

I should have said intellisense. Without getting suggestions you do have to go to the docs a lot in the beginning and it is frustrating, but with intellisense I found myself proficient in a couple days and I was among those that din't give an opportunity to tailwind for years. I really wasted time, it works great

Re: Why Tailwind CSS Won

#516

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's good, it means in a few years Tailwind will be considered a dead tech. And that’s good because of what, beyond your own personal preference as to your Framework Of Choice?

It is good because Tailwind actively fights the engineering choices behind the web platform, it doesn't understand them, it doesn't build on top of them in synergy and alignment, but it counteracts and nullifies them with religious fervor and zeal. Tailwind projects read like the wall writings of a mad man, who is convinced they've discovered the secret of the Universe. And that secret is compiling absurdly large, GI…

> It is good because Tailwind actively fights the engineering choices behind the web platform, it doesn't understand them, it doesn't build on top of them in synergy and alignment, but it counteracts and nullifies them with religious fervor and zeal.

Are there any CSS frameworks that are the opposite of this?

Re: Why Tailwind CSS Won

#517
post #483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First, the site uses some weasel language to speak about how much they're "focused on performance" in such a way as you think Tailwind is literally faster than doing normal CSS. It's not. It's a heavy approach and while you can always find edge cases to the contrary, in general it leads to pages that add lag and load to people's devices. If you have a very simple page this doesn't matter, but as your site/business gr…

Reading the bloated HTML when using Tailwind is less painful than dealing with all the cascading crap of CSS.

CSS cascades whether you use Tailwind or not.

Re: Why Tailwind CSS Won

#518

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does anyone, anywhere still use Coffeescript?

Hahaha. Ok yes, there definitely are also some things that die.

First time: someone's opinion actually changed as a result of a brief Internet argument.

Re: Why Tailwind CSS Won

#519

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Boilerplate? What do you mean? Any IDE can autocomplete 90% of any media query. And, on a sidenote, I was only talking about using Tailwind's default aesthetics in pure CSS, here. That's what the 20 minutes refers to. And I think it was a conservative estimate. As for features, it took months before grid was included in Tailwind. New powerful and useful selectors aren't there. It took years for Tailwind to support "g…

What are you building where CSS and the "weight" of HTML is a real performance consideration?

Well, I'm building websites and apps.

And, as I'm sure you know, milliseconds are important in our craft. You can easily shave or add hundreds of milliseconds with HTML or CSS.

And to be honest, I find your general line of inquiry here to be quite agressive and dismissive. I think, respectfully, a little more good faith could further our understanding of each other.

Re: Why Tailwind CSS Won

#520

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're just using someone else's padding and margin classes. At least when you write your own it makes sense instead of Tailwind's alphabet soup bloat.

Not really. Tailwind lets you configure your own spacing and breakpoints. You get to pick what those numbers mean.

That's just a CSS variable. You don't need Tailwind for that.
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