4 ms·

I just wonder if this means every single site will look the same. The UI is already very heavily inspired by Stripe's UI, which is ok because it looks awesome.

by nickjj 7y ago

I just wonder if this means every single site will look the same. The UI is already very heavily inspired by Stripe's UI, which is ok because it looks awesome. But if this product is targeted towards non-designer developers who want to make nice UIs quickly, that means using the components as is with little modification. In order to really customize things to the point where it looks unique would require being a designer in which case, you probably have your own components already. And since it's closed source, we likely won't see a huge influx of custom looks to these components like we do with Bootstrap. I hope Adam addresses that by eventually making multiple variants of each component in each kit so we have some variation. Even just a few well tested color palettes would help initially.

dan1234 7y ago
Even if everyone bought the cheapest deal ($149), $500k in sales works out at around 3,300 orders, which isn’t really a large number of devs.
- cglace 7y ago
  And how many of those are going to actually going to have something that makes into production? Probably less than half.
dchuk 7y ago
Is that necessarily a bad thing? If it means every site has clean, consistent UI/UX at the expense of originality, that’s not the worst trade off.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
pier25 7y ago
> I just wonder if this means every single site will look the same. It's weird because in the web world we expect sites to look different and have a unique look and feel. But in the native world (mobile and desktop) devs are lauded when using native OS GUIs. I've often wondered if browsers should ship a standard UI kit with everything taken into consideration (performance, accessibility, etc).
- karatestomp 7y ago
  > I've often wondered if browsers should ship a standard UI kit with everything taken into consideration (performance, accessibility, etc). Since it's 2020 and we're now, what, 15 years into the whole "webapp" thing, yes, we're at least five years overdue to have an actual decent-looking well-functioning application UI library shipped with browsers so we can stop burning so much damn money re-inventing yet another shitty non-a11y-friendly broken-on-some-browsers fundamental UI widget all the time.
  - charliepark 7y ago
    I’m not sure what the status / velocity is like on this, but Google and Microsoft are both working on improving Chromium’s default elements, both on aesthetic and usability grounds. Here’s a video from November ’19 about it: https://youtu.be/ZFvPLrKZywA https://youtu.be/ZFvPLrKZywA
- _bxg1 7y ago
  > I've often wondered if browsers should ship a standard UI kit with everything taken into consideration (performance, accessibility, etc). They do, it's called HTML :) Jokes aside, native HTML obviously isn't enough by itself anymore. But I think that's because it's been neglected, not because things have to be that way. IMO there are two ways it would need to change to compete with these libraries: - A makeover. By 2020 standards, your website is ugly if you don't start from the get-go with a heap of CSS. But it probably doesn't need to be. - Native reactivity. This is something that would benefit everybody. Why in the world do we still need third-party Virtual DOMs implemented in JavaScript when reactivity has so clearly been established as a paradigm? Why don't we have a browser API implemented in C++ for reactive rendering of HTML templates?
  - pier25 7y ago
    > Native reactivity Yeah I've been saying this for years. We need native reactivity and data binding. We'd save so many CPU cycles and bandwidth.
masonhensley 7y ago
> really customize things to the point where it looks unique Why? I'd argue most UI/UX missteps stem from the ego (designer, engineer, executive) to want something unique. If anything, there should be more of a convergence on best practices. Users won't have to relearn "the basics" in every app and everyone can focus on real problems.
- nickjj 7y ago
  I don't think it's 100% ego. A website IMO is more than just UI elements placed in a particular place. It's you or your company's identity. In a way, maybe it's related to clothing. Your site portrays your personality, or at least what you want others to think about you or your company. Following the clothes analogy, there is room for best practices and standard things to take place while having many different unique styles. For example, you're probably not going to walk around wearing a desk that has cut outs for your limbs and is suspended by ropes. No, we have best practices like shirts, pants, shoes and other things. But when you combine those things with varying materials and colors you end up with a completely different look while adhering to standards. Maybe you could say a unique identity is a byproduct of ego and maybe it is but that's how people are. Otherwise we would all be wearing the same global uniform and eating the same food every day. Long story short, there's plenty of room to stick with UI best practices while having a unique look, but you need to find tools that support customizing that look or find a designer who knows how to do it.
  - karatestomp 7y ago
    It is definitely true that many product owners and designers are very sure (or, at least, say they are very sure) that having the color, shape/form(!) & behavior(!?) of the form elements in their applications be on-brand is super important.
  - masonhensley 7y ago
    I'd argue that best practices often get overlooked in the search for putting one's mark on things & designers and engineers can often be bullied into capitulating. I'm not advocating a sterile one size fits all grey dystopian outfit equivalent for everyone. But when you look at the landscape of software, I'd argue that teams forget what the equivalent concepts of what pockets or zippers are. Similar to how many orgs will spend $100k's to have a half baked mobile app when a web app or off the shelf CMS would not only suffice but be a better solution for the end users's needs. Point being - get the basics right, leverage the immense value that's been provided by the open source community and then & only then do you start redecorating.
joshmanders 7y ago
I'd like to point out a few things. 1. Tailwind UI is built on top of Tailwind CSS, Tailwind CSS is not closed source. Tailwind UI does ship with a plugin to Tailwind CSS that adds a bit of extra customizations on top, but not much, and even still that is open source. B. Tailwind UI is a collection of components built on top of Tailwind CSS, the beauty of Tailwind CSS is that it's easily customizable, sure you can copy and paste these components into your app, but they are sooo easily customized that you just change `bg-blue-700` with whatever color you want your app to be and boom, it's different. Without the headaches of most other UI frameworks like Bootstrap. III: I maintain Awesome Tailwind CSS project (https://git.io/awesome-tailwindcss https://git.io/awesome-tailwindcss) and we have a section for sites & apps built in Tailwind. I review all sites to make sure they are indeed built in Tailwind, and honestly, I have to view source and read CSS class names to make sure they are Tailwind because it's not easy to tell from the look of the site.

by nickjj 7y ago

dan1234 7y ago

Even if everyone bought the cheapest deal ($149), $500k in sales works out at around 3,300 orders, which isn’t really a large number of devs.

cglace 7y ago
And how many of those are going to actually going to have something that makes into production? Probably less than half.

dchuk 7y ago

Is that necessarily a bad thing? If it means every site has clean, consistent UI/UX at the expense of originality, that’s not the worst trade off.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

pier25 7y ago

> I just wonder if this means every single site will look the same. It's weird because in the web world we expect sites to look different and have a unique look and feel. But in the native world (mobile and desktop) devs are lauded when using native OS GUIs. I've often wondered if browsers should ship a standard UI kit with everything taken into consideration (performance, accessibility, etc).

karatestomp 7y ago
> I've often wondered if browsers should ship a standard UI kit with everything taken into consideration (performance, accessibility, etc). Since it's 2020 and we're now, what, 15 years into the whole "webapp" thing, yes, we're at least five years overdue to have an actual decent-looking well-functioning application UI library shipped with browsers so we can stop burning so much damn money re-inventing yet another shitty non-a11y-friendly broken-on-some-browsers fundamental UI widget all the time.
- charliepark 7y ago
  I’m not sure what the status / velocity is like on this, but Google and Microsoft are both working on improving Chromium’s default elements, both on aesthetic and usability grounds. Here’s a video from November ’19 about it: https://youtu.be/ZFvPLrKZywA https://youtu.be/ZFvPLrKZywA
_bxg1 7y ago
> I've often wondered if browsers should ship a standard UI kit with everything taken into consideration (performance, accessibility, etc). They do, it's called HTML :) Jokes aside, native HTML obviously isn't enough by itself anymore. But I think that's because it's been neglected, not because things have to be that way. IMO there are two ways it would need to change to compete with these libraries: - A makeover. By 2020 standards, your website is ugly if you don't start from the get-go with a heap of CSS. But it probably doesn't need to be. - Native reactivity. This is something that would benefit everybody. Why in the world do we still need third-party Virtual DOMs implemented in JavaScript when reactivity has so clearly been established as a paradigm? Why don't we have a browser API implemented in C++ for reactive rendering of HTML templates?
- pier25 7y ago
  > Native reactivity Yeah I've been saying this for years. We need native reactivity and data binding. We'd save so many CPU cycles and bandwidth.

masonhensley 7y ago

> really customize things to the point where it looks unique Why? I'd argue most UI/UX missteps stem from the ego (designer, engineer, executive) to want something unique. If anything, there should be more of a convergence on best practices. Users won't have to relearn "the basics" in every app and everyone can focus on real problems.

nickjj 7y ago
I don't think it's 100% ego. A website IMO is more than just UI elements placed in a particular place. It's you or your company's identity. In a way, maybe it's related to clothing. Your site portrays your personality, or at least what you want others to think about you or your company. Following the clothes analogy, there is room for best practices and standard things to take place while having many different unique styles. For example, you're probably not going to walk around wearing a desk that has cut outs for your limbs and is suspended by ropes. No, we have best practices like shirts, pants, shoes and other things. But when you combine those things with varying materials and colors you end up with a completely different look while adhering to standards. Maybe you could say a unique identity is a byproduct of ego and maybe it is but that's how people are. Otherwise we would all be wearing the same global uniform and eating the same food every day. Long story short, there's plenty of room to stick with UI best practices while having a unique look, but you need to find tools that support customizing that look or find a designer who knows how to do it.
- karatestomp 7y ago
  It is definitely true that many product owners and designers are very sure (or, at least, say they are very sure) that having the color, shape/form(!) & behavior(!?) of the form elements in their applications be on-brand is super important.
- masonhensley 7y ago
  I'd argue that best practices often get overlooked in the search for putting one's mark on things & designers and engineers can often be bullied into capitulating. I'm not advocating a sterile one size fits all grey dystopian outfit equivalent for everyone. But when you look at the landscape of software, I'd argue that teams forget what the equivalent concepts of what pockets or zippers are. Similar to how many orgs will spend $100k's to have a half baked mobile app when a web app or off the shelf CMS would not only suffice but be a better solution for the end users's needs. Point being - get the basics right, leverage the immense value that's been provided by the open source community and then & only then do you start redecorating.

joshmanders 7y ago

I'd like to point out a few things. 1. Tailwind UI is built on top of Tailwind CSS, Tailwind CSS is not closed source. Tailwind UI does ship with a plugin to Tailwind CSS that adds a bit of extra customizations on top, but not much, and even still that is open source. B. Tailwind UI is a collection of components built on top of Tailwind CSS, the beauty of Tailwind CSS is that it's easily customizable, sure you can copy and paste these components into your app, but they are sooo easily customized that you just change `bg-blue-700` with whatever color you want your app to be and boom, it's different. Without the headaches of most other UI frameworks like Bootstrap. III: I maintain Awesome Tailwind CSS project (https://git.io/awesome-tailwindcss https://git.io/awesome-tailwindcss) and we have a section for sites & apps built in Tailwind. I review all sites to make sure they are indeed built in Tailwind, and honestly, I have to view source and read CSS class names to make sure they are Tailwind because it's not easy to tell from the look of the site.