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I'm a huge proponent of Tailwind. What I tell people is to ignore their gut impression and just try it out. Equivalently, my first impression of HTMX is that I

I'm a huge proponent of Tailwind. What I tell people is to ignore their gut impression and just try it out. Equivalently, my first impression of HTMX is that I kind of hate it. But I could see it being similar to Tailwind, where you just need to try it out and then it'll click. Is that fair to say?

mathgladiator 4y ago
I second Tailwind as I can't stand complexity, so I'm trying to simplify the entire stack down for _just_ my needs. Tailwind is a big part of simplifying my life. The other part is that I'm trying to simply "fix HTML", and I believe HTMX is pretty great. I'm taking a different approach as I have a reactive backend, and I can make the HTML simply be a template of a streaming JSON object. It's like mustache with reactive data binding. I'm enjoying, but I'm not a consultancy so I don't need to push the framework for every usecase.
joshlemer 4y ago
I've tried Tailwind, and as a back end dev who only really understands the basics of CSS I find it a bit overwhelming and open ended. Seems it's designed for people with already a really deep knowledge of CSS who can could create beautiful components with it if they wanted but for whom hooking up the CSS to the components is painful. If you aren't good enough to create components with CSS in the first place, seems better to stick with things like bootstrap/bulma no?
- danielvaughn 4y ago
  100%, absolutely. It’s not an abstraction of CSS; if you don’t know the language already then it won’t help. But if you do, then it improves your productivity dramatically. If you’re in a scenario where you’re tasked with building out UI, but don’t have design or FE skills, my recommendation would be something like bootstrap or MUI.
- jp_sc 4y ago
  Or you can use tailwind-ui components that look way more polished. Another big advantage of the Tailwind approach is that you can copy any component you see on the web, paste it in your project, and it will look the same (unless custom classes are used). No need to hunt down and adapt the whole cascade of styles for each tag. In that sense, Tailwind has some of the earlier-Internet charm where you learned by seeing what others were doing.
  - danielvaughn 4y ago
    True, it does cost money but it's by far the most flexible approach long term. I've been on the fence about buying it, but I'm super tempted.
thiht 4y ago
Agree. The idea of Tailwind just feels wrong because it goes at the opposite of everything we can believe regarding content/style separation. But the fact is, it's amazing to use. Maybe it's not for everyone, but it really is worth a try, with an open mind.
- danielvaughn 4y ago
  It’s such a cool experience - actively disregarding well-established principles that have been in place for 20 years…only to have it fix nearly everything that I hate about CSS.
decross 4y ago
For me, it clicked immediately. It is a simple way to partial updates of the UI, without having to worry about a ton of tooling. It also pushes most of the logic to the backend, which is nice. It also constrains some of the UX decisions, leaving less room for useless craziness.

mathgladiator 4y ago

I second Tailwind as I can't stand complexity, so I'm trying to simplify the entire stack down for _just_ my needs. Tailwind is a big part of simplifying my life. The other part is that I'm trying to simply "fix HTML", and I believe HTMX is pretty great. I'm taking a different approach as I have a reactive backend, and I can make the HTML simply be a template of a streaming JSON object. It's like mustache with reactive data binding. I'm enjoying, but I'm not a consultancy so I don't need to push the framework for every usecase.

joshlemer 4y ago

I've tried Tailwind, and as a back end dev who only really understands the basics of CSS I find it a bit overwhelming and open ended. Seems it's designed for people with already a really deep knowledge of CSS who can could create beautiful components with it if they wanted but for whom hooking up the CSS to the components is painful. If you aren't good enough to create components with CSS in the first place, seems better to stick with things like bootstrap/bulma no?

danielvaughn 4y ago
100%, absolutely. It’s not an abstraction of CSS; if you don’t know the language already then it won’t help. But if you do, then it improves your productivity dramatically. If you’re in a scenario where you’re tasked with building out UI, but don’t have design or FE skills, my recommendation would be something like bootstrap or MUI.
jp_sc 4y ago
Or you can use tailwind-ui components that look way more polished. Another big advantage of the Tailwind approach is that you can copy any component you see on the web, paste it in your project, and it will look the same (unless custom classes are used). No need to hunt down and adapt the whole cascade of styles for each tag. In that sense, Tailwind has some of the earlier-Internet charm where you learned by seeing what others were doing.
- danielvaughn 4y ago
  True, it does cost money but it's by far the most flexible approach long term. I've been on the fence about buying it, but I'm super tempted.

thiht 4y ago

Agree. The idea of Tailwind just feels wrong because it goes at the opposite of everything we can believe regarding content/style separation. But the fact is, it's amazing to use. Maybe it's not for everyone, but it really is worth a try, with an open mind.

danielvaughn 4y ago
It’s such a cool experience - actively disregarding well-established principles that have been in place for 20 years…only to have it fix nearly everything that I hate about CSS.

decross 4y ago

For me, it clicked immediately. It is a simple way to partial updates of the UI, without having to worry about a ton of tooling. It also pushes most of the logic to the backend, which is nice. It also constrains some of the UX decisions, leaving less room for useless craziness.