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How do you guys feel about tailwind? I’ve been using it on some side projects. It feels ok, but I’m constantly looking up stuff in the tailwind docs. CSS I alre

How do you guys feel about tailwind? I’ve been using it on some side projects. It feels ok, but I’m constantly looking up stuff in the tailwind docs. CSS I already am pretty confortable with. I think it’s an improvement, but not by as much as I thought.

jakelazaroff 3y ago
I've been using it at work for just over a year. I don't like it. I still need to constantly reference the Tailwind docs for most non-trivial properties. It flat-out doesn't support some things I need. It produces giant blocks of difficult-to-scan HTML. Chunks of common styles end up repeated. The problems it purports to solve are better solved in other ways, such as CSS modules. Ultimately, I don't begrudge people for using whatever tool they find best. But I try to avoid Tailwind when given the choice.
- leetrout 3y ago
  > It flat-out doesn't support some things I need Can you share some of those? I don't do much raw CSS so have no idea where it has gaps.
  - jakelazaroff 3y ago
    One example is rotation along axes other than Z, which is required for 3D transforms. Here's a two year old issue on it: https://github.com/tailwindlabs/tailwindcss/discussions/3521 https://github.com/tailwindlabs/tailwindcss/discussions/3521 Another is attribute selector support. They have many common ones, but to do anything more complex you need to add support to your configuration. https://tailwindcss.com/docs/hover-focus-and-other-states#attribute-selectors https://tailwindcss.com/docs/hover-focus-and-other-states#at... I don't want to oversell this; I think Tailwind does a pretty good job covering the "happy path", and if you haven't run into any gaps I wouldn't worry about it too much. But you'll encounter its limits well before you encounter the limits of CSS.
lawn 3y ago
Nah, it's not an improvement for me. It's an abstraction, but a poor one. It's too low-level to be truly useful, and it's also confusing as some properties doesn't mean the same as in CSS. You end up with huge unreadable blobs, reminding me of the "write-only" label that Perl once used to have. And the answer to avoid that unreadable blob is to include CSS, defeating the point. I prefer CSS/SASS with variables for customization (so you don't have to repeat the blobs) and well-chosen class names (so you can actually read and modify existing code).
hnrodey 3y ago
I was quite hesitant to jump into Tailwind. I've tried it in the past few months and quite like using it. I do have to refer to the docs a lot but that is okay because I think they're docs are quite usable. I miss some of the already established components from Bootstrap, but whatever. Bootstrap is always kind of a pain in the butt to integrate into a project.

jakelazaroff 3y ago

I've been using it at work for just over a year. I don't like it. I still need to constantly reference the Tailwind docs for most non-trivial properties. It flat-out doesn't support some things I need. It produces giant blocks of difficult-to-scan HTML. Chunks of common styles end up repeated. The problems it purports to solve are better solved in other ways, such as CSS modules. Ultimately, I don't begrudge people for using whatever tool they find best. But I try to avoid Tailwind when given the choice.

leetrout 3y ago
> It flat-out doesn't support some things I need Can you share some of those? I don't do much raw CSS so have no idea where it has gaps.
- jakelazaroff 3y ago
  One example is rotation along axes other than Z, which is required for 3D transforms. Here's a two year old issue on it: https://github.com/tailwindlabs/tailwindcss/discussions/3521 https://github.com/tailwindlabs/tailwindcss/discussions/3521 Another is attribute selector support. They have many common ones, but to do anything more complex you need to add support to your configuration. https://tailwindcss.com/docs/hover-focus-and-other-states#attribute-selectors https://tailwindcss.com/docs/hover-focus-and-other-states#at... I don't want to oversell this; I think Tailwind does a pretty good job covering the "happy path", and if you haven't run into any gaps I wouldn't worry about it too much. But you'll encounter its limits well before you encounter the limits of CSS.

lawn 3y ago

Nah, it's not an improvement for me. It's an abstraction, but a poor one. It's too low-level to be truly useful, and it's also confusing as some properties doesn't mean the same as in CSS. You end up with huge unreadable blobs, reminding me of the "write-only" label that Perl once used to have. And the answer to avoid that unreadable blob is to include CSS, defeating the point. I prefer CSS/SASS with variables for customization (so you don't have to repeat the blobs) and well-chosen class names (so you can actually read and modify existing code).

hnrodey 3y ago

I was quite hesitant to jump into Tailwind. I've tried it in the past few months and quite like using it. I do have to refer to the docs a lot but that is okay because I think they're docs are quite usable. I miss some of the already established components from Bootstrap, but whatever. Bootstrap is always kind of a pain in the butt to integrate into a project.