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"Build times reduced", "no more @tailwind directives", "No more js configuration", "Designed for the modern web". To me, this screams "CSS now can do everythin

"Build times reduced", "no more @tailwind directives", "No more js configuration", "Designed for the modern web". To me, this screams "CSS now can do everything we used to do ourselves, but let's keep pretending that we are still needed somehow"

bitpush 2y ago
Really!? Is that really what you got out of it? I understand you're not a fan of Tailwind, so perhaps say what you dont like about Tailwind instead of creating a strawman and attacking it. Also, shame on you for poo-pooing on someone else's open source project and people find useful.
- mc3301 2y ago
  Yeah, I tried (not so hard) to like and use tailwind, but I've been using bootstrap for so long, and for my very simple needs, bootstrap was a better choice. But I wouldn't go around saying, "tailwind is unnecessary for everyone."
  - notjoemama 2y ago
    I'm with you. Tailwind would be great if it could be SASS'd but Tailwind is a post processor and it would be silly to build a post-post processor just to make tailwind reusable. It simply isn't a good tool for large enterprise applications. Toys, home projects, sure. But then, why learn CSS twice for occasional use? Until they solve the post processor problem, I'll stick with bootstrap. But if they do, I would definitely switch. That would be the best of both worlds.
- rglullis 2y ago
  "What I don't like about Tailwind" has less to do with Tailwind itself and more about the violation of separation of content and presentation that they push so hard. > poo-pooing on someone else's open source project This is not some young kid doing free software out of kindness. This is a company making millions of dollars in revenue in a closed source product (tailwind UI), which is built on a foundation (tailwindCSS) that is becoming less and less needed.
  - yCombLinks 2y ago
    Often content and presentation are part of the same package. In these cases, separating them makes maintenance of sites harder.
  - BeetleB 2y ago
    > and more about the violation of separation of content and presentation that they push so hard. As someone who's done it both ways with web sites, that separation sucked. Having to figure out which style in my CSS file was messing things up was always a pain. And Tailwind tends to be "local" by default, limiting the damage done to other elements when I style an element. In my larger experience (not just with web sites), whether separating content and presentation is a good idea varies widely from use case to use case.
crummy 2y ago
What did you need Tailwind for before that you couldn't do in normal CSS? Doesn't Tailwind map pretty much 1:1 to CSS?
- ervine 2y ago
  Yes.
- BeetleB 2y ago
  > Doesn't Tailwind map pretty much 1:1 to CSS? Much of it does, but not all of it.
  - _heimdall 2y ago
    Do you have an example that Tailwind can do that can't be done in CSS?
    - BeetleB 2y ago
      I'm going off a claim from the Tailwind site :-) The original question wasn't whether Tailwind can do something CSS can't, but whether it was a 1:1 mapping. Can regular CSS do media queries all within the element's style attribute? I believe Tailwind also utilizes JS to get some convenience features to work.
      - _heimdall 2y ago
        Oh gotcha, I must have just misunderstood the previous comment. I want to say that tailwind also can't do inline media queries, but that's getting really nitpicky and pedantic. You can at least add a class inline that Tailwind creates a media query for in CSS, that is really handy.
      - yurishimo 2y ago
        Tailwind doesn't generate any JS at all. The final build is 100% CSS.
- rayrrr 2y ago
crooked-v 2y ago
"Basically just inline CSS, but less fiddly and much more optimizable than the style attribute" was always the selling point of Tailwind in the first place.
- rglullis 2y ago
  Then, yes. But nowadays CSS is a lot more powerful and has caught up. So why bother with Tailwind?
  - Sateeshm 2y ago
    Because of multitude of reasons. One of the big ones being never having to search through a style tag or finding a CSS file. 100% of the element styling is described in the element markup. Tailwind was never about filling gaps in CSS.
    - someothherguyy 2y ago
      That is atomic CSS, and it predates tailwind by quite a bit. There is a huge marketing push behind tailwind. If you look into who made it, you'd see it wasn't their first attempt.
  - BeetleB 2y ago
    Do you have any links describing what you mean? I'm not a CSS guru, and perhaps I know only the "old" CSS. I did recently learn Tailwind and it's way nicer than the "old" CSS. If modern CSS makes styling as easy as Tailwind does, I'd love to read about it.
  - buzzerbetrayed 2y ago
    Why do you keep saying CSS has “caught up”? Tailwind has always just mapped to CSS, so you’ve always been able to do anything in CSS that you could do in tailwind. What has CSS done that makes you see no value in Tailwind today where you used to see value?
  - jitl 2y ago
    CSS has become more confusing over time, not less confusing, so the upside of a utility class approach like Tailwind is also improving over time rather than decreasing. Tailwind solves css confusion by presenting a “paved road” for many tasks. Want to do “thing”? Just look up “thing” in the tailwind docs, add “thing-2” to your class, done in 2 minutes. Rather than look up “thing” on google, skim several articles, then write 4-10 lines of CSS, done in 30 minutes. As CSS has gotten more complexity from new capabilities, solving various tasks with it feels more and more like a research project. Like centering a div vertically and horizontally - there’s now 3-4 generations of solutions for this task: 1. Hacky stuff with position: absolute or floats 2. Flexbox approach. Hope you remember the 6 different attributes you need to set! Oh, there’s a new shorthand for flex now? Cool! More stuff to learn. 3. Grid approach. There are a bunch of different ways to structure a grid centering approach. Hope you remember how grid templates work! With tailwind, just add 2 classes, done.
crowcroft 2y ago
If you going to hate on it, at least try understand what it is and why people use it.
- rglullis 2y ago
  It's not "hate". It's just that I don't see the value that it brings today.
  - ervine 2y ago
    Whether you enjoy utility classes isn't really related at all to what css supports.
    - rglullis 2y ago
      Maybe you are making my point? If tailwind was "just utility classes", fine. But what business would it be there if they just published a bunch of CSS files with their styles? With modern CSS, what problem are they really solving now?
      - kyleyeats 2y ago
        As someone who made a competing product along these lines (that got no attention or traction): Tailwind gives CSS a "place" in the codebase. It benefits orgs, not necessarily apps. I didn't get it at first either. But it's very useful to the people to whom it's useful.
        rglullis 2y ago
        > Tailwind gives CSS a "place" in the codebase. It benefits orgs, not necessarily apps. That is a better argument. But couldn't we be able to achieve that by, e.g: - Create one standard HTML document with a predefined structure and including all the web components needed by your product. - Having all designers and frontend developers developing their CSS (or SCSS) against this single base document This would be basically the CSS Zen Garden approach. It would still keep separation of content and styling and it would create a "place" for styling code.

bitpush 2y ago

Really!? Is that really what you got out of it? I understand you're not a fan of Tailwind, so perhaps say what you dont like about Tailwind instead of creating a strawman and attacking it. Also, shame on you for poo-pooing on someone else's open source project and people find useful.

mc3301 2y ago
Yeah, I tried (not so hard) to like and use tailwind, but I've been using bootstrap for so long, and for my very simple needs, bootstrap was a better choice. But I wouldn't go around saying, "tailwind is unnecessary for everyone."
- notjoemama 2y ago
  I'm with you. Tailwind would be great if it could be SASS'd but Tailwind is a post processor and it would be silly to build a post-post processor just to make tailwind reusable. It simply isn't a good tool for large enterprise applications. Toys, home projects, sure. But then, why learn CSS twice for occasional use? Until they solve the post processor problem, I'll stick with bootstrap. But if they do, I would definitely switch. That would be the best of both worlds.
rglullis 2y ago
"What I don't like about Tailwind" has less to do with Tailwind itself and more about the violation of separation of content and presentation that they push so hard. > poo-pooing on someone else's open source project This is not some young kid doing free software out of kindness. This is a company making millions of dollars in revenue in a closed source product (tailwind UI), which is built on a foundation (tailwindCSS) that is becoming less and less needed.
- yCombLinks 2y ago
  Often content and presentation are part of the same package. In these cases, separating them makes maintenance of sites harder.
- BeetleB 2y ago
  > and more about the violation of separation of content and presentation that they push so hard. As someone who's done it both ways with web sites, that separation sucked. Having to figure out which style in my CSS file was messing things up was always a pain. And Tailwind tends to be "local" by default, limiting the damage done to other elements when I style an element. In my larger experience (not just with web sites), whether separating content and presentation is a good idea varies widely from use case to use case.

crummy 2y ago

What did you need Tailwind for before that you couldn't do in normal CSS? Doesn't Tailwind map pretty much 1:1 to CSS?

ervine 2y ago
Yes.
BeetleB 2y ago
> Doesn't Tailwind map pretty much 1:1 to CSS? Much of it does, but not all of it.
- _heimdall 2y ago
  Do you have an example that Tailwind can do that can't be done in CSS?
  - BeetleB 2y ago
    I'm going off a claim from the Tailwind site :-) The original question wasn't whether Tailwind can do something CSS can't, but whether it was a 1:1 mapping. Can regular CSS do media queries all within the element's style attribute? I believe Tailwind also utilizes JS to get some convenience features to work.
    - _heimdall 2y ago
      Oh gotcha, I must have just misunderstood the previous comment. I want to say that tailwind also can't do inline media queries, but that's getting really nitpicky and pedantic. You can at least add a class inline that Tailwind creates a media query for in CSS, that is really handy.
    - yurishimo 2y ago
      Tailwind doesn't generate any JS at all. The final build is 100% CSS.
rayrrr 2y ago

crooked-v 2y ago

"Basically just inline CSS, but less fiddly and much more optimizable than the style attribute" was always the selling point of Tailwind in the first place.

rglullis 2y ago
Then, yes. But nowadays CSS is a lot more powerful and has caught up. So why bother with Tailwind?
- Sateeshm 2y ago
  Because of multitude of reasons. One of the big ones being never having to search through a style tag or finding a CSS file. 100% of the element styling is described in the element markup. Tailwind was never about filling gaps in CSS.
  - someothherguyy 2y ago
    That is atomic CSS, and it predates tailwind by quite a bit. There is a huge marketing push behind tailwind. If you look into who made it, you'd see it wasn't their first attempt.
- BeetleB 2y ago
  Do you have any links describing what you mean? I'm not a CSS guru, and perhaps I know only the "old" CSS. I did recently learn Tailwind and it's way nicer than the "old" CSS. If modern CSS makes styling as easy as Tailwind does, I'd love to read about it.
- buzzerbetrayed 2y ago
  Why do you keep saying CSS has “caught up”? Tailwind has always just mapped to CSS, so you’ve always been able to do anything in CSS that you could do in tailwind. What has CSS done that makes you see no value in Tailwind today where you used to see value?
- jitl 2y ago
  CSS has become more confusing over time, not less confusing, so the upside of a utility class approach like Tailwind is also improving over time rather than decreasing. Tailwind solves css confusion by presenting a “paved road” for many tasks. Want to do “thing”? Just look up “thing” in the tailwind docs, add “thing-2” to your class, done in 2 minutes. Rather than look up “thing” on google, skim several articles, then write 4-10 lines of CSS, done in 30 minutes. As CSS has gotten more complexity from new capabilities, solving various tasks with it feels more and more like a research project. Like centering a div vertically and horizontally - there’s now 3-4 generations of solutions for this task: 1. Hacky stuff with position: absolute or floats 2. Flexbox approach. Hope you remember the 6 different attributes you need to set! Oh, there’s a new shorthand for flex now? Cool! More stuff to learn. 3. Grid approach. There are a bunch of different ways to structure a grid centering approach. Hope you remember how grid templates work! With tailwind, just add 2 classes, done.

crowcroft 2y ago

If you going to hate on it, at least try understand what it is and why people use it.

rglullis 2y ago
It's not "hate". It's just that I don't see the value that it brings today.
- ervine 2y ago
  Whether you enjoy utility classes isn't really related at all to what css supports.
  - rglullis 2y ago
    Maybe you are making my point? If tailwind was "just utility classes", fine. But what business would it be there if they just published a bunch of CSS files with their styles? With modern CSS, what problem are they really solving now?
    - kyleyeats 2y ago
      As someone who made a competing product along these lines (that got no attention or traction): Tailwind gives CSS a "place" in the codebase. It benefits orgs, not necessarily apps. I didn't get it at first either. But it's very useful to the people to whom it's useful.
      - rglullis 2y ago
        > Tailwind gives CSS a "place" in the codebase. It benefits orgs, not necessarily apps. That is a better argument. But couldn't we be able to achieve that by, e.g: - Create one standard HTML document with a predefined structure and including all the web components needed by your product. - Having all designers and frontend developers developing their CSS (or SCSS) against this single base document This would be basically the CSS Zen Garden approach. It would still keep separation of content and styling and it would create a "place" for styling code.