We went down a similar path (using Hotwire, non the less!) and got to many of the same conclusions. It is impressive to see what CSS does and how many of the headaches are gone and :has is very powerful.
Alas, after several months we tore it all out and went back to React+Tailwind.
We still use native HTML popovers and :has selectors and other things we've have learned.
But writing UIs across three files (template, stimulus controllers, css) is such a tremendous bore. Concepts that belong together are spread out and I needed to be diligent with placing attributes and classes and remember to remove them all when removing functionality again. Obviously no compile-time checks, just magic strings and runtime errors. The Hotwire docs were also surprisingly hard to work with. All in all a lot of friction.
This just was not worth it.
inb4 rage, it is possible to use React for the UI alone and pass in fully formed view models, use form submissions and links.
I like the idea of using vanilla CSS for my personal website but, not being a designer, making something that looks good from nothing is difficult. I've looked at some templates to get started with but they are generally a mess of a million classes I don't need
I'm curious about this. I'm not a frontend engineer but enjoy tinkering on simple frontend UIs for my hobby projects, and I've found Tailwind nice for creating encapsulated components more easily. It's funny that it skips the entire cascading part of Cascading Style Sheets though. Are there major downsides besides that?
Yeah think it’s best to push html css js to the limit & avoid frameworks unless obviously needed. They’re just such a rabbit hole of complexity fragility and lately supply chain risk
We went down a similar path (using Hotwire, non the less!) and got to many of the same conclusions. It is impressive to see what CSS does and how many of the headaches are gone and :has is very powerful.
Alas, after several months we tore it all out and went back to React+Tailwind.
We still use native HTML popovers and :has selectors and other things we've have learned.
But writing UIs across three files (template, stimulus controllers, css) is such a tremendous bore. Concepts that belong together are spread out and I needed to be diligent with placing attributes and classes and remember to remove them all when removing functionality again. Obviously no compile-time checks, just magic strings and runtime errors. The Hotwire docs were also surprisingly hard to work with. All in all a lot of friction.
This just was not worth it.
inb4 rage, it is possible to use React for the UI alone and pass in fully formed view models, use form submissions and links.
I mostly agree. I prefer vanilla CSS to frameworks but I find a lot of value in CSS modules.
In particular I use:
1. The `composes` feature to do something like base classes.
2. The import feature to get something like namespacing.
Given the recent advancements in CSS, I won’t be surprised if they eventually build something like `composes` into the base language.
The namespacing seems more like an artifact of how you package your website and how you stay organized within your package system (I use webpack).
I like the idea of using vanilla CSS for my personal website but, not being a designer, making something that looks good from nothing is difficult. I've looked at some templates to get started with but they are generally a mess of a million classes I don't need
>let me be clear: there is nothing wrong with Tailwind
But there is.
I'm curious about this. I'm not a frontend engineer but enjoy tinkering on simple frontend UIs for my hobby projects, and I've found Tailwind nice for creating encapsulated components more easily. It's funny that it skips the entire cascading part of Cascading Style Sheets though. Are there major downsides besides that?
Yeah think it’s best to push html css js to the limit & avoid frameworks unless obviously needed. They’re just such a rabbit hole of complexity fragility and lately supply chain risk
I used to be like this, until I realized Tailwind makes me faster.