Tailwind CSS: Best Frontend Library for Core UI Design Work
With dozens of frontend frameworks like Bootstrap and other alternatives you’ve got your pick of the litter. But many of those frameworks force their own styles and custom page designs.
What if there were a framework that focused mostly on the core parts of a layout? Something that doesn’t force you to use custom widgets or button styles, but gives you the foundation to create those things yourself.
Tailwind is the answer and it’s the only CSS framework of its kind giving developers this much control.
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If you visit the intro page you can read a little more about Tailwind. It’s not meant to be a competitor to Bootstrap or Foundation or anything like that.
Instead it’s a library of custom classes with abstractions to separate CSS features and styles.
This means you can build container elements with certain widths, backgrounds, drop shadows, and margins, all using Tailwind’s proprietary classes.
On the downside this can clutter up your HTML fast. On the plus side it’s a lot easier to use as a starting point for rapid prototyping.
Ultimately the goal of Tailwind is utility first. You aren’t focusing on the little aspects of the design like icon styles or color choices, or 1px margin changes between page sections.
Instead you’re focused on the practical style of your page and how to arrange elements properly. Especially for mobile screens with a growing need for responsive layouts.
Since this isn’t a custom UI framework it doesn’t have many demos to show off. Most of the demos are code-based and you’ll find those in the documentation across various topics.
You wouldn’t use Tailwind for pretty styles or easy page designs. You’d use this as a starting point to simplify your coding process.
To get started you can download a copy from GitHub and then follow their setup guide.
Tailwind does have a CDN version so technically you don’t need to download anything. Just add that file into your page and start coding.
A fun library for developers who want more control over their framework-based projects. This may not work for all your websites but Tailwind is certainly a one-of-a-kind framework.