Discussion on "My honest opinion on Tailwind CSS"

Chris Bongers · 2021-11-26T05:35:01.404Z

I've written quite a few articles about Tailwind CSS and would really like to give my honest opinion about it. There seems to be a big divide between those loving Tailwind and those not loving it. Which is fine, eventually it's all up to someone what...

It's a great article. I'm a backend developer planning to learn CSS framework should I go for it?

I would agree with your statement that anyone with less than a medium level of experience with CSS should not use it. Learning CSS first is definitely important if you plan to make any real progress in your personal growth.

Personally though, I just can't get passed the mess of classes. Yes, I know you can use apply, while that remove the mess from the HTML, it just relocates it to the CSS. It's still a mess. Seems like a real maintainability nightmare. Maybe in small to medium websites that won't be updated often, Tailwind could help to speed up development. But for larger apps that are in continuous development, Tailwind seems like a real headache

Are you using components?

Because if you are this argument is completely gone. We use it at a large scale over at daily and never had any headaches around tailwind.

I would agree if you re-use and have to modify it in multiple places it's one big mess.

Hence it really thrives in component based systems.

I have been a user of Foundation since 2015. It seems to do everything Tailwind does and more. So not sure what the big deal with Tailwind is. Seems late to the responsive CSS framework party. I guess new beats proven these days.

Not at all Bruce, I think you might have missed the premise of Tailwind then.

Foundation much like Bootstrap is a framework, it gives you a flavoured style packages.

Like your <Card> component, it's ready made.

In tailwind we only get utility classes giving us more freedom and less overhead.

Saying this, nothing wrong with Foundation, or Bootstrap, it just serves different purposes.

Great piece.

IMHO, Tailwind looks to more relevant while developing with a JavaScript UI Framework/Library. What is your say about that?

It's more powerful when using component based frameworks. But even in plain HTML is can make a difference.

Chris Bongers

I just don't know if its my computer or something but it installs successfully and gives me an error when I run $npm start command.

I was installing it for React and I followed the official documentation.

Have you ever encountered tailwindcss not found by craco

I have been using Tailwind recently and I can confirm this: Having intermediate knowledge of CSS3 is a must if you want to use Tailwind.

I had to brush up on transform/translate properties because it was difficult to understand them. A

Glad you agree on that one!

Great content Chris! I can see why Tailwind css is now demanded more as a skill in most companies.

Yep! it's in very high demand. Def worth picking up

Another great Article a few things i don't entirely agree with but i suppose its personal opinions. the main thing for me was the "medium CSS" knowledge... for me it was a complete flip... i was useless with normal CSS and still am to a certain degree... BUT using tailwind and trouble shooting my issues etc i was able to see the CSS Behind the classes and learn a bit of CSS. I'm now happy enough that i can extend my tailwind config to include normal CSS which done with a few components on my log.

The responsiveness of Tailwind for Mobile Dev etc is just a dream so far i cant fault it.

another resource to add to your list is

https://www.wickedtemplates.com/ https://wickedblocks.dev/

i use both of these websites for my blog even though i have access to a tailwind UI account, the resources on those sites are incredible

Thanks for this Mike 🤘

I personally really think a good understanding of CSS will help. Else people will adopt wrong use-cases for solutions. *(but this is very opinionated)

Thanks for the extra resources! Need to take a moment to update them :D

Thanks for sharing Chris Bongers

Thanks man! 🙏🎉

I really love the way you explained it, simple & useful. I like Tailwind but didn't use it till now. Thank you for the great article.

Thanks Zahab! 🎉🎉🎉

Thanks for sharing your opinions chris🙌 I find tailwind amazing with responsiveness and web3 project quick prototyping is booting the use 🔥

Thank you chris for sharing this with community. We use tailwind a lot in our open source project open-metadata.

That's great to hear Sachin! And lovely to see it's being well used.

You are right one should have good understanding of vanilla CSS already before diving into tailwind else it will just confuse them. It's different from libraries like bootstrap where you learn mostly bootstrap specific things, but tailwind sometimes forces you to refresh your existing CSS knowledge as well.

Thanks for the article, great study :)

100% I do think some people make that mistake and think tailwind sucks because of that.

It's not a tool to make you understand CSS, rather a tool to speed up CSS writing.

Great Blog . I would suggest this website . Plz do add it.

tailblocks.cc

Which website is this? Can't see it in your comment

I just love Tailwind, it is easy to use and very intuitive once you get the hang of it. Thanks for sharing your insights, Chris! :)

Indeed!

Once you know what you want, it's a breeze to setup something complex.

I love tailwind for quick projects, however, it looks so messy with a bunch of classes in my UI repo. :(

You could use PurgeCSS to clean the classes you're not using ;)

If you use a component based library it's not so bad. And like Regis suggest the purge is super handy to cleanout classes not being used in the end page.

Defo get purging.... i found my CSS files were nearly 16mb during dev..... then when i npm run prod it strips out any classes not used in my pages... my CSS files are now around 100kb.....

Thank you for sharing Chris.

The ease of doing responsive layouts in tailwind is what I like most about it.

Yep 100% responsive and color use is so much needed for a person like me

Nice to finally read someone's opinion with reasonable points Chris Bongers.

Most of the time I see articles that will either praise a framework/library or talk trash about it. Or in other cases they can be too general which doesn't help to make a decision...

Thanks!

Glad you find so. I always think, what would I like to read when writing these kind of articles.

And to be completely honest I was really anti tailwind in the beginning 😂

Great study, Chris. Thanks for sharing. The mobile-first approach of Tailwind I appreciate a lot.

Thanks Tapas!

And for sure the mobile first helps me a lot in making decision of how certain elements should render.

Chris Bongers Right, I realized it best while building my website 🙂

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My honest opinion on Tailwind CSS

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