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- Hacker News
- One approach I've been really starting to enjoy is to use use Tailwind alongside scoped styles (in Svelte and Vue). This keeps template pollution minimal while still allowing for the conveniences Tailwind brings:
<div class="counter-component"> <button @click="count++">+</button> <span class="count" :data-is-even="count % 2 === 0">{{ count }}</span> </div> <style scoped> @reference "tailwindcss" .counter-component { @apply flex items-center gap-2; button { @apply bg-gray-800 text-white; } .count { @apply italic text-teal-500; &[data-is-even="true"] { @apply text-rose-500; } } } </style>by SwiftyBug - Nice article!
I'm a fan of removing any dependencies on external libraries and writing my own solution from scratch, but there's a good reason why I decided not to do so with Tailwind: They offer an optimization for production that ensures that you never ship more than the bare minimum of CSS needed. This means you can keep your palette of color, spacing, and other options fully enumerated in `globals.css` and elsewhere, without worrying whether you're using all those variants in production. Moreover, if you're working within a framework, such as Next.js, this minimization step automatically happens when you build, without even having to worry about whether it's happening. This alone is a compelling reason, at least for me, not to migrate from Tailwind.
Also, I've never found any restrictions in Tailwind in using inline CSS that weren't readily navigable, or in implementing really nice responsive grids that handle different screen widths for instance using Tailwind's grid tooling. I definitely have solved each of the scenarios described in this article using Tailwind or a Tailwind-CSS combination, but it's true that they don't have grid-column-areas natively. Still, I haven't yet found that to be a significant restriction in getting responsive grid layouts.
I think the biggest issue with Tailwind is simply that it takes a long time to get used to reading it. We all learn that inline CSS is bad, globally scoped CSS is best, etc., and we get used to seeing clean simple HTML. Then we look at real-world code featuring Tailwind and it just looks so hard to read at first, especially because the lines are so long. I guess I just have been using it long enough that I've gotten completely used to the way it looks, but I do remember it took me a very long time to get comfortable with reading Tailwind. After a long while, I concluded that, for me, Tailwind really is more efficient and maintainable and even more readable, but it definitely took quite a bit.
by simonreiff - When an agent writes a component, the styles come along with the JSX. "flex items-center gap-4 bg-purple-600 rounded-lg" doesn’t require any mental context switch to a separate stylesheet file. Custom classes force you into a separate file for each component; utility classes keep the style information close at hand.
The other thing Tailwind stops from happening: class name bloat. In its absence, agents invent classes such as "card-header-inner", "feature-block-content", "sidebar-item-wrapper" – all separate naming choices. After a few months of development, you accumulate hundreds of classes that are not owned by anyone. The limit placed by Tailwind is in its vocabulary; there are no names to invent. This trade-off described by Julia exists. It's just articulated a bit differently.
by luodaint - I have been writing a "clean" web development guide focusing on writing HTML and CSS that scales well: https://webdev.bryanhogan.com/
Maybe it's useful for people here. I don't use Tailwind or similar for styling, just CSS with modern frameworks like Astro or Svelte.
For every project I have the following CSS files:
- reset.css
- var.css
- global.css
- util.css
Other styling is scoped to that specific component or layout.
by bryanhogan - CSS Modules are a simpler solution to cascading problems. They create unique class names, so your classes don't clash [1]. And they don't have the two main downsides of TW, which are readability [2] and tooling. Tooling for debugging and experimenting interactively with Chrome and FireFox DevTools.by efortis
- One thing that has always struck me about Tailwind is that practically every argument its proponents use more or less boils down to “I never learnt CSS beyond a junior level”. It’s super common to hear Tailwind advocates say things like “Without Tailwind, we would just have one big disorganised CSS file that always grows uncontrollably and ends up with loads of obsolete stuff in it and !important everywhere! Tailwind is so much better!”.
CSS is a skill just like any other technical skill. If all you do is learn the bare minimum so you can bodge things until you get something that looks right, then your ambitions are going to outpace your ability to keep things organised very quickly.
by JimDabell - I really, really love Julia Evans writing.
She writes from a place of vulnerability and honesty. Most people write to sound smart and she writes to say "I don't know it all but there are some things I discovered I want to share." I almost feel like she writes to share things with people she loves, even though she doesn't know them directly.
She spoke alongside Randall Munroe at the last Strange Loop (RIP). Some people waited to talk to him afterwards, but I waited to talk to her. I don't think she got my joke that she should rewrite her bash scripts into perl and for that I'm truly sorry.
by xrd - > I got curious about what writing more semantic HTML would feel like.
I've been teaching semantic HTML / accessible markup for a long time, and have worked extensively on sites and apps designed for screen readers.
The biggest problem with Tailwind is that it inverts the order that you should be thinking about HTML and CSS.
HTML is marking up the meaning of the document. You should start there. Then style with CSS. If you need extra elements for styling at that point, you might use a div or span (but you should ask yourself if there's something better first).
Tailwind instead pushes the dev into a CSS-first approach. You think about the Tailwind classes you want, and then throw yet-another-div into the DOM just to have an element to hang your classes on.
Tailwind makes you worse as a web developer from a skill standpoint, since part of your skill should be to produce future-proof readable HTML and CSS that it usable by all users and generally matches the HTML and CSS specs. But devs haven't cared about that for years, so it makes sense that Tailwind got so popular. It solved the "I'm building React components" approach to HTML and CSS authoring and codified div soup as a desirable outcome.
Tailwind clearly never cared about any of this. The opening example on Tailwind's website is nothing but divs and spans. It's proven to be a terrible education for new developers, and has contributed to the div soup that LLMs will output unless nudged and begged to do otherwise.
by TonyAlicea10