pico VS astro

picocss/pico - Minimal CSS Framework for semantic HTML

Tailwind is great, but creating everything from scratch is annoying. A nice base of components which can be extended with tailwind would be great. There are a few tailwind frameworks like Flowbite, Daisy Ui, but I like Bulma, PicoCSS and Bootstrap.

Modern CSS stylesheets include configurability via CSS variables on the root element so maybe that's where the "framework" comes from.

Also note: This project looks like an even more minimized version of PicoCSS [1]

[1] https://picocss.com/

The templates grabs Markdown file data with XMLHttpRequest and converts it to HTML with https://showdownjs.com/ . Classless styles are done with https://picocss.com/ and code block syntax highlighting is done with https://highlightjs.org/ .

GitHub repo: https://github.com/dandalpiaz/markdown-pages

This is exactly why I love HTMX [1] in combination with PicoCSS[2]. HTMX is just the regular html elements with ajax extensions built into the tags (it is a js library currently but they plan on lobbying to have these as default functionalities with HTML in the future) and picoCSS also works without classes so you are "trained" to use the semantic tags for the page to be rendered beautifully

[1] https://htmx.org/

[2] https://picocss.com/

/*! * Minimal theme switcher * * Pico.css - https://picocss.com * Copyright 2019-2023 - Licensed under MIT */ /** * Minimal theme switcher * * @namespace * @typedef {Object} ThemeSwitcher * @property {string} _scheme - The current color scheme ("auto", "light", or "dark"). * @property {string} menuTarget - The selector for the menu element that contains theme switchers. * @property {string} buttonsTarget - The selector for theme switcher buttons. * @property {string} buttonAttribute - The attribute name used for theme switcher buttons. * @property {string} rootAttribute - The attribute name used for the root HTML element to store the selected theme. * @property {string} localStorageKey - The key used to store the preferred color scheme in local storage. */ export const ThemeSwitcher = { // Config _scheme: 'auto', menuTarget: "details[role='list']", buttonsTarget: 'a[data-theme-switcher]', buttonAttribute: 'data-theme-switcher', rootAttribute: 'data-theme', localStorageKey: 'picoPreferredColorScheme', /** * Initialize the theme switcher. * * @function * @memberof ThemeSwitcher */ init() { this.scheme = this.schemeFromLocalStorage || this.preferredColorScheme; this.initSwitchers(); }, /** * Get the color scheme from local storage or use the preferred color scheme. * * @function * @memberof ThemeSwitcher * @returns {string|null} The color scheme ("light", "dark", or null). */ get schemeFromLocalStorage() { if (typeof window.localStorage !== 'undefined') { if (window.localStorage.getItem(this.localStorageKey) !== null) { return window.localStorage.getItem(this.localStorageKey); } } return this._scheme; }, /** * Get the preferred color scheme based on user preferences. * * @function * @memberof ThemeSwitcher * @returns {string} The preferred color scheme ("light" or "dark"). */ get preferredColorScheme() { return window.matchMedia('(prefers-color-scheme: dark)').matches ? 'dark' : 'light'; }, /** * Initialize the theme switcher buttons and their click events. * * @function * @memberof ThemeSwitcher */ initSwitchers() { const buttons = document.querySelectorAll(this.buttonsTarget); buttons.forEach((button) => { button.addEventListener( 'click', (event) => { event.preventDefault(); // Set scheme this.scheme = button.getAttribute(this.buttonAttribute) || 'auto'; // Close dropdown document.querySelector(this.menuTarget)?.removeAttribute('open'); }, false ); }); }, /** * Set the selected color scheme and update the UI. * * @function * @memberof ThemeSwitcher * @param {string} scheme - The color scheme to set ("auto", "light", or "dark"). */ set scheme(scheme) { if (scheme == 'auto') { this.preferredColorScheme == 'dark' ? (this._scheme = 'dark') : (this._scheme = 'light'); } else if (scheme == 'dark' || scheme == 'light') { this._scheme = scheme; } this.applyScheme(); this.schemeToLocalStorage(); }, /** * Get the current color scheme. * * @function * @memberof ThemeSwitcher * @returns {string} The current color scheme ("auto", "light", or "dark"). */ get scheme() { return this._scheme; }, /** * Apply the selected color scheme to the HTML root element. * * @function * @memberof ThemeSwitcher */ applyScheme() { document.querySelector('html')?.setAttribute(this.rootAttribute, this.scheme); }, /** * Store the selected color scheme in local storage. * * @function * @memberof ThemeSwitcher */ schemeToLocalStorage() { if (typeof window.localStorage !== 'undefined') { window.localStorage.setItem(this.localStorageKey, this.scheme); } } };

To understand the core problem, let's consider a very simple traditional web app, with HTML, CSS and a script tag injecting an index.js which acts as the entry point for JavaScript. To add some styling we're also injecting some external UI library like Pico CSS via a CDN and linking the same.

This is excellent if bare bones. It's meant for "the clean slate" style of CSS development. To be honest, I do less and less of starting from zero.

Another style is a more built up starting point like PicoCSS. https://picocss.com/

Both have their place and their use cases.

I personally prefer Bootstrap to Tailwind, but my favorite is https://picocss.com/

Usually, I just want decent-looking default CSS styles. The benefits of a CSS framework have diminishing returns when using frameworks with styles scoped to components (like SvelteKit/Vue/React).

The fact Tailwind removes all styles so you can't even tell a button is a button unless you add classes is annoying. If you know the class names, sometimes it's a little more convenient to add Tailwind classes, but for the most part it just clutters the HTML. And it makes it difficult to update entire "classes" of elements: you have to update each element one at a time.

I'm currently building a project using Astro, to which I've added basic authentication via Twitch so users can log in to view their inventory for my new stream game by calling an API on the back end (my Twitch bot). I'm using Astro in SSR mode, and authentication is provided by Auth.js via auth-astro. When using Auth.js to authenticate, it saves three cookies in the browser to remember that you've logged in to this website via Twitch.

I rebuilt my personal website[1] (static site) using Astro[2], and it was a pleasant experience.

[1]: https://ivylee.github.io/

[2]: https://astro.build/

or Astro; if you’d like to integrate React, VueJS etc. code as well. use their themes page here to get a starting point.

I have spent today learning the new Astro SSG. You can read about it at https://astro.build/ or better yet you can get started with it at https://docs.astro.build/en/install/auto/. While Visual Studio isn't exactly a SSG, they way you code with it can make static web pages. VS has so much more power than that.

We'll use several interesting technologies to achieve this: Strapi CMS to take care of the content management and backend, Astro which is a great new technology for quickly creating blazing fast frontend apps, and ChatGPT to provide the article summaries.

Astro

Case study 4: Astro

Astro is the new hot new web framework on the block. All the cool kids are using it. I've recently given up, drank the Kool-Aid, and gone all in on it.

Built with Supabase, Astro, Unreal Speech, Stable Diffusion, Replicate, Metropolitan Museum of Art

Astro to use every framework at once instead of just react? https://astro.build/