compiled VS vanilla-extract

tags inside SFCs are typically injected as native </code> tags during development to support hot updates. <strong>For production they can be extracted and merged into a single CSS file.</strong></p> </blockquote> <p>There are also 3rd party CSS libs that do the same thing such as <a href="https://linaria.dev/">linaria</a>, <a href="https://vanilla-extract.style/">vanilla-extract</a>, and <a href="https://compiledcssinjs.com/">compiled CSS</a>. Which can be used in the event you're stuck with something that doesn't have baked in support via SFC formats (looking at you React).</p> <p>These are my preferred ways of handing it.</p> <ol> <li>Tailwind</li> </ol> <p>Option 2 is tailwind, which works backwards.</p> <p>That is, instead of the above with extraction where you write the styles, and the framework or libs extract them and replace them with class names, it's the other way around.</p> <p>You're writing class names first (which are essentially aggregated CSS property-values) which then generate and/or reference styles.</p> <p>It has the advantage of being easy to write (assuming you've got editor LSP, linting, etc), but as you've discovered, it's difficult to read / can get really messy really fast.</p> <p>As far as all the other claims on the Tailwind site, it's all marketing, at least 80% bullshit.</p> </div>

Your choice of CSS lib. Bootstrap can still be a valid choice, tho you may want to check the docs of whatever SSR / SSG framework you end up using as they may have better (or worse support). For example if you wanted to do CSS-in-JS (Next) i'd consider Linaria, vanilla-extract, or compiled.

So to be extremely clear, the issue isn't CSS-in-JS per se, it's just that the author only looked at implementations that don't generate create CSS files. He notably mentioned the (apparent) zero-runtime solutions Vanilla Extract and Linaria, only to skip them and complain that Compiled inserts nodes at runtime.

Compiled

Link: https://compiledcssinjs.com/

Compiled (Compile time CSS-in-JS solution from Atlassian)

Stitches Is near zero runtime and vanilla-extract claims it's zero runtime and typed. There's atlassian compiled as well but I never used it.

Author here, I haven't had time to play around with it, but this library[0] from Atlassian looks like a "best of the both worlds" styling approach: CSS-in-JS authorship without the runtime penalty.

[0] https://compiledcssinjs.com/

In our experience, the best testing strategy for modern frontends is a combination of E2E testing (using Playwright+NextJS), and unit testing. Visual regression testing is not worth the effort in our opinion, especially with the advent of better CSS tooling like TailwindCSS and Vanilla Extract.

For building component libraries I’ve been a big fan of vanilla extract. Apparently it’s from the same people who made css modules

This sounds exactly like Vanilla Extract. https://vanilla-extract.style/

KumaUI : Another relatively new contender, Kuma uses zero runtime CSS-in-JS to create headless UI components which allows a lot of flexibility. It was heavily inspired by other zero runtime CSS-in-JS solutions such as PandaCSS, Vanilla Extract, and Linaria, as well as by Styled System, ChakraUI, and Native Base. ### Vue

The components are styled with CSS modules. When building the library, these styles will get transformed to normal CSS style sheets. This means that the consuming application will not even be required to support CSS modules. (In the future I want to extend this tutorial to use vanilla-extract instead.)

I do a lot of UI work and have never understood the appeal of Tailwind. It’s like relearning a new language. Tailwind was released in 2017. Maybe the CSS landscape wasn’t as good back then? Modern CSS is pretty awesome.

I’ve enjoyed using Vanilla Extract https://vanilla-extract.style/. It’s like css-in-js with none of the downsides as everything gets compiled to css.

Nah, I used enough Tailwind to know it becomes a spaghetti mess. I stick with CSS now, and in React I use https://vanilla-extract.style, compile time CSS in TypeScript.

Vanilla Extract is my current choice for the next greenfield project. I would also recommend checking out how and why this team integrated it with Tailwind.

I'm not trying to call a particular org or library out, because I think the ones I've been digging through (and prompted me to write this) are very high quality. It's vanilla-extract (a build-time CSS-in-JS library) and Braid Design System (built on vanilla-extract).

Apart from what has been suggested, there is also https://vanilla-extract.style/.