headlessui VS shadcn/ui

Tailwind CSS ecosystem features growing resources like Tailwind UI (a component library), Headless UI (unstyled, accessible components), and community-built plugins. It’s maintained by a smaller company (Tailwind Labs) but has very active development and a dedicated community of web developers.

Website: headlessui.com

An evolution of the popular Headless UI library, now offering more pre-styled components while maintaining its focus on accessibility and customization.

Headless UI

Headless UI is a design pattern and library that separates the logic and behavior of a user interface component from its visual representation. It provides completely unstyled, fully accessible UI components, designed to integrate beautifully with Tailwind CSS.

Headless UI for various interface component logic.

Guys, didn't you get the memo? We're doing this differently now, we've replaced

https://github.com/jquery/jquery-ui/blob/main/ui/widgets/tab...

with the much better, much simpler, more readable and not at all depending on 42(!) modules

https://github.com/tailwindlabs/headlessui/blob/main/package...

What joy!

Svelte Headless UI is a library of unstyled, accessible UI components, inspired by Tailwind's Headless UI. It gives you all the interactivity without enforcing styles, allowing you to design the components exactly the way you want. With Svelte’s reactivity and this library's flexibility, building complex UI interactions has never been easier. Github repository →

You can use component libraries like skeleton UI:https://www.skeleton.dev/ or Schadcn: https://ui.shadcn.com/, so you don't have to design the components an style guides yourself. If you are interested in reading just one book and be confident about your design decisions, read : The User Experience Team of One by Leah Buley.

Not in the so distant past, when Bootstrapped themes were becoming the face of the Internet, a new framework came to town — TailwindCSS. The smart thing they did was introduced the framework with a few brilliant template and a lot of styled components. I bought the initial copy and does a lot of people. Those templates, TailwindUI.com (now TailwindCSS.com/plus)[1] became the gradien-y, dark-ish, glow-y design you see a lot these days.

A similar design wave is also happening with internal dashboard, admin interfaces. Thanks to https://ui.shadcn.com Personally, I'm fine with the standardization of such functional interface designs.

btw, for Have I Been Pwned, this is Bootstrap[2] and I'm not surprised it is also inheriting those design styles.

1. https://tailwindcss.com/plus

2. https://getbootstrap.com

shadcn/ui

Next, we have to search for the particular component we want to use, which is Tooltip. So, on the shadcn website, press control + K or command + K and type tooltip. You would be guided to install it using the command below:

In a nutshell: Basecoat is a port of shadcn/ui to HTML and Tailwind CSS. It's a modern, themeable component library; everything from buttons to comboboxes and dialogs.

Why? Well, I got sick of React and moved over to a more "old school" stack (Python, HTMX, Alpine.js and Tailwind).

The one thing I missed was shadcn/ui [1]. Nice defaults, well thought out design system, easy to theme and great to build your own component library with.

I didn't find the alternatives compelling: Flowbite, Preline and the likes encourage you to copy/paste dozens of classes for each element.

That's not how I use Tailwind. I love the utility-first approach, but I don't want walls of classes for each button, form element or tooltip I have in my app.

I had been building my own component library for a project I’m working on (a Vercel for Python apps) and realized it may be worth my time to firm things up.

Why I think it's cool? Well:

- No React. Just Tailwind CSS (with a tiny bit of Alpine.js if you choose to). You can use that with whatever stack you want.

- Jinja and Nunjucks macros. I hope to support more template engines.

- 100% compatible with shadcn/ui themes (you can play with the theme select box on the site).

- Super easy to install and use (there's even a CLI).

- Accessible, with ARIA support.

- Did I mention no React?

Hope some of you find it useful.

[1]: https://ui.shadcn.com/

[2]: https://v4.shadcn.com/ (this is actually the new/upcoming version of shadcn/ui).

Shadcn/ui isn't a component library in the traditional sense. It's better described as a curated collection of beautifully designed, highly reusable UI primitives and components built using Radix UI for behaviour and accessibility, and Tailwind CSS for styling. The magic lies in its approach: you don't install it as a dependency. Instead, you use its CLI tool to copy the actual component code directly into your project. This means you own the code. You can tweak, modify, and style it exactly as you need, without fighting against library internals or complex specificity rules.

Explore ShadCN UI

shadcn/ui contains a set of beautifully designed and accessible components, and it works seamlessly with major React frameworks. It’s open-source and has amassed 85.5k (and counting) GitHub stars. It’s built on the shoulders of giants — Radix UI and Tailwind CSS, making it one of the best to work with. Unlike many other UI libraries, the components are not just installed as npm modules, they’re downloaded into your project. That gives you access to the source code and you can modify it if you want. I like this approach better because I can tweak aspects of a component if I want to.

🖥️ Shadcn UI (Highly customizable components)

utilização de componentes prontos com shadcn