JSS VS styled-components

Most websites those days are SPA applications that render on the front-side. There is also this trend of CSS in JavaScript also knowns as JSS that is debatable (makes everything overcomplicated), but in some specific cases, can be justified and very useful.

> why tf aren't we using JS for styling already

People are and have been for quite a while

https://cssinjs.org/

JSS

It is possible. At its most simple, you could just modify the style property on every element. That's not generally considered best practice, but there are a number of "CSS-in-JS" libraries which streamline the process. The typically generate dynamic CSS classes and apply them to your elements. A big one is JSS.

import React, { useState, useEffect } from "react"; import Amplify, { API, graphqlOperation } from "aws-amplify"; import { createBlog } from "./graphql/mutations"; import { listBlogs } from "./graphql/queries"; import awsExports from "./aws-exports"; import { ListBlogsQuery } from "./API"; Amplify.configure(awsExports); const initialState = { name: "", body: "" }; const App = () => { const [formState, setFormState] = useState(initialState); const [blogs, setBlogs] = useState(); useEffect(() => { fetchBlogs() }, []); const handleInputChange = (event: React.ChangeEvent) => { setFormState({ ...formState, [event.target.name]: event.target.value }); }; const fetchBlogs = async () => { try { const blogData = (await API.graphql(graphqlOperation(listBlogs))) as { data: ListBlogsQuery } setBlogs(blogData.data); } catch (err) { console.log("Error fetching blogs" + err); } }; const addBlog = async () => { try { if (!formState.name || !formState.body) return; const blog = { ...formState }; if (blogs) { await API.graphql(graphqlOperation(createBlog, { input: blog })); await fetchBlogs(); setFormState(initialState); } } catch (err) { console.log("error creating blog: ", err); } }; return (

Amplify Todos

Create Blog {blogs && blogs?.listBlogs?.items?.map((blog, index) => { return (

{blog?.name}

{blog?.body}

); })}

); }; const styles = { container: { width: 400, margin: "0 auto", display: "flex", //real weird issue: https://github.com/cssinjs/jss/issues/1344 flexDirection: "column" as "column", justifyContent: "center", padding: 20, }, todo: { marginBottom: 15 }, input: { border: "none", backgroundColor: "#ddd", marginBottom: 10, padding: 8, fontSize: 18, }, todoName: { fontSize: 20, fontWeight: "bold" }, todoDescription: { marginBottom: 0 }, button: { backgroundColor: "black", color: "white", outline: "none", fontSize: 18, padding: "12px 0px", }, }; export default App;

Material UI v5 brought some amazing updates, but switching from JSS to Emotion had an arguably nasty side-effect: it was no longer as straightforward to group your component styles in classes. Fortunately, a fantastic library emerged that allowed developers to not only reduce the extreme pain from migrating all their classes from v4's makeStyles to emotion, but to also to continue to writing classes in practically the same syntax, with wonderful TS type-safety. This library was tss-react, and it was one of my favorite open source discoveries of 2021.

I started writing a long response, but I want to add that a simple CRA + JSS + TS (named exports only) stack solves or abstracts away most of these issues.

JSS

CSS-in-JS is a styling technique wherein CSS is composed using JavaScript instead of defined in external files. This method allows CSS to be scoped locally to components rather than globally, reducing the probability of style conflicts. Utilizing JavaScript also enables dynamic styling easily aligned with the component's state or props. Libraries like Styled Components and Emotion are popular choices in the React ecosystem for adopting this method.

In 2023, I had a chat with Max Stoiber, CEO of Stellate, on a podcast to learn about his early success on GitHub. His first open-source project, react-boilerplate/react-boilerplate, gained a whopping 10k stars in just one weekend after appearing on the homepage of Hacker News. This success led Max to drop out of university and create several other popular open-source projects, including styled-components. This library accelerates the process of building styles in React components.

Embracing the styled-components library allows developers to write actual CSS code to style their components. It utilizes tagged template literals to style components, enabling a seamless integration of styles within the component's JavaScript file. This approach eliminates the mapping between components and styles, thus enhancing developer productivity and component reusability.

styled-components: Allows for maintainable styling with CSS-in-JS. Learn more

Over the past few years, I've worked with React apps utilising various CSS-in-JS libraries, starting with styled-components, transitioning through emotion, Theme UI, and finally Stitches. I've also integrated MUI, Mantine, and Chakra in numerous client projects.

There are several alternatives to MUI. shadcn/ui is a modern alternative that is very popular. Ant Design is also a great alternative. Charkra UI can also be used as a UI Framework. Some people suggest just using styled components. Some use Tailwind CSS. Yet, for both styled components and Tailwind CSS, one still writes a lot of CSS. This might not provide the best developer experience compared to using a UI Framework, especially if we aim to avoid designing all the pages on the website.

Website: Styled Components

The project is build using several ready made components available within, Mantine. It’s a fully featured React components library. However some places still use some custom CSS-in-JS so we used some good ol’ styled components.