stitches VS antd

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.

Radix has some great ideas that challenge the way components are usually built. I'd love to use it, but am somewhat burned by how Stitches stopped being maintained due to the changes in React 18. Context: https://github.com/stitchesjs/stitches/discussions/1149#disc...

To be clear, it's not so much that they decided to not spend time, energy and money into maintaining it, but that there's seemingly been very little (if any) interest in letting others maintain it despite several people expressing interest. I'm sure it's scare handing over commit access, but if you're giving it up anyway then why not just do it, see what happens? Instead it's just dead in the water.

I'd happily pay license fees to use Radix and/or Stitches, if that guarantees maintenance. Sadly that's not an option it seems.

I work on a lot of more "creative" projects where frameworks like TailwindCSS or Bootstrap just don't cut it. My approach has always been to use some kind of library to ease the process of creating my own CSS framework that can then be used by other people. I find that Stitches does it pretty well. You set your design tokens, then you have IntelliSense to help people understand the design system.

Some libraries, such as Stitches, claim near-zero runtime performance overhead by tackling the first issue (parsing JavaScript CSS objects). Nevertheless, they still inject the parsed CSS into the DOM at runtime, which means they haven’t entirely eliminated the performance concerns.

Stitches allows you to map your design system

Define strict system of colors, spaces, etc then attempt to synchronize usage of it in both design and code (tools like https://vanilla-extract.style/ or https://stitches.dev/ can help with enforcing system on software side)

Curious to understand what is trending. We've been big fans of Stitches, however, unfortunately the project is no longer maintained.

There are some issues with SSR and NextJS in React 18: https://github.com/stitchesjs/stitches/issues/863

According to the docs, NextUI is a React UI library that allows you to make beautiful, modern, and fast websites/applications regardless of your design experience. It is created with React and Stitches, based on React Aria, and inspired by Vuesax.

Stitches CSS customization

Ant Design

Official Website: https://ant.design/

Ant Design (antd) is a React component library for building beautiful and modern user interfaces. It comes with a collection of prebuilt, enterprise-level UI components. To install Ant Design, use the command below:

🔍 Site ⭐ GitHub

(I'm a frontend dev, but I came into the design side only later in my career, after having started as a full-stack programmer.)

I think this book is probably the single best resource I've seen on the topic: https://www.refactoringui.com/

It's a really easy-to-use format (one quick tip on each page, with clear examples).

It's from the people who made Tailwind, a CSS framework that's basically a reimagining of Bootcamp for the Javascript/component era.

Check out some of their templates: https://tailwindui.com/templates

These are lookalike "modern" designs that you can pay to use, or just draw inspiration from. Imitation == flattery and all that.

Along similar lines, check out the free Next.js templates: https://vercel.com/templates/next.js

If you want to build up from components instead, Tailwind offers a component library too: https://tailwindui.com/components

For React, I prefer the astoundingly good MUI framework (amazing components with lots of customizability, a good enough default look, and great documentation): https://mui.com/ If you end up going this route, using their Figma kit (https://mui.com/store/items/figma-react/) plus the Refactoring UI book from above should allow you to whip up a pretty standard-looking, "pretty enough" design in very little time. And then implementing it using the actual MUI lib would just take a few days.

There's also Ant Design: https://ant.design/

And Chakra UI: https://chakra-ui.com/

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For more theoretical stuff (i.e., less visual but still very valuable), the UX research group Nielsen Norman still has a treasure trove of valuable advice: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/top-ten-guidelines-for-home...

You should know the basics of accessibility (beyond general usability, this alos means alt text, header levels, contrast ratios, readability, screen readers, keyboard navigation, special considerations for the hard of sight and hearing, etc.): https://www.w3.org/WAI/standards-guidelines/wcag/ or at least use an easy checklist tool like Microsoft's WCAG analyzer: https://accessibilityinsights.io/

Ant Design is a fantastic toolkit for React developers. It's like having a box of building blocks that are not only stylish but also super functional. With Ant Design, you get a collection of pre-made React components that you can easily put together to create a sleek and modern look for your web projects. Whether you're a beginner or a seasoned developer, Ant Design simplifies the process of making your web applications both visually appealing and user-friendly. It's a go-to choice for those who want a seamless blend of design and functionality in their React applications.

The backend UI is a combination of React + MUI + Ant Design.

Material-UI Ant Design Chakra UI Semantic UI React

ant-design -> Less configurable. Limited but nice components.

GitHub stars: 88k GitHub link: https://github.com/ant-design/ant-design Documentation: https://ant.design/docs/react/getting-started