Have you heard of Tailwind CSS? It’s one of the most popular CSS frameworks available today, which means it has a lot of perks and benefits to offer your current or future project. But what exactly are those perks and benefits? In this article, we’ll explore how Tailwind CSS can be used to create scalable, responsive projects that are also adaptable and easy to modify as needed in the future. Let’s get started!
Introduction to Tailwind CSS
Today, we’re going to be taking a look at one of my favorite tools for front-end development. Tailwind is a utility-first CSS framework that speeds up our workflow by providing us with a ton of pre-made classes we can use when designing our projects. It’s not an opinionated front-end framework, which allows us to create unique experiences with their library. Let’s learn more about how to implement them into our site!
How does this compare to Bootstrap?
Bootstrap has become one of today’s most popular front-end frameworks. At its core, Bootstrap focuses on helping you build responsive web pages with easy-to-use toolkits. Whether you’re creating a landing page or something more complex, it’s easy to get up and running with Bootstrap—and there are a ton of great plugins available. That said, if you need even more power, then you might be interested in something like Tailwind CSS. This framework gives you more control over your design, plus a host of other features. If you know how to code CSS already, that gives you an added advantage here. After all, there aren’t any predefined layouts to follow; instead, everything is configured from scratch. For those who have some coding experience, that means you can create custom components on your own! In addition to giving developers more power, Tailwind offers unique features like prebuilt color themes and simple utility classes that make customization faster than ever before. With any new technology, however, it takes some time to learn the ropes—but once you understand how things work under-the-hood (no pun intended), coding with Tailwind becomes second nature.
So, why use Tailwind CSS over Bootstrap or Foundation?
Bootstrap and Foundation are great. They’re popular, they have a big community, they’re free. The styles are mostly well done. And there’s no reason not to use them, if you want to build something quickly with pre-made styles. So why choose Tailwind over Bootstrap or Foundation? Well… nothing against those frameworks! I love Bootstrap. (I actually used Bootstrap while building my last website.) But maybe you want: more customization options; more elements; easier setup; smaller file size; built-in defaults & custom variables; configuration via Javascript API, Sass maps, and CSV files; lots of helpful information on their site (and in their docs). To be fair, Bootstrap has also recently added some new features that match up pretty closely with Tailwind – things like display utilities and breakpoints make it much easier to manage responsive grids. However, when I was first learning how to use Tailwind last year, those features didn’t exist yet. If you haven’t tried out Bootstrap 4, give it a try. If you really need to customize EVERYTHING, go with Tailwind. Otherwise, maybe stick with one of these other tools until someone else makes an awesome new framework 🙂
The best way to learn about Tailwind is just by trying it out!
Is Tailwind CSS free?
Yes, Tailwind is free to use on as many projects as you need.
Does it really help with performance optimization, like Facebook says?
With Google recently announcing that they will be considering page load time as a ranking factor in their search algorithm, companies are taking steps to ensure their websites are performing well. Facebook has been using an open-source library called Tailwind on their own website since May of 2018. This library allows you to use responsive design without having to write redundant code for each breakpoint that may or may not work as expected. It also automates many animations so that all you have to worry about is implementing it into your project. In short: It seems too good to be true, but Facebook would know better than most if there were any issues with performance because they use it themselves! If you want to speed up your project, why not give Tailwind a try?
Which browsers does it support, again?
The core package of Tailwind contains support for all modern browsers, including Edge. It also has a browser support extension available that supports IE9+ and most other browsers.
Where can I download the framework from, and how much does it cost me?
Tailwind has a great online documentation that you can read through. Once you’ve become familiar with Tailwind, download their latest framework from Github. You’ll also find installation instructions inside their docs. It’s completely free to use!
