tailwind comes along and surges in popularity. it really goes to show you that marketing makes a difference!
for what it's worth I prefer tachyons because it's much simpler.
You basically generate the kitchen sink in dev and then rip out everything you’re not using when it’s deployed so the actual package size is really tiny.
Utility CSS classes should augment your CSS, not be your entire CSS.
As far as the toolchain goes, meh. Building on PostCSS allowed the Tailwind team a lot of power with minimal complexity and it appears to have paid off for them. The JIT is plenty fast as is now; so fast in fact, that you can now run it in on a CDN build for prototyping/MVP.
https://github.com/tailwindlabs/tailwindcss/releases/tag/v3....
https://github.com/facebook/create-react-app/milestone/81?cl...
If you're picking a framework that will eventually be used by developers who might not have any design skills, which would you prefer?
Tachyons shadows: https://tachyons.io/docs/themes/box-shadow/
Tailwind shadows: https://tailwindcss.com/docs/box-shadow
Tachyons colors: http://tachyons.io/docs/themes/skins/
Tailwind colors: https://tailwindcss.com/docs/customizing-colors
Even something like floats look better in Tailwind documentation despite being the same one line of CSS.
Tachyons floats: http://tachyons.io/docs/layout/floats/
Tailwind floats: https://tailwindcss.com/docs/float
Part of it is marketing and part of it is the novelty of using inline utility classes, but none of this explosive growth happens without a deep focus on design at every stage.
Documentation, defaults, examples, and color palettes all matter.
This is somewhat apples to oranges, but look at Bootstraps' navbar example page versus Tailwind's (paid) examples. One is a cluttered mess, the other is a carefully designed list.
Bootstrap 5 navbars: https://getbootstrap.com/docs/5.1/examples/headers/
TailwindUI navbars: https://tailwindui.com/components/application-ui/navigation/...
I like tachyons looks more than tailwind but you can change tailwind using config to look exactly like tachyons but you cant turn tachyons into looking like tailwind.
So i use tailwind.
although probably making a decision like that based on how the documentation for the framework looks isn't actually reasonable.
How much effort someone puts into their documentation tells me a lot about how much effort they put into the product in general, and user-friendliness in particular.
Single developer projects tend to put more effort into the code than the documentation, but that doesn’t mean the product isn’t good.
Startups can afford to put massive amounts into documentation and marketing while having a terrible product.
And big businesses can be anything.
The Tailwind team is just insanely talented and committed to quality at every level. Not everything is a SV game of marketing and smoke screens.
No. I’m simply saying that the quality of a website does not indicate quality of the product being shown. The only thing that will indicate if a product is good or not is testing it.
Tailwind obviously has great marketing and a great developer base, but not everything is the same.
I couldnt use tachyons in type of work i do but i can tailwind.