Understanding the trade-offs of using Tailwind CSS

measured.co

12 points·ohskylab··3 comments

I respect what tailwind has done

But, here's an issue for me: it makes your (cacheable/compressible) CSS smaller and your (uncacheble/uncompressible) HTML larger

Of course, you can cache and compress HTML. Unless you're using TLS, then you should not compress HTML (see BREACH). And unless you have any dynamic data on your page, then you won't be using caching...

And Tailwind makes HTML responses quite a bit larger

> Potential brand conflicts > > Tailwind makes design choices so designers and developers don't have to. This can result in a recognisable look. Those familiar with Tailwind can often spot Tailwind-built sites.

When landing on this author's site, I immediately thought it looked like it was made with Tailwind. The lengths they went to create their entire own custom CSS and design system to match the choices that Tailwind makes is interesting.

To add to my original thought here, most sites that people pick up on as "made with Tailwind" are that way because they tend to lack working with a designer to come up with an original design. These sites are often a single developer looking to get things done quickly, who pull together components and CSS from somewhere else, like shadcn and Tailwind examples. Or all the same, they're half built with AI tools.

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