Supabase UI Library
supabase.com
supabase.com
why are they releasing a web component library when React Native doesn't even have a decent UI library? Like who are supabase's customers again??
Despite the title "UI library", this is more like a "component registry" for developers to bootstrap their applications and it will work for everything from Web & Mobile, to database scaffolding. Perhaps some poor naming/positioning on our part.
If you aren't familiar with shadcn, it works by dumping a bunch of files into your application which you can modify at your leisure. This is a different from something the "Bootstrap" approach where you could only do minimal tweaks to the theming.
But the developer in me, who realizes how bad we are at design realizes shadcn/ui is terrible for 99% of people using it. They don't have a design system, don't know what that even means, and their sinful hands should not be tweaking any UI libraries, at most being limited to modifying a rich set of theme tokens that force consistency... not touching individual components or copying in random cruft with hard coded gaps between elements.
And so for all that (and also tl;dr) I wish you'd have just shipped actual versioned, buttoned-up components that are well thought out and themeable through tokens, just like your existing auth UI.
You could have even made the default theme shadcn-like to satisfy all the people lying to themselves that one day they'll actually modify that ui folder.
I feel like the majority of shadcn users doesn't tweak it whatsoever though. In fact - I bet you a large percentage has never even considered the ability to tweak it, just seeing it as a plug-and-play set of UI components. Think old Android and iOS apps, where almost everyone just used the default components.
> You could have even made the default theme shadcn-like to satisfy all the people lying to themselves that one day they'll actually modify that ui folder.
That's why shadcn is so terrible: you're resorting to diffs and a loose convention instead of a stable API and a package manager, for the promise that one day you can definitely probably modify it into something else... yet if you're the kind of person to start with shadcn/ui instead of Radix, you shouldn't be modding components in the first place.
Even if you get real designers later, they're not going to try and "evolve" shadcn into your brand, they're going to start from scratch and you're back at Radix again.
What I'm saying - they're not lying to themselves that they'll do that. They've never even considered it as being something to potentially do! They consider it as a package to use as-is. "A re-design later on? Who knows, by that time we'll have people who know their UI stuff, they'll figure it out. Whether that will be based on shadcn? Who cares, not important." I bet the premise that all these people are using shadcn with the idea of some day modifying it just isn't the most common reality.
The main selling points and source of shadcn's meteoric rise...
- It's not a component library!
- It's easy to customize!
- You just Ctrl + C, Ctrl + V!
- You can just edit it in your project!
- No more fighting themes!
- It's a kickstarter for your design system! (contrary to my words that you're repeating, many people choose shadcn/ui thinking it is going to make a meaningful difference in starting their own design system, people who have no business starting design systems especially)
> I bet the premise that all these people are using shadcn with the idea of some day modifying it just isn't the most common reality.
The thing is literally distributed via copied files and updated via diffs instead of being a package. The entire cargo cult that lead up to that is 100% the idea they'll modify it. It's just either don't out of apathy (and should have just used a component library), or do and do so terribly (and should have just used a component library).
> It's easy to customize!
May be very overstated, with lots of users not caring or even knowing about that as a selling point. They just use it for all of the other selling points.
> The thing is literally distributed via copied files and updated via diffs instead of being a package. The entire cargo cult that lead up to that is 100% the idea they'll modify it. It's just either don't out of apathy (and should have just used a component library), or do and do so terribly (and should have just used a component library).
It definitely started out that way. Just like sports brands started out selling trainers for, you know, sports. And now 99.9% of the minutes-worn for them is during non-sports activities. But they're meant for sports! That's their selling point! Sure, most people couldn't care less though, and don't even buy them with the idea of using them for sports.
And it didn't just start out that way, the only package is still a cli tool that will then diff your files.
Overall, it really doesn't make sense to paint this all as some now discarded origin story, especially when you're in the comment section of a major launch that's based on shadcn and selling itself on the exact same story.
But if that's how you see it, let's agree to disagree.
For the absence of design tokens for instance, shadcn is remarkably themable using the main css file.
Also, most people using it are probably prototyping or building a school project or something - most are not businesses making big bucks.
So from a utility point of view, it is great. The rest, I leave to the philosophers
But if you're never aiming for anything more than prototypes and school projects, I agree, do whatever.