Show HN: Open Source TailwindCSS UI Components

(github.com)

148 points | by santush 13 days ago

20 comments

  • 015a 13 days ago
    I'm gonna be rough here.

    I think calling these things "components" feels wrong. Components are far more elemental than what these are; these are pages, or maybe modules.

    Nonetheless, some of these "components" are quite bad [1]; it smells like AI was used to generate these? They run the gamut between bad enough that I wouldn't use them, or simple enough [2] that I wouldn't use them, and I'm not seeing a ton occupy the middle.

    [1] https://easyfrontend.com/component-details/error-404-buttons...

    [2] https://easyfrontend.com/component-details/grid-style-number...

    • FireInsight 13 days ago
      If you want some "copy-paste tailwind components" you're really best of using shadcn/ui or whatever port exists for your favorite UI libraty. I've been using shadcn-svelte in a recent project and it's the best decisions I made. Having the source code there and modifying it to suit my needs really has helped me learn a lot of good practices.
      • mattgreenrocks 13 days ago
        shadcn is fantastic. Bit of a learning curve vs component libraries (like Flowbite), but you can just go in and make the changes you need as necessary.

        It also helps that the New York style is very nice as well.

    • KMnO4 13 days ago
      Yikes, that’s some bad code. What’s the point of using tailwind if half the elements have their own custom CSS classes attached?
      • 015a 12 days ago
        Oh I didn't necessarily mean the code, at least in the first example; you have to click the "Preview" button to see what the code results in, but its a rather bad 404 page, using broken english, phrases that generally wouldn't/shouldn't appear on a 404 page ("this page is broken"), a button that fully disappears rather than correctly entering a hover state, and a button that generally would never appear on a 404 page ("Try Again").

        Like, I don't mean to be, well, mean about this; but I'm struggling not to be so here it is: I find it difficult to believe that any human with an ounce of the craft in their bones could have created that. So my conclusion was AI, because that is the more kind of two conclusions I could draw. The authors responding to my original comment by stating that no AI was used in the production of these assets, unfortunately, leaves only the other conclusion.

        • santush 12 days ago
          hi 015a, thank you for the comments. I admit that there are some improvment must need and we will continue improve it.

          our teams works several months for the components and you are here to say it using AI.Its easy to say that so it using AI. Please try to build 700+ components with HTML, REACT and framework of TailwindCSS and Bootstrap. With light and dark version.

          let me know which AI do that and give me the link I will follow next time.

      • santush 12 days ago
        I don't know where you found custom CSS. Maybe you checked the main site and didn't follow which language and framework are selected. Also, please select the Tailwind CSS framework to see the Tailwind codes.
      • that_guy_iain 13 days ago
        Are you looking at the tailwind code or bootstrap? I can’t see custom classes in the tailwind version just the bootstrap version
    • santush 13 days ago
      hi, thank you for the comment. We didnot build any components using AI. The link you provided if you choose the language and framework you will see the actual code of the component.

      There is proper way we follow > design components > make it HTML Tailwind > React Tailwind

      And all are free to use.

      • bytearray 13 days ago
        First off, thanks for doing something cool and releasing it as open source! Second, think the person 2 messages up has a valid point and I would like to offer the same constructive feedback.

        As someone who is doing a lot of React/Tailwind development lately the more you can assemble larger pages from independently usable components the better. For example here: https://easyfrontend.com/components/ui/all/html?page=1

        It would be useful sometimes to be able to search for a "card" component that I want to use rather than remember that I want to see cards I need to go to Blog #10. This seems to be my normal intent when I'm using a framework is that I'm trying to find a [card, dialog, select box, data table, etc].

        Anyway though, don't let the feedback get you down, it's awesome and greatly appreciated that you're releasing nicely designed Tailwind UI components. Github repo starred and thread upvoted!

        • nprateem 13 days ago
          There are loads of those already. For chucking together something decent quickly we need more 'block' level components than elements.

          I tried not to buy flowbite but it just speeds things up so much, it's a no-brainer. This is in a similar vein and will be ok for some less discerning use cases.

        • santush 12 days ago
          thank you for the comment. We will improve it based on your feedback.
    • qingcharles 12 days ago
      They're not awful, they're just very average, IMO.
    • adif_sgaid 13 days ago
      I totally agree...
  • jefc1111 13 days ago
    Hi, I had a quick look at website and have some feedback in case you want it.

    "Faq's" in the top menu does not need the apostrophe and "lets" on the frequently asked questions page needs an apostrophe. So all in all, you don't need to acquire any new apostrophes, you can just move the one you already have in "Faq's" to between the t and the s in the "lets". Result!

    • efilife 13 days ago
      https://youryoure.com/?apostrophe

      A great website to learn the basics of the English language

      • KronisLV 13 days ago
        The site lays out plenty of practical examples and I agree that it's useful!

        However, this feels a bit edgy or just unkind:

        > Getting it wrong makes you look stupid. And ugly.

        Oh well.

        • efilife 13 days ago
          Yup, it's a bit edgy, but I kind of understand the author. Common mistakes listed on the site plague the whole internet and it's hard not to get emotionally invested once you start to notice how many people just write incorrectly. A very interesting thing from my observations: people that make these mistakes are usually native speakers, foreigners usually lack vocabulary but don't confuse words. May be related to how the language is learned
    • nkko 13 days ago
      This is the reason why I always get back to HN. 100% value delivered.
    • santush 13 days ago
      Thank you. made an update
  • sigseg1v 13 days ago
    The website mentions they have 1400+ customers, yet at the same time it's a beta, and has 1 YouTube video with 8 views posted a year ago. Something just feels a little... off?

    Their Twitter posts seem to have retweeted a post by "Dorik AI" which is a website which has exactly the same theme and mentions "Dorik AI Website Generator can generate a complete website for you in a matter of seconds".

    I wonder if this is how these components* were initially built? They seem very mishmash and all over the place.

    *: I mention "components" because these feel more like auto-generated pages rather than the granular things you'd expect a component to have.

  • victorbojica 13 days ago
    "Build your site in minutes or copy & paste your way to a professional website components!" - state of front-end right now
    • tomschwiha 13 days ago
      Isn't it a good thing the web became so accessible? It's super easy to find ressources free to use.
      • samuellevy 13 days ago
        Funny that you mention "accessible"... Because most of these components are anything but.

        Modern HTML and CSS are awesome tools on their own, and are able to do so much without needing to rely on massive JavaScript bundles, but you still end up with component libraries that are <div><div><div><div> all the way down.

    • jefozabuss 13 days ago
      I think for an average landing page / small shop it's perfectly fine. They can go online faster with tools like this.

      For more complex projects you'd tweak the components of course but it helps a lot that you can see the whole blocks rendered in advance and can prototype way faster this way.

    • code_biologist 13 days ago
      Honestly the bloat and ergonomics of heavily customizable generic component libraries aren't great. Copy and pasting a simple component to make the specific customizations you want helps reduce JS ecosystem churn and dependency pain. Popularity of libraries like shadcn/ui [1] are good acknowledgements of that.

      [1] https://ui.shadcn.com/

    • W4ldi 13 days ago
      We already had that with Dreamweaver
    • mattgreenrocks 13 days ago
      Webdev has always been a focus point for the industry's love of commoditization, unfortunately.

      What these libraries don't do is confer any design sense. You still have to know how to put the components together well, which means you'll spend way more time than expected adjusting sizing, spacing, and thinking about responsive design.

    • dartos 13 days ago
      It’s basically web widgets. Nothing wrong with it really.
    • romanovcode 13 days ago
      Not really. Now write the code in React/Angular/etc to make it all work together.
    • datascienced 13 days ago
      So? If you like coding but hate design this sort of thing can help get something reasonable up and running without analysis paralysis.
    • breckenedge 13 days ago
      Just do it in Wordpress. Then you don’t even need the designer or developer, just a credit card.
    • kyahwill 13 days ago
      I'm in this comment and I don't like it
  • smallerfish 13 days ago
    EasyFrontend is cool - nice job. Do you have a long term pricing plan?

    You definitely need some copyediting on your home page.

    It'd be nice if you abstracted fonts (and colors?!) across components, so that users could pick their main combo and have those applied throughout.

    The editor sidebar should be wider, since that's the main place where somebody working on the frontend will be tweaking styles and editing text.

    • santush 12 days ago
      We are working on some premium components and themes as well. Some features will be available soon. We will introduce them shortly on our website for early bird registration.

      In the editor, you can choose theme colors and fonts, but the theme style is still in process. We will publish it soon.

  • jprosevear 13 days ago
    Not affiliated: https://daisyui.com/
    • blowski 13 days ago
      Also https://flowbite.com/ (and I'm also not affiliated).
    • lelandfe 13 days ago
      There is something delightfully odd about a Tailwind project saying, "instead of writing 100 class names, use semantic class names" – which, yanno, is pretty much what everyone was doing already before Tailwind.
      • notresidenter 13 days ago
        Yeah, I think the DaisyUI developers miss the point of Tailwind. You should almost never use "semantic class names" with Tailwind (and what even is a semantic class name, honestly? It's all context-, developer-dependent) and instead go for a component (using a js framework, a web component, or other) and write the component with utility classes.
        • FireInsight 13 days ago
          I tried out DaisyUI and I think it had kind of best of both worlds and was pretty ergonomic. IMO the main issues with it were that it's just CSS (not much accessibility etc. thought out for me), but the design isn't that great (in practice writing custom components without DaisyUI could have gotten the same results).
      • Shrezzing 13 days ago
        Wait, it's not satire?
  • hilti 13 days ago
    Great idea ... I would love to see a couple things

    1) Another section "Dashboard" including components for responsive tables, date pickers, lists, maybe charts 2) A really pure, semantic and therefore light HTML/CSS3 version; no bloated code; I do love the approach of PicoCSS 2

    • santush 13 days ago
      We have planned to release dashboard components. In next phase we will release that. Thank you for suggestion.
  • lovegrenoble 13 days ago
    Maybe someone can tell me what is better to use for a newbie: a framework or library of individual web components, like WebAwesome (former Shoelace), for example: https://shoelace.style
    • SebastianKra 13 days ago
      Depends on how good the Framework is. Radix-Themes has generalised components that compose well and exposes design tokens that I would consider best-best practices in any app.

      On the other end of that spectrum is Ant.Design. It feels like a constant fight against the framework, with a scattershot approach of poorly thought out and overly specific components that are hard to configure to your needs.

  • bschmidt1 13 days ago
    Why should I not just use the official Tailwind UI? https://tailwindui.com/components

    Are there more components in Easyfrontend? Better ones?

    • santush 12 days ago
      EasyFrontend is free
      • bschmidt1 12 days ago
        Lol so is Tailwind
        • rijavecb 11 days ago
          TailwindCSS is indeed free, but their UI components and themes (TailwindUI) are a paid product. They do offer some components for free though!
          • bschmidt1 11 days ago
            Their UI components are free lol I use Tailwind UI (the React components) all the time in projects, never paid for anything. It's a great place to start for a design system and component library in a new project.

            After checking again I see you can pay (1-time) to unlock site templates and more components: https://tailwindui.com/templates

            Does Easyfrontend have site templates? That's what would compare it with Tailwind's paid product, which is a different product.

  • SillyUsername 13 days ago
    I'm looking for components to produce a desktop webapp frontend. I didn't see any examples in your project for things like this, do you have any?
  • sprintfire 13 days ago
    I tried the editor on the website. When I try to add tailwind navigation components to an html project it results in SQL numeric value out of range error.
    • santush 13 days ago
      Hi sprintfire, sorry to hear that you faced that issue. Just solve that. Thank you
  • pquki4 13 days ago
    This is one of those things that look great in demos but impossible to use for a professional website.
  • J_Shelby_J 13 days ago
    Maybe I should use them on my easy Astro blog creator[0]. How much “easy” can we stack!

    [0] https://github.com/easy-astro-blog-creator/easy-astro-blog-c...

  • threatofrain 13 days ago
    Huh... does anyone find these components to be remarkably bleh quality? As low quality as if they were generated by Vercel's AI service.
    • Olphs 13 days ago
      Yes, I'm very surprised that this is the top post on HN currently

      Still haven't seen an open-source UI kit that would get even close of the original one: https://tailwindui.com/

      • airstrike 13 days ago
        shadcn is downright great and ergonomic
      • RamblingCTO 13 days ago
        Yeah, you have tons and tons of these. Shoestring, primeng, shadn/radix, etc. etc.
        • dimgl 12 days ago
          Btw I think you meant Shoelace
        • dimgl 13 days ago
          shadcn/Radix is incredible though. Best component framework I’ve ever used.
          • RamblingCTO 12 days ago
            Yeah, I've been using it quite a lot actually and it's so satisfying and fast to develop with.
  • j45 13 days ago
    This reminds me of shuffle.dev l, of which I am a customer.

    Nice work!

  • canadiantim 13 days ago
    Does anyone else find GitHub’s mobile website to be poorly designed now? They used to be great but now it’s barely useable.
    • microflash 13 days ago
      Earlier GitHub UI was heavily reliant on web components. Now, they have been increasingly using React.
  • naiv 13 days ago
    TailwindUI's 101% bet on React for the templates and catalyst is really sad. I would pay extra for TailwindUi vanilla js components.

    So it's good to see new component libraries being released supporting vanilla Javascript with Tailwind and gives developers who do not like React a choice.

    • heartbreak 13 days ago
      TailwindUI has React, Vue, and a simplified HTML version of their interactive components.

      See: https://tailwindui.com/components/application-ui/data-displa...

      • naiv 13 days ago
        I know, like I mentioned not in the templates or catalyst
      • BaculumMeumEst 13 days ago
        He is saying they don't all have vanilla JS implementations of component functionality.
    • BaculumMeumEst 13 days ago
      Outing myself as a moron, but I did not understand this until after I paid. I ended up getting enough alpine js figured out to get stuff working (although it mixes kind of awkwardly with Hiccup). Definitely not happy to be getting that working myself- in hindsight I would not have paid without complete vanilla JS support.
      • naiv 13 days ago
        I really like some of their templates and ended up cherry picking parts and rewrote the React to vanilla js. Took me a day or two for the rough change but eventually it feels 'dirty'.
    • rjzzleep 13 days ago
      • naiv 13 days ago
        I bought the pro license for Flowbite as well. I like that is has a js library and I think the look and feel works well on admin dashboards, not so much for b2c cases
    • goosejuice 13 days ago
      Tailwind is fantastic, but I do feel that Tailwind UI hasn't really delivered value for my needs. It's missing a lot of common components and dark mode versions of the ones they have. Catalyst is also no use to me. I use phx live view without a js framework.

      Would have preferred to see more vanilla components as well. Looks like they are doing really well and hiring, so I'm hopeful.

      • naiv 13 days ago
        I miss full dark mode support :/
      • airstrike 13 days ago
        I find it odd that a paid product doesn't offer, you know, 120% of what a regular user needs. How hard can it be to include dark mode versions? Feels lazy, man
    • nicce 13 days ago
      There are many sites with alpine.js components if that is better.
  • zipping1549 12 days ago
    How is it Tailwind component if it's half custom CSS?
  • jwr 13 days ago
    Somewhat related: I'm still looking for a replacement for Semantic-UI. Specifically, similar breadth, no JavaScript (and no npm), just lots of components styled using CSS. Willing to pay a $250/month subscription fee.

    Most "frameworks" seem to follow the same patterns: NPM, lots of JavaScript, "revolutionary new approach to how you specify your layouts", few components, styling suitable for landing pages and startup home pages, not for data-dense applications, and nobody cares about tables.

    If you ask "so what's wrong with Semantic-UI?" — nothing, except it isn't really developed and maintained anymore. I wish it also relied less on JavaScript. But otherwise it's pretty good.