Marlon Hunt

Jul 06, 2022

Tailwind CSS

There are popular frameworks out there that many developers use to style their websites and Web projects. Alternatively, some developers learn CSS to style their Web projects without resorting to a framework. Which of these approaches works better? Like most things in development, it depends.

Although you can plop down components from something like Bootstrap and go about your day, ultimately, you'll need to learn enough CSS to customize it, or your projects will look exactly like every other website. The “Bootstrapification” of the Web is one reason that many Web developers are hesitant to use CSS frameworks.

On the other hand, it can be difficult to build your site from scratch using CSS. Understanding multiple layout semantics, unit systems, and cascading rules can be overwhelming for developers who just want to be able to get back to building functionality.

Somewhere between these two extremes lives Tailwind CSS. Tailwind CSS focus provides utility to build ideas without spending much of that time building CSS style sheets. By using utility CSS classes, Tailwind allows you to build prototypes of designs quickly and find the look and feel of what you want. As the design matures, Tailwind CSS allows you to compose these utility classes into CSS that is built to simplify your markup once you've found the design you want. Let's dig in and see how that works.