Hi there 👋🏻
Building user interfaces has never been easier, the abundance of beautifully crafted component libraries has made it incredibly effortless to build high-quality, rich and interactive user interfaces in a very speedy manner.
But with all the choices that are available out there, how do you choose? Is it the design, the development experience, the documentation? Or maybe a whole bunch of reasons and factors you take into consideration? 🤔
Drop your reasons in the comments section!
Top comments (10)
Couple of main decision influencing points:
Ideally I would like component to own's it primitive responsibility and my work only should be to decide where to use and how it should look.
Headless UI architecture fits perfectly here. ShadCN UI is a great example of this. You can literally have any design incorporated with those components while preserving it's underlying functionality
I think depending on the answers on customizability, I think a good question is always "am I okay with the tradeoffs of not being able to customize it?"
Obviously a lot of the time it's not just you, but the team/product/company — and I think in this case over-communicating the trade-offs is key.
Hey there! 👋🏻 Building interfaces has become so easy with today’s component libraries. But with all the choices out there, how do you pick the right one? Here’s my quick guide on what I usually consider:
It's not always an easy task.
First of all, I prioritize libraries that are backed by trusted people or relevant organizations, over those made by some random person. I also look for good documentation!
Another factor, for me, is popularity. If many people use it, some of them probably talked about problems and solutions they had.
Documentation certainly important, look on how many people using it, can loosely measure by amount of stars on GitHub repo, also look on amount of open issues and how fast they get resolved.
Look for Typescript usage, TS types make life easier, if main repo uses plain JS, types will be out of sync.
Look for tests, if there any complex enough functionality, if it's not just styling.
Can take into account review from people whose expertise you respect.
And how new library is, if library existed for a few years, most of questions about them already answered, can find articles as well.
As solo player, choosing the right component library was crucial. Here's my decision process:
Development Speed vs. Customization
I went with shadcn/ui because it offers a unique "copy-paste" approach and import via CLI feature - you own the components and can modify them freely. This gives me:
Bundle Size Consideration
Since each component is copied into your project, you only include what you use.
Developer Experience
A few things that made shadcn/ui stand out:
Design System Flexibility
The Tailwind + CSS Variables approach makes it easy to:
If you need an all-in-one solution with official support, I guess MUI or Chakra might be better choices.
Here are my considerations: 😄
Absolutely incredible! 😻.
Glad you found it helpful!
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