Why Are Modern Web Platforms Enjoying Tailwind?

In the world of front-end React application development Tailwind CSS needs no introduction. The CSS framework is loved among the developer community due to its scalability, flexibility, adaptability, and lightweight nature.

Tailwind simplifies the issue of maintaining CSS with its single-purpose utility classes. So, if you are finding a way to build a responsive and easy-to-maintain web application that works best on any device, Tailwind CSS is the answer. 

Currently, the framework is used by more than  261,170 live websites and the number will continue to grow in the near future. 

This article will help you to understand the reason behind the popularity of Tailwind CSS and how it solves most of the traditional CSS issues. So let's get started.  

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What is Tailwind CSS ?

Tailwind CSS is a framework for building front-end applications. The utility class framework is designed to empower users to build apps faster and easier. 

It can be used to control layouts, colors, spacing, typography, and more. Tailwind enables developers to create custom component designs without leaving HTML. It works by scanning all the HTML files, JavaScript components, and other templates then generating the corresponding styles and finally writing them to the static CSS. Overall, it gives a fast, flexible and reliable experience to the front-end developers while having zero runtime. 

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Benefits of using Tailwind CSS

1. Lightweight framework

Tailwind is a lightweight framework. You can considerably reduce the file size by removing the unused classes in the project using PurgeCSS. That is the reason why Tailwind can be a good choice since it requires the base stylesheet file with a size up to just 27kb. 

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2. Tailwind CSS is a Low-Level framework

Like Bootstrap and Materialize CSS, Tailwind doesn’t come up with predefined components. It operates on lower-level components, also called utility classes. These utility classes contain predefined styles that can be applied to an element. 

Utility classes simplify the process of building reusable components, help you write clear code, and provide developers with multiple design options for custom web app development.

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3. Tailwind styling is easier to maintain

With a utility-only approach, you don’t need to worry about annoying style conflicts. So, if you have a huge project with large hierarchies of style with nested selectors, then you might want to make changes. These changes can be overridden with the  !important, which is not a good idea. 

On the contrary, Tailwind helps you to apply styles directly to the things you are styling and you can easily change the styling without affecting the higher-level components. 

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4. Don’t need to worry about the naming conventions for style classes

With traditional styling you need to consider the style and the content while creating classes and even if you have base classes you might need to override them, which can be exhausting because of the following reasons:

1. Classes can be used more than once so developers must follow standard naming conventions.
2. It is difficult to keep consistency in the class names across the project when different teams are working on it.  

Tailwind CSS uses utility classes which means you do not need to name the classes that far. It's easy to use the Tailwind utility classes as the naming is fairly intuitive.

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5. Enables styling inline without having to create different selectors

Tailwind allows you to create inline styling without having to create different selectors. For example, if you want to display something on a small screen and the same on a large screen, you will need to create different sets of selectors in the different parts of your CSS which is time-consuming. 

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6. Easy to compress for the smaller production build

It's normal to have the larger HTML file with Tailwind, because of the repetitive nature of utility classes they are quite easy to compress well at the transport layer with the tools like CSSnano and Brotli. 

With the compressed CSS file, you don’t have to worry about code splitting and other techniques to reduce production build size, instead, it can be downloaded once and cached till it is redeployed to the site. The small file size improves the data transfer speed and page load performance. 

Here we have discussed only a few benefits of the Tailwind CSS framework over the traditional CSS, but as you start using Tailwind you will discover the other benefits too. 

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Summing Up:

The article helps you to get a clear idea about why you should use Tailwind CSS in your next project. The framework offers many advantages over traditional CSS, by improving app development speed, reliability, maintainability, and efficiency.  And above all Tailwind has a big ecosystem of UI components and learning resources. 

Well, if you are looking for the best way to build your next custom web application, you can make it effortless and faster by using DhiWise React web app builder. 

The web app builder uses Tailwind CSS as a defined framework, so you can build a web app without restrictions while having minimum code clutter. 

Find out more about this ultimate platform, and sign up today to start building your next web application with Tailwind CSS and DhiWise Web Builder.