How to Build Unique, Beautiful Websites with Tailwind CSS

Selecting the right CSS framework is an important part of new project development. Frameworks such as Bootstrap and Foundation are popular for their ready-made preset components that developers can easily get started. This method is suitable for simple websites with a more versatile appearance and feel. But for more complex and personalized websites, problems arise.

As the project progresses, we need to customize components, create new components, and ensure that the final code base remains uniform and easy to maintain after modification.

The above needs are difficult to meet with frameworks such as Bootstrap and Foundation because these frameworks bring a lot of styles that are subjective and in many cases unwanted. As a result, we have to continue to solve specificity issues while trying to override the default style. This doesn't sound easy.

On-shelf solutions are easy to implement, but lack flexibility and are limited by certain boundaries. On the other hand, designing a website without a CSS framework is not easy to manage and maintain. So, what is the solution?

The solution, as always, follows the golden mean. We need to find and apply the right balance between concrete and abstract. Low-level CSS frameworks provide this balance. There are many such frameworks, and in this tutorial, we will explore the most popular one: Tailwind CSS.

Key Points

• Tailwind CSS adopts a practically preferred approach that allows more direct control and customization of web components in HTML, thereby facilitating a more manageable and scalable code base.
• The installation and setup of Tailwind CSS is very simple, including npm installation, configuration via tailwind.config.js, and using the @tailwind command to include styles.
• Tailwind CSS supports responsive design through mobile-first utility classes that can be applied conditionally using breakpoint prefixes to easily build responsive websites.
• The framework encourages the extraction of common patterns into reusable components, reducing redundancy and improving the efficiency of style design.
• Tailwind's powerful customization allows developers to extend the framework with their own CSS classes and utilities, adjusting default themes to suit project-specific needs.
• From small personal blogs to large enterprise applications, Tailwind CSS is suitable because it is flexible and easy to maintain.

What is Tailwind?

Tailwind is not just a CSS framework, it is an engine for creating design systems. ——Tailwind official website

Tailwind is a collection of low-level utility classes. They can be used to build any type of components just like Lego bricks. This collection covers the most important CSS properties, but can be easily extended in a number of ways. With Tailwind, customization is no longer a problem. The framework has excellent documentation, details each class utility and demonstrates its custom methods. All modern browsers and IE11 support it.

Why use a practical priority framework?

The low-level practical priority CSS framework like Tailwind has many benefits. Let's explore some of the most notable:

• You can have better control over the appearance of the element. Using utility classes, we can change and fine-tune the appearance of elements more easily.
• Easy to manage and maintain in large projects, because you only need to maintain HTML files, not large CSS code bases.
• It is easier to build unique, custom website designs without fighting unwanted styles.
• It is highly customizable and scalable, which gives us unlimited flexibility.
• It adopts a mobile-first approach and makes it easy to implement responsive design patterns.
• You can extract common, repetitive patterns into custom reusable components—in most cases, no need to write a line of custom CSS.
• It has a self-interpreted class. We can imagine the appearance of the styling element by simply reading the class name.

Lastly, as the creator of Tailwind said:

The first time I saw it, it was almost impossible to think it was a good idea - you have to actually try it.

So, let's try it!

Beginner of Tailwind

To demonstrate the customization of Tailwind, we need to install it through npm:

npm install tailwindcss

The next step is to create a styles.css file, which we use the @tailwind directive to include the frame style:

@tailwind base;

@tailwind components;

@tailwind utilities;

After

, we run the npx tailwind init command, which will create a minimal tailwind.config.js file where we will put custom options during development. The generated file contains the following content:

module.exports = {
  theme: {},
  variants: {},
  plugins: [],
}

The next step is to build the styles so that they can be used:

npx tailwind build styles.css -o output.css

Finally, we link the generated output.css file and Font Awesome to our HTML:

<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="output.css">
<link rel="stylesheet" href="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/font-awesome/5.9.0/css/all.min.css">

Now, we are ready to start creating.

(The detailed steps for building a single-page website template are omitted here, because the length is too long, but the pictures and key code snippets are retained)

Summary

As you can see, Tailwind provides a straightforward process without limiting options or flexibility. The practical priority method provided by Tailwind has been successfully applied to large companies such as GitHub, Heroku, Kickstarter, Twitch, Segment, etc.

Personally, after many hours of "fighting" and "fighting" with the styles of frameworks like Bootstrap, Foundation, Semantic UI, UIkit, and Bulma, using the Tailwind utility feels like being in a cloudless sky Fly freely in the middle.

(The FAQs section is omitted here because it is too long, but an overview of the main questions and answers is retained) The FAQs section covers the uniqueness of Tailwind CSS, the approach to getting started, and other frameworks Compatibility, responsive design, large-scale project applicability, theme customization, preprocessor support, production environment optimization, email design, and learning resources.

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