Tailwind CSS - A Utility-First CSS Framework for Rapidly Building Custom Designs

Utility-first

They come with all sorts of predesigned components like buttons, cards, and alerts that might help you move quickly at first, but cause more pain than they cure when it comes time to make your site stand out with a custom design.

Tailwind is different.

Instead of opinionated predesigned components, Tailwind provides low-level utility classes that let you build completely custom designs without ever leaving your HTML.

<div class="md:flex">
  <div class="md:flex-shrink-0">
    <img class="rounded-lg md:w-56" src="https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1556740738-b6a63e27c4df?ixlib=rb-1.2.1&ixid=eyJhcHBfaWQiOjEyMDd9&auto=format&fit=crop&w=448&q=80" alt="Woman paying for a purchase">
  </div>
  <div class="mt-4 md:mt-0 md:ml-6">
    <div class="uppercase tracking-wide text-sm text-indigo-600 font-bold">Marketing</div>
    <a href="#" class="block mt-1 text-lg leading-tight font-semibold text-gray-900 hover:underline">Finding customers for your new business</a>
    <p class="mt-2 text-gray-600">Getting a new business off the ground is a lot of hard work. Here are five ideas you can use to find your first customers.</p>
  </div>
</div>

If you're sick of fighting the framework, overriding unwanted styles, and battling specificity wars, Tailwind was made for you.

Learn more about Tailwind's utility-first workflow →^[1]

Responsive to the core

Every Tailwind utility also comes with responsive variants, making it extremely easy to build responsive interfaces without resorting to custom CSS.

Tailwind uses an intuitive {screen}: prefix that makes it easy to notice responsive classes in your markup while keeping the original class name recognizable and intact.

Learn more about responsive design with Tailwind →^[2]

Component-friendly

While you can do a lot with just utility classes, as a project grows it can be useful to codify common patterns into higher level abstractions.

Tailwind provides tools for extracting component classes^[3] from repeated utility patterns, making it easy to update multiple instances of a component from one place:

<!-- Using utilities: -->
<button class="bg-blue-500 hover:bg-blue-600 text-white font-bold py-2 px-4 rounded">
  Button
</button>

<!-- Extracting component classes: -->
<button class="btn btn-blue">
  Button
</button>

<style>
  .btn {
    @apply font-bold py-2 px-4 rounded;
  }
  .btn-blue {
    @apply bg-blue-500 text-white;
  }
  .btn-blue:hover {
    @apply bg-blue-600;
  }
</style>

Learn more about extracting components with Tailwind →^[4]

Designed to be customized

If it makes sense to be customizable, Tailwind lets you customize it. This includes colors, border sizes, font weights, spacing utilities, breakpoints, shadows, and tons more.

Tailwind is written in PostCSS^[5] and configured in JavaScript, which means you have the full power of a real programming language at your fingertips.

Tailwind is more than a CSS framework, it's an engine for creating design systems.

// tailwind.config.js
module.exports = {
  theme: {
    screens: {
      tablet: '768px',
      desktop: '1024px',
    },
    colors: {
      primary: {
        100: '#ebf8ff',
        300: '#90cdf4',
        500: '#4299e1',
        700: '#2b6cb0',
        900: '#2a4365',
      },
      secondary: {
        100: '#fffff0',
        300: '#faf089',
        500: '#ecc94b',
        700: '#b7791f',
        900: '#744210',
      },
    },
    extend: {
      boxShadow: {
        huge: '0 30px 60px -15px rgba(0, 0, 0, .25)'
      }
    }
  }
}

Learn more about customizing Tailwind →^[6]

References

1. ^{^} Learn more about Tailwind's utility-first workflow →
2. ^{^} Learn more about responsive design with Tailwind →
3. ^{^} extracting component classes
4. ^{^} Learn more about extracting components with Tailwind →
5. ^{^} PostCSS (postcss.org)
6. ^{^} Learn more about customizing Tailwind →