Everything You Need to Get Started with Tailwind UI

What is Tailwind CSS?

Tailwind CSS is one of the top 10 most popular CSS frameworks in 2022 for modern website development. It is a utility-first framework that is easy to learn and scale in a large application.

Tailwind CSS is an open-source CSS framework created in 2017. Tailwind labs, which is also the creator of the Tailwind UI and Refactoring UI, maintains it.

It is the second most used

by web developers after Bootstrap and it’s catching up with Bootstrap according to npm trends, as shown below:

Tailwind CSS is actively being maintained by its developers and has over 62k stars on GitHub and over 4.3 million weekly downloads on the npm website.

Some of the features of Tailwind CSS include the following:

• Quick setup
• Highly customizable
• Versatile
• There is no vanilla JavaScript required, making it suitable for any JavaScript framework.

Getting Started with Tailwind CSS

There are two ways to start with Tailwind CSS for the first time as a web developer. One way is exploring it first on Tailwind Play or installing Tailwind CSS into your web app projects. Check out the CopyCat plugin for React if you’re seeking for amazing React tools to help you build component code faster and be production ready sooner than your competition!

Tailwind CSS Playground

According to Tailwind; Tailwind Play is an advanced online playground for exploring Tailwind CSS, including support for things like customizing your tailwind.config.js file, extracting classes with @apply and code completion with an instant preview editor, as shown below:

Tailwind Play is perfect for learning how the framework works, prototyping a new idea, or creating a Tailwind CSS project demo to share online.

Tailwind CSS Installation

The framwork provides four options to install Tailwind CSS into your frontend project:

1. Tailwind CLI
2. Using PostCSS
3. Framework Guides
4. Play CDN

1. Tailwind CLI

The Tailwind CLI tool is the quickest and easiest way to get started with Tailwind CSS from the ground up. The CLI is also available as a standalone executable if you want to use it without installing the Node.js package.

Check out the Tailwind CSS CLI installation here.

2. Using PostCSS

Installing Tailwind CSS as a PostCSS plugin is the most seamless way to integrate it with build tools like webpack, Rollup, Vite, and Parcel.

Check out how to install Tailwind CSS using PostCSS here.

3. Framework Guides

Tailwind provides framework-specific guides that cover recommended approaches to installing Tailwind CSS in a number of popular environments.

Below are the frameworks that are covered by Tailwind CSS as of writing this article:

Check out the framework-specific installation guide for your front-end framework here.

4. Play CDN

Use the Play CDN to try Tailwind right in the browser without any build steps. The Play CDN is designed for development purposes only and is not the best choice for production.

Check out the steps to add Tailwind CSS to your project using the Play CDN here.

Tailwind Utility Classes

Tailwind CSS provides ready-made, single-purpose CSS classes to build responsive UI faster without writing too much vanilla CSS.

Some of the most used Tailwind utility classes include the following:

• Flex (Flexbox)
• Grid template columns (CSS Grid)
• Spacing (padding, margin, and space between)
• Typography (font family, size, colour etc)
• Handling Hover, Focus, and Other States

You can make use of Tailwind functions & directives such as the @apply directive to add your custom styles to components or you can change colours and other designs using CSS variables. Check out the full list of Tailwind CSS functions & directives here.

Tailwind UI Components for Web Development

The makers of Tailwind CSS provide over 500+ free and paid beautifully crafted Tailwind CSS UI components, that are production ready for your next project.

The Tailwind UI components are categorized into three; Application UI, Product Marketing and Product E-commerce which are all available in plain HTML, ReactJS and VueJS versions.

Tailwind Templates for Website Development

Tailwind templates are fully customizable and production-ready templates for developing modern websites. They are designed using React and Next.js framework by Tailwind UI experts.

The templates include a SaaS marketing template, a personal modern websites template, a podcast template, a documentation template, a conference template and many more.

Tailwind Dark Mode

Dark mode has become one of the must-have features in frontend applications and Tailwind CSS seamlessly support styling your site in dark mode.****

Tailwind CSS supports both toggling dark mode manually and system preference, which can be easily integrated into an existing Tailwind CSS project.

Check out the tutorial video below by Tailwind Labs on how to build a dark mode UI using Tailwind CSS below:

Tailwind UI Resources

Learning and working with Tailwind CSS is easy! The resources and tools listed below will help you understand how the Tailwind CSS component works and help improve your Tailwind CSS productivity.

Tailwind component live preview

Explore a variety of Tailwind UI components developed by experts on Tailwind live playgrounds.

Explore Tailwind components

Check out the paid version of Tailwind CSS components and templates for plain HTML, React and Vue.

Headless UI

Headless UI is an unstyled component UI kit from the creators of Tailwind CSS. Its UI components can be used with both React and Vue.

Tailwind Starter Kit by Creative Kim

Download the Tailwind Starter Kit from www.creative-tim.com to speed up your project development. The starter kit includes a dashboard page, landing page, login page, profile page, form layouts etc.

Free Tailwind Template

Get free and paid Tailwind CSS landing pages and business websites from tailwindtemplates.co.

Tailwind Toolbox

Get free Tailwind templates, components and building resources from the Tailwind Toolbox website.

ThemeForest

Purchase paid and free Tailwind CSS templates from the ThemeForest website.

ThemeWagon

Get paid and free Tailwind responsive UI templates from the ThemeWagon website.

Other Tailwind CSS learning and productivity tools

• Learn how to set up Tailwind CSS in React application (a step by step guide)
• Tailwind CSS IntelliSense extension for Visual Studio Code
• Tailwind official prettier plugin for Tailwind CSS that automatically sorts your classes on Visual Studio Code.

Tailwind CSS Crash Course

If you prefer a hands-on project, take a look at the Tailwind crash course below, where you will build awesome UI projects with Tailwind CSS.

Build and deploy a Tailwind CSS project with Traversy Media from the ground up.

Build Portfolio Website with Tailwind CSS | Tailwind Tutorial for Beginners by Lama Dev

**Build a React Portfolio Website With Tailwind | Tutorial by DevED

https://youtu.be/k-Pi5ZMxHWY

Frequently asked questions about Tailwind UI

Is Tailwind a UI framework?

• Yes, it’s a UI framework that enables you to design your custom UI components and theme for web apps without writing your own CSS variables.

Who uses Tailwind UI?

• Over 340 companies on stackshare.io reportedly use Tailwind CSS in their tech stacks. Companies including, Hashnode, ****MAK IT, and Superchat.

Is Tailwind better than Bootstrap?

• Unlike Bootstrap, Tailwind CSS does not provide a series of predefined classes for elements such as buttons or tables. Tailwind was built from the ground up to be super customizable with less or no CSS needed to be written by the developer.

Is there a free version of Tailwind UI?

• Yes, there are free versions of Tailwind UI components and Tailwind site templates.

Wrapping Up

Tailwind CSS has grown in popularity among front-end frameworks for web development, and it isn’t going away anytime soon (ever).

In this article, we looked at some important aspects of Tailwind CSS, such as how the Tailwind utility class can help you get more done with less vanilla CSS and ship faster with Tailwind’s free and paid UI components and templates.

Finally, you can find more incredible articles like this on our blog at CopyCat. CopyCat is a tool that saves you about 35% of development time by converting your Figma files to an up-and-running React project. Check it out here.

Interesting Reads From Our Blogs

• 10 CSS Frameworks for Frontend Developers in 2022
• React Table Tutorial: How to Build a Table with React Table Library
• The Top 16 Design System Examples

Happy Coding 👨🏽‍💻