Shadcn UI

Shadcn UI adoption guide:

Overview, examples,

and alternatives.

What is Shadcn UI?

The Official Documentation states that shadcn/ui is not a component library. It is a collection of reusable components that you copy-paste into your codebase. The components are part of your codebase and not a third-party dependency you installed.

Shadcn UI provides pre-built components that can be entirely customized to match your application's design system. This means you're not limited to a predefined style, as you would be with other component libraries. Instead, it delivers all of the functionality while letting you customize the appearance and feel.

The best part is, shadcn/ui is open-source. You can explore the entire codebase, see how things are done, and take inspiration from it to build something of your own.

What is Radix-UI?

Radix-UI is a component library for React that offers a collection of 'headless' components, meaning components that manage functionality and accessibility without enforcing any specific styling or design. This approach lets developers implement fully customizable and accessible UI components while keeping design control in their hands.

Why you should use Shadcn UI?

Even though it is a relatively new UI library, Shadcn UI has quickly risen in the ranks and is being adopted by several creators in the open source community and brands like Vercel. Its wide adoption is one great reason to use it — you’re likely to find tutorials, guides, and support from the community.

Here are a few other reasons you should use Shadcn UI:

Offers beautifully designed components:

One of Shadcn UI's major selling points is its well-designed components. You’re sure to have an aesthetically pleasing website if you build it with Shadcn UI.

Provides many components:

Shadcn UI offers various component options, ranging from basic UI elements like buttons and inputs to more complex components like toasts, dropdown menus, and navigation menus. This gives you a wide range of building blocks for your app.

Built with Tailwind CSS:

Shadcn uses Tailwind CSS, a popular and utility-first CSS framework, for styling. This allows you to easily customize the components to match your application's branding and design requirements.

However, Shadcn UI is not for every developer or every project. Here's why you shouldn't use Shadcn UI:

Ownership and responsibility:

Since every component's code lives in your codebase, you are responsible for maintaining the components and their dependencies and fixing any bugs or issues that may arise.

Bundling and performance:

Any component you use will be included in your application's bundle. This can potentially increase the overall bundle size and affect performance. You will have to manually use performance optimization techniques like code splitting to optimize the bundle size, which requires extra effort.

Requires Tailwind CSS knowledge:

While it's not a major issue, knowledge of Tailwind CSS is required to effectively use Shadcn UI.

You should weigh these reasons to use or not use Shadcn UI, along with its pros and cons (which we'll discuss below), before deciding whether or not it's the right choice for your next project.

What are the Pros and Cons of using Shadcn-UI?

Pro no.1:
1. Customizations are easy.
2. Why? Because code is copied and pasted into your source code.
Pro no.2:
1. Minimal lock in to the library.
2. How? Easy to replace underlying dependencies. (facade pattern).
3. Example: Can change the underlying calendar dependency in the future.
Pro no.3:
1. The theme is controlled by a global.css file instead of proprietary theme object.
2. If you've built your own component library before, you know how hard it can be to create a universal theme.
3. With Shadcn, you can create a global theme using Tailwind CSS.

;

Dark mode

Shadcn UI supports dark mode for Next.js Click here to learn more!

CLI

You can use Shadcn UI's CLI to integrate the library with your applications, add dependencies, and apply the relevant tailwind.config.js configurations. You can also add UI components to your applications with the CLI. You can either manually copy and paste the code for each component from the documentation or add them with the CLI. The CLI provides a superior developer experience and is one more feature that makes Shadcn UI work with.

Multiple components

As of this writing, Shadcn UI has 40 components, including Accordion, Skeleton, Table, and Popover. Instead of building components from scratch, you can save time by leveraging Shadcn UI’s prebuilt components.

Benefits of Shadcn UI

Shadcn UI provides several benefits compared to other component libraries. Here are the most significant:

1. Rich Component Library

Shadcn UI offers a vast library of pre-built components that cater to a wide array of common use cases. These components range from basic elements like buttons and forms to complex structures such as data tables and modals. Each component is designed to be highly customizable, ensuring that developers can tailor them to fit their specific design requirements.

2. Customizability

One of the standout features of Shadcn UI is its high degree of customizability. Every component is designed with flexibility in mind, allowing developers to easily override default styles and behaviors. This ensures that the UI can be tailored to match the specific design requirements of any project.

3. Accessibility

Accessibility is a core focus of Shadcn UI. All components are built with accessibility best practices, ensuring that applications are usable by people with disabilities. This includes keyboard navigation, screen reader support, and compliance with ARIA (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) standards.

4. Responsive Design

Shadcn UI components are designed to be fully responsive, adapting seamlessly to different screen sizes and orientations. This is crucial for creating applications that provide a consistent user experience across desktops, tablets, and mobile devices.

5. Performance

Performance is a critical aspect of modern web development, and Shadcn UI is optimized to ensure fast load times and efficient rendering.

Getting Started with Shadcn UI

Step 1: Installation

To get started with Shadcn UI, you first need to install the library. This can be done using npm or yarn:

Step 2: Importing Components

Once installed, you can start importing and using Shadcn UI components in your project. For example, to use a button component, you can do the following:

;

Step 3: Customizing Components

Customizing Shadcn UI components is straightforward. You can use CSS-in-JS libraries like styled-components or Emotion to override styles, or you can apply your custom classes directly:

How is ShadCN UI based on Radix UI?

Headless and Accessible Components:

Radix UI is known for its "headless" components, meaning they handle functionality and accessibility without imposing specific styling. ShadCN UI leverages these components to ensure they are both highly accessible and customizable, meeting modern web accessibility standards.

Focus on Customization:

Since Radix UI separates functionality from styling, ShadCN UI can easily apply custom styles (often using Tailwind CSS) to create a cohesive and visually appealing design. This customization flexibility allows ShadCN to offer components that adapt to various design needs without being constrained by preset styles.

Consistency and Usability:

Radix UI provides a consistent API for various components, which ShadCN UI extends. This makes ShadCN's components not only uniform in behavior but also easier to use and integrate with other components in a project.

Enhanced Developer Experience:

By building on Radix UI, ShadCN UI offers components that work smoothly out of the box, saving developers time and effort on accessibility and interactivity concerns.

In essence, ShadCN UI takes Radix UI's solid, accessible foundation and enhances it with a visually polished, customizable layer, resulting in a modern, user-friendly UI component library.

I've also incorporated a ShadCN component in this project for an enhanced user experience—Let's see if you can spot it!