Steve Kinney
Temporal
Tailwind CSS
4 hours, 10 minutes CC
Course Description
Use Tailwind CSS's utility-first approach to build out entire web designs without needing any custom CSS! You can even add responsive breakpoints and dark mode right into your HTML markup. Learn through hands-on exercises building real-world components like modals, forms, and page layouts. You’ll then configure Tailwind to theme your projects and harness its layers for concise, maintainable styles. By the end of this course, you'll be proficient in building visually stunning, responsive, and maintainable user interfaces with Tailwind CSS!
This course and others like it are available as part of our Frontend Masters video subscription.
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Published: December 13, 2023
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Table of Contents
Introduction
Section Duration: 6 minutes
Steve Kinney introduces Tailwind CSS and discusses discovering Tailwind CSS as a solution for writing CSS more efficiently. Tailwind CSS is a utility-first CSS framework classes that can be composed to build any design, directly in markup. The Tailwind CSS playground will be used to code and test the exercises throughout the course.
Basic Styling
Section Duration: 1 hour, 18 minutes
Steve explains the purpose of a utility-first CSS framework like Tailwind CSS. Tailwind CSS can increase productivity and the ability to add customizations. Questions about using Tailwind, including the level of CSS knowledge required and how it compares to other CSS libraries, are also addressed in this lesson.
Steve discusses the basics of Tailwind CSS and explains its philosophy. The Tailwind CSS playground is helpful for experimentation, and the course website provides information about tools like Tailwind IntelliSense and Prettier. CSS layers are introduced and help encapsulate styles and manage specificity. Tailwind CSS ships with a base, components, and utilities layer.
Steve demonstrates the base styles within Tailwind and how to add core styles to the base layer using utility classes and the @apply function. Using a theme in Tailwind CSS, including using predefined colors and creating custom color classes, is also covered in this lesson.
Steve explains how to customize the color theme in Tailwind CSS. The default theme can be extended with new colors and shades of colors. The custom theme colors can be used in custom CSS classes or to override the existing primary and secondary colors. The lesson emphasizes the flexibility and extensibility of Tailwind CSS in terms of color customization.
Steve customizes a button with various properties such as background color, text color, padding, border, shadow, and rounding corners. Arbitrary values and measurements can be used by wrapping them in square brackets. Text sizing and spacing are also explained.
Students are instructed to style an alert/modal dialog that contains text and two buttons.
Steve explains how utility classes can easily add background colors, spacing, and other styles to elements without writing custom CSS. Composing multiple utility classes together can create custom utilities.
Students are instructed to use the spacing utility classes to separate menu items.
Variants
Section Duration: 1 hour, 34 minutes
Steve demonstrates how to use pseudo-classes to apply different styles to elements based on their state, such as hover, active, and disabled.
Students are instructed to use style a form using Tailwind CSS pseudo-classes.
Steve answers questions about Tailwind CSS. Questions include how to utilize features of SASS, trade-offs of not using the cascade, and when to use the utility layer versus the component layer.
Steve adds a few more enhancements to the form and demonstrates how to customize placeholder text, input cursors, and the mouse. Tailwind CSS plugins that can support new CSS features are also discussed.
Students are instructed to improve the form's look by adding accent colors, placeholder styles, border and ring styles, and removing the default outline.
Steve introduces "peer" and "group" modifiers, which style elements based on their relationship to other elements. The peer modifier only works with future siblings. Namespacing peer modifiers and decoration classes are also covered in this lesson.
Steve demonstrates group modifiers and compares them with peer modifiers. Group modifiers can have different variants, such as hover, to apply specific styles to elements within the group. Data attributes can also be used with groups to create more dynamic styling effects.
Students are instructed to use group modifiers to add a hover style to the modal and a separate hover style to the button in the modal.
Steve demonstrates additional group modifiers. The group-open modifier can style details and summary elements based on an open or closed condition. Additional background colors and rounded corner styles are discussed as well.
Steve demonstrates how the before and after modifiers add content before or after an element, and how they can be stacked and combined to create interactive effects.
Steve implements dark mode using the dark variant and the Tailwind CSS configuration option for a dark parent class. By default, the variants will use the user's color preference. Other variants like selection and aspect ratio are also introduced in this lesson.
Steve uses the breakpoint variants to apply different styling rules at the predefined breakpoints. If a custom breakpoint is required, it can be added to the configuration file.
Layout
Section Duration: 47 minutes
Steve introduces the columns property, which is helpful for masonry layouts or multi-column text layouts. Options for controlling the columns include specifying the number of columns or the width of each column. Aspect ratios for images are also discussed in this lesson.
Students are instructed to use the the columns class to create a multi-column layout.
Steve introduces the Flexbox and Grid classes in Tailwind CSS and uses a playground to demonstrate the Flexbox classes. By default, the horizontal axis for layout is the main axis, and the vertical axis is the cross axis.
Students are instructed to use the Flexbox classes in Tailwind CSS to create horizontal and vertical layouts. Breakpoints should be added to adjust the design across different viewports.
Steve explores the grid classes in Tailwind CSS and compares them with the Flexbox classes. The grid playground is used to experiment with the layout classes justify, align, place, content, and items.
Steve demonstrates how to create a grid layout using Tailwind CSS. The HTML structure uses header, sidebar, main, and footer elements. CSS grid properties like grid-template-rows and grid-template-columns are applied, and Tailwind's responsive breakpoints are used to adjust the layout for different screen sizes.
Additional Tailwind CSS Features
Section Duration: 14 minutes
Steve demonstrates the pre-defined animation classes like a pulse for creating loading indicators or notifications. The animation classes can be combined with transitions and transforms to display indicators based on an empty state. Copying content and screen reader-specific classes are also demonstrated in this lesson.
Steve explains that plugins in Tailwind CSS are a way to package up functionality that can be added to the build system. Typography and container query plugins are demonstrated. Tailwind CSS configuration for plugins is also explained in this lesson.
Wrapping Up
Section Duration: 9 minutes
Steve wraps up the course by answering Tailwind CSS questions, including important features, considerations for building for production, tools in the Tailwind ecosystem, building a custom design system with Tailwind CSS and Figma, using CSS variables, and handling scrolling panels within a grid container.
Recently completed the Tailwind CSS course on Frontend Masters taught by Steve Kinney!
Love the utility-first approach for rapid development and keeping styles consistent. Big thanks to Steve Kinney for the awesome breakdown!
Here's what I loved most:
Utility Classes: Building UIs with pre-defined classes for margins, padding, and typography feels great. No more jumping between files and hunting down conflicting CSS issues.
Boosting Efficiency: Tailwind lets you focus on layout and component styling, freeing you from writing tons of CSS.
Customization Power: Don't get fooled by the utility-first approach. You can still create custom classes and components for a unique design.
Overall, Tailwind CSS is seriously streamlining my development process. It's a fantastic tool for building modern, responsive websites quickly.
Cody Perry
Senior Software Engineer
Just wrapped up Steve Kinney's Tailwind CSS course on Frontend Masters, what an eye-opener! I discovered the magic of using utility classes to achieve so much while keeping the CSS file size minimal.
Sahil Langoo
kashurgeek
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