Chakra UI vs Tailwind CSS: A Comparison of Two Popular UI Libraries

Chakra UI: A Simple, Modular and Accessible Component Library for React

If you are looking for a way to create beautiful, accessible and responsive user interfaces for your React applications, you might want to check out Chakra UI. Chakra UI is a comprehensive library of reusable and composable React components that streamlines the development of modern web applications and websites. In this article, we will explore what Chakra UI is, why you should use it, how to use it in your React app, and how to learn more about it and join the community.

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What is Chakra UI and why use it?

Chakra UI is a component library that provides a set of reusable UI components that can be used to create complex UIs. It focuses on providing a set of high-quality, accessible components that can be used to build responsive, user-friendly interfaces. Some of the features and benefits of Chakra UI are:

The features and benefits of Chakra UI

• It follows the for all components, ensuring that your app is accessible to all users.

• It allows you to customize any part of the components to match your design needs, using a .

• It is designed with composition in mind, meaning that you can combine different components to create new ones with ease.

• It supports multiple color modes, such as light and dark, that can be toggled by the user or by the system preference.

• It offers a great developer experience, with helpful tools such as .

• It has an active community of maintainers and users who are ready to help you with any questions or issues you might have.

The installation and setup of Chakra UI

To use Chakra UI in your project, you need to install it using one of the following commands:

npm i @chakra-ui/react @emotion/react @emotion/styled framer-motion // or yarn add @chakra-ui/react @emotion/react @emotion/styled framer-motion

After installing Chakra UI, you need to set up the ChakraProvider at the root of your application. This component provides the theme and global styles for your app. You can also pass a custom theme object to the provider if you want to override or extend the default theme. Here is an example of how to set up the provider:

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import * as React from 'react' import ChakraProvider from '@chakra-ui/react' function App() return ( <ChakraProvider> <TheRestOfYourApplication /> </ChakraProvider> )

How to use Chakra UI components in your React app

Chakra UI provides a wide range of components that can be used to create various types of user interfaces. You can find all the available components in the , along with their props, examples, and usage guidelines. To use a component in your app, you need to import it from the @chakra -ui/react package. Here are some examples of how to use Chakra UI components in your React app:

The basic usage of Chakra UI components

Chakra UI components are designed to be easy to use and intuitive. You can use them as you would use any other React component, by passing props and children to them. For example, here is how you can use the Button component to create a simple button:

import * as React from 'react' import Button from '@chakra-ui/react' function Example() return ( <Button colorScheme="blue">Click Me</Button> )

This will render a blue button with the text "Click Me". You can see the result in the following image:

You can also use the as prop to change the underlying element of the component. For example, you can use the Link component to create a link that looks like a button:

import * as React from 'react' import Link from '@chakra-ui/react' function Example() return ( <Link as="button" colorScheme="blue" href=" Chakra UI</Link> )

This will render a link that looks like a blue button with the text "Visit Chakra UI". You can see the result in the following image:

The customization and theming of Chakra UI components

One of the main advantages of Chakra UI is that it allows you to customize any aspect of the components to suit your design needs. You can use two main ways to customize the components: using the theme object or using the style props.

The theme object is a global object that contains all the default values for the components, such as colors, fonts, sizes, breakpoints, etc. You can override or extend any part of the theme object by passing a custom theme object to the ChakraProvider. For example, here is how you can change the primary color of your app to green:

import * as React from 'react' import ChakraProvider, extendTheme from '@chakra-ui/react' const theme = extendTheme( colors: primary: 'green', , ) function App() return ( <ChakraProvider theme=theme> <TheRestOfYourApplication /> </ChakraProvider> )

This will change the primary color of all the components that use it, such as buttons, links, badges, etc. You can see the result in the following image:

The style props are props that you can pass to any component to modify its appearance or behavior. They are based on , but with some enhancements and shortcuts. For example, here is how you can change the size, color, and margin of a button using style props:

import * as React from 'react' import Button from '@chakra-ui/react' function Example() return ( <Button size="lg" color="white" bg="purple.500" m=4>Click Me</Button> )

This will render a large button with white text and purple background, with a margin of 4 units on all sides. You can see the result in the following image:

The accessibility and responsiveness of Chakra UI components

Another key feature of Chakra UI is that it ensures that all the components are accessible and responsive by default. This means that your app will be usable by anyone, regardless of their device or ability.

All the components follow the , which provide guidelines for making web content accessible to people with disabilities. For example, all the interactive components have proper keyboard navigation, focus, and aria attributes. For example, here is how the Button component handles accessibility:

<button type="button" role="button" tabindex="0" aria-disabled="false" > Click Me </button>

All the components are also responsive, meaning that they adapt to different screen sizes and orientations. You can use the breakpoints object in the theme to define the breakpoints for your app, and then use the responsive styles to change the style props based on the breakpoints. For example, here is how you can change the size of a button depending on the screen width:

import * as React from 'react' import Button from '@chakra-ui/react' function Example() return ( <Button size= base: 'sm', md: 'md', lg: 'lg' >Click Me</Button> )

This will render a small button on small screens, a medium button on medium screens, and a large button on large screens. You can see the result in the following image:

How to learn more about Chakra UI and join the community

If you are interested in learning more about Chakra UI and how to use it in your projects, there are several resources and platforms that you can use. Some of them are:

The official documentation and courses of Chakra UI

The best place to start learning about Chakra UI is the that show you how to use Chakra UI with other tools and frameworks, such as Next.js, Gatsby, Ty