In a nutshell: Basecoat is a port of shadcn/ui to HTML and Tailwind CSS. It's a modern, themeable component library; everything from buttons to comboboxes and dialogs.
Why? Well, I got sick of React and moved over to a more "old school" stack (Python, HTMX, Alpine.js and Tailwind).
The one thing I missed was shadcn/ui [1]. Nice defaults, well thought out design system, easy to theme and great to build your own component library with.
I didn't find the alternatives compelling: Flowbite, Preline and the likes encourage you to copy/paste dozens of classes for each element.
That's not how I use Tailwind. I love the utility-first approach, but I don't want walls of classes for each button, form element or tooltip I have in my app.
I had been building my own component library for a project I’m working on (a Vercel for Python apps) and realized it may be worth my time to firm things up.
Why I think it's cool? Well:
- No React. Just Tailwind CSS (with a tiny bit of Alpine.js if you choose to). You can use that with whatever stack you want.
- Jinja and Nunjucks macros. I hope to support more template engines.
- 100% compatible with shadcn/ui themes (you can play with the theme select box on the site).
- Super easy to install and use (there's even a CLI).
- Accessible, with ARIA support.
- Did I mention no React?
Hope some of you find it useful.
[1]: https://ui.shadcn.com/
[2]: https://v4.shadcn.com/ (this is actually the new/upcoming version of shadcn/ui).
A sampling of error messages:
- Failed to load resource: Load cannot follow more than 20 redirections
- Cross-origin script load denied by Cross-Origin Resource Sharing policy.
- TypeError: window.basecoat.registerDialog is not a function. (In 'window.basecoat.registerDialog(Alpine)', 'window.basecoat.registerDialog' is undefined)
- Alpine Expression Error: Can't find variable: sidebar
and so on and so forth. It just goes downhill from there.