👋 Introduction
When I first started learning frontend development, styling a webpage felt overwhelming. Writing long CSS files, naming classes, man...
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I always read these tailwind articles hoping that one day one will answer the one question that actually matters: We know inline styles are bad; why should we go back to using them?
I'm sure most of us know about the short-term strengths of TW over separate CSS; but we also know that
style=""has all the same strengths or more. And there are good reasons we aren't using that anymore.Yeah, I see what you mean. But inline styles are just more work. Tailwind is like inline styles done right—faster, cleaner, and easier for the whole team. Unless we miss the table-layout era, I’d stick with TW. 😅
Inline styles aren't bad because they require more typing; they're bad for very deep structural problems that I haven't seen TW address in any way.
Table layouts are also an interesting thing to bring up; because tailwind seems to mirror all the fundamental problems with tables.
Makes me wonder if 10 years from now, people will look back on tailwind as another one of those cringe ways we used to build websites, while doing the next iteration of the exact same thing rather than just use CSS.
yeh, every developer has their own perspective and preferences.
My take is this: inline styles are like duct tape on a web app, while Tailwind is like LEGO bricks. It's not replacing CSS, but offering a faster and more consistent way to use it.
In 10 years, we may laugh at today's trends, but I doubt we'll laugh at clean, maintainable design systems. Just like React builds on top of plain HTML to make development easier (see my blog on this), Tailwind is simply a smarter way to use CSS.
Sure, but all you've said is that tailwind somehow gets around all the inherent problems with inline styling, but not how it does it. Every time I've looked at TW it seemed to just have all the same problems with a different syntax.
Sure Tailwind is built on top of CSS, so it inherits both its strengths and weaknesses.
The difference is that Tailwind knows how to manage those problems. Inline styles sit directly in the HTML and can’t handle things like pseudo-classes (:hover), media queries, or consistent design tokens.
Tailwind, however, uses predefined utility classes tied to a centralized design system (spacing, colors, typography). So while it might look like inline styles at first glance,
under the hood it’s structured, reusable, and far more maintainable.”