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Discussion on: We're the core maintainers of Storybook, Ask Us Anything!

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jess profile image
Jess Lee

What are common pitfalls devs are currently experiencing with storybook?

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danielduan profile image
Daniel Duan • Edited

I think there are a few scenarios where people experience frustrations with Storybook

New to Storybook:

Setup: Getting started can get quite complex when it comes to webpack and babel config, especially for users who have components in an existing codebase. Adding support for things like LESS, TypeScript, etc. can be pretty complicated to someone who isn't familiar with frontend build systems. We've been discussing ways to mitigate this, through better documentation, presets, etc.

Advanced users:

Documentation - Storybook has been designed as a development environment first and a playground second. I've been experiencing an increasing need for Storybook to play the role of documentation as well. It makes a lot of sense to keep documentation and code as close as possible, and using Storybook to do this has been a point of discussion during our roadmap meeting for a while.

Customization - We recognize the need to customize the Storybook layout, theme, and everything in between. Storybook can be a branding or component playground for many organizations, and it makes a lot of sense for the rest of the Storybook interface to have the same feel and experience. The theme feature coming in 4.0 is a good first step towards that.

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norbertdelangen profile image
Norbert de Langen

One pitfall I hear about is that people think you need to start using storybook right from the start.
That's not true, it's very much possible to start using storybook long after the start of your project, and gradually start using it for new components.

Then apply boy-scout rule and whenever you solve an issue in an components write a component-story for it, so it becomes visible / reviewable.

TIP: deploy your storybook on every commit / PR or use Chromatic!