The Best of 2025 from Rails Designer

#rails #ruby #webdev #hotwire

This article was originally published on Rails Designer

It's (for a few in this world) Christmas day. And also, again for a bit more than a few, the end of 2025. That means things slow down and thus a perfect opportunity to read up on what was happening and published on Rails Designer. Last year I also published a “best of” list (for 2024). And looking at it, things have not slowed down much. Next to Rails Designer's UI Components Library being steady (about ~1.1k total in 2025), I also published a few new OSS projects (some on this list will be officially launched next year; so you read about them first here!).

Courrier is one I am really happy about (and use in all my projects) but has not picked up yet.
Perron is one I have high hopes for. A Rails-based SSG with all the (SaaS) marketing features baked in. What's not to love?
Attractive.js seems to hit off (modestly, for now) and it is one I am really excited about too.
Requestkit a useful, little tool to receive/send webhooks/API request; a cool little kit in your development toolbelt.
Fuik allows you to catch webhooks from any provider and run with it. Will be publicly announced soon. 🤫
Rails SaaS Starter; TBD

Both Perron and Attractive.js I am truly excited about. They also work really great together!

All of the above have not reached the 1.0.0 release. That is on the list for 2026. I like new OSS put to work first (by you and me), before tagging a 1.0 release. Published in 2024, Rails Icons really grew big in 2025. It sees about 15k downloads every month. Not sure why, but it is cool to see.

I hope to see more contributors to all these projects. All have been in the single digits. All OSS is sponsored by Rails Designer. What actually means: me coding away at them. I've easily spent tens of thousands worth of time on all these projects. 😅

I also helped a dozen companies/teams with improving their UI (and some continue into 2026) and I also built a handful of new SaaS' for people. Great to see them slowly (but surely!) grow their new business. 😊

Next to all that, there were a total of about 60 articles published (and more that didn't make it! It is not just me anymore). Traffic stayed pretty flat (but still a 16% increase compared to 2024. '24 saw more “hitș”. '25 had on average more visitors every month). It is baffling me that the number of visitors could fill up many big stadiums. 🤯

(screenshot taken early December 2025)

The lack of growth I would mostly contribute to AI LLM. It is a trend you see across the industry and I won't go into it here—but I have thoughts about it.

With that out of the way—without using frecency (frequency + recency) scoring, time decay algorithms or applying exponential decay to older visits—what was the most popular content on Rails Designer in 2025?

10. Components in Rails without gems

The need for UI components in Rails apps have been popping up for years. Most popular (based on me observing) is that ViewComponent, followed by Phlex, are the most popular third-party options. But still Rails developers like there to be first-party option. I am unaware of such thing coming (wouldn't bet on it!), but this article explore how you can get close to a first-party solution.

9. Create a macOS-inspired stack UI with Stimulus and Tailwind CSS

This article shows how to replicate the “macOS stack UI”. It uses a super small Stimulus controller to set an attribute which the CSS works off of (I would use Attractive.js for that today 😄

8. Add a multi-step form/wizard to your Rails app

If you need to add a simple Onboarding/Get started set up to your (SaaS) app, this article is for you. It explores a way to have some basic classses that can be easily extended and just as easy copied over to your next app.

7. Build a Notion-like editor with Rails

This article, part of two-part series, builds a Notion-like editor using Rails and Stimulus. The first article set ups the foundation in Rails and basic views. The 2nd article dives into extending the features with multiple Stimulus controllers.

6. Turbo Drive, Frames, Streams, Morph? What to use?!

The morph action was introduced to Turbo. It takes the get request's body and compares the changes to the existing DOM, then only the changes are injected. This article gives a guideline on what and when to use any of the available options: Drive (enabled by default, Frames, Streams and then Morph). I highlight in this article that I haven't really used morph and that is still the case. Would love to here from you, in the comments below, of any example how you (successfully) used morph in your (Rails) app.

5. Visual loading states for Turbo Frames with CSS only

I love how powerful CSS ~has become~ is. Whenever I can use CSS to add some interactivity, I go for it. In this article I highlight how you can use the provided attributes added by Turbo to add some useful UX to your apps.

4. Create a Kanban board with Rails and Hotwire

Who doesn't love a good kanban board. They are so popular still, that 37signals built a complete product around it, called Fizzy. Here I explain how I would built such a feature, mostly spending time on the correct data model and the UX basics. The follow-up article extends this article feature set with a few more goodies.

3. Announcing Attractive.js, a new JavaScript-free JavaScript library

Mentioned this project I am excited about above already. Attractive.js allows to add interactivity by adding HTML attributes. That's it. It is minimal by design; just enough for basic Rails apps and more than enough for most static sites (built with Perron). You all seem to like it too! 😊

2. Building optimistic UI in Rails (and learn custom elements)

I see most of the articles from Rails Designer shared on newsletters, curation platforms, socials and Reddit. But the only site that fucks up my stats is the orange site (ie. hackernews). I only learn about it when I check the stats weekly (or a small influx in sales or interest in Rails/UI or SaaS/month).

This article was also shared on it. I do not use or read hackernews, nor Reddit or other socials. But I know HN is infamous for having stong opinions. I wouldn't know. Live is good.

In this article I explore custom elements (part of the web components standard). It is going from something basic to a quite useful custom element for an optimistic UI. Custom elements is something I will be exploring more in 2026.

1. 10 Modern CSS Features You Want to Use

I mentioned already earlier, but CSS is great! For many things that required JavaScript before, can be done with CSS today. I love it. There are also many features that allows you to craft more precise UI's, making the designer in me really happy. If you are able, forget Tailwind CSS and explore all modern CSS gives you. While I enjoy using Tailwind CSS, the web is built on (open) standards which is important to keep it accessible, maintainable and future-proof. I might or might not work on something to help with this.

And that is it. Last year's top articles were not too surprising to me. This year's was, but I am happy to see more love for CSS (or was it the clickbait-y title?). The current queue of articles already goes way into 2026, so there are no immediate plans to stop. But I do keep an eye out on traffic. It is all costing serious time (and money; many tens of thousands) between all the OSS and content work. I might reconsider if traffic is declining against AI LLMs.

I ended last year's article stating (hoping?) that 2025 would be amazing. And looking back at it, after writing this article, I can confidently say it was a good year. With the foundation of above OSS projects and other work done, I am looking forward to 2026.