So I've been playing around with panda css and vanilla extract over the past few days to get impressions of tailwind alternatives and here are my general thoughts and opinions 👇
I think the clear winner for me right now if i was to start a new project would be panda css, its very straight forward to setup & customise which is something vanilla extract didn't do the same for me, it was just...complicated.
Tailwind is completely fine and I do still use it but I have come to learn that my brain doesn't do well with code horizontally, It's much more manageable for myself to read the styles in a js object type of format.
I also really like in panda css that you can choose to write the styles inline with the tag or separate it into it's own file or above the component, which is something vanilla extract does lack because of the need of .css.ts files to generate the styles during build time. Obviously with tailwind you can stick in a variable in another file with the string of styles but you lose autocompletion which you don't with panda css.
Okay maybe I just really like panda css hmm, it's just honestly so good tho like it's best of both worlds. The tokens thing that they have going on, multiple different ways to write styles (example _dark outside or per css property, same with _hover, _focus...etc) just gives you so much flexibility and customisation. It's honestly so great massive shoutout to the
@chakra_ui team for delivering on this wonderful project!