diff --git a/src/content/blog/studiocms-ui-v0-1-0-stable-release.md b/src/content/blog/studiocms-ui-v0-1-0-stable-release.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..84a686e --- /dev/null +++ b/src/content/blog/studiocms-ui-v0-1-0-stable-release.md @@ -0,0 +1,53 @@ +--- +title: 'A new UI Library Approaches!' +description: "@studiocms/ui is our first ever stable resource!" +publishDate: 2024-12-08 +ogVariant: accent +author: louis-escher +--- + +TL;DR: +We're releasing [@studiocms/ui](https://npmjs.org/package/@studiocms/ui), the library we use to build the StudioCMS ecosystem to the community! +--- + +Hi everyone! + +This isn't the usual post about how we're still working on beta.8 (although that is most certainly still the case). No, today's post is about +a pretty important milestone, as we're releasing yet another of our development tools early to the community. While building the new dashboard +for beta.8, we've seen first-hand how helpful an Astro-First UI library can be, so we figured we might as well bring out the Christmas presents +early: + +## StudioCMS UI v0.1.0 + +Starting today, we're releasing StudioCMS UI as its own project in the StudioCMS ecosystem, detached from our Monorepo and normal release schedule. +As of Version 0.1.0, it features over 15 components, all aimed at making your life a little easier while building your next big project. +Some highlights include our dropdown, modal and toast components, which take complex UI concepts and abstract away all the complexity into a +single component (and maybe a helper). + +You can [check out the documentation](https://ui.studiocms.dev) to learn how to get started. We recommend using Astro v5, but the library should +be compatible with any Project running Astro v4.5.0 or higher, as long as the `experimental.directRenderScript` flag is set to `true`. + +## Why we built an entire UI library from scratch + +StudioCMS UI was created after we realized that building a dashboard from scratch wouldn't be easy. A lot of other things had to be taken care of, +so yours truly decided to do some research on UI libraries that might make our job a little easier. Surprisingly, there wasn't a lot of options at +the time! Most UI libraries were simply ported from React, which introduced unnecessary complexity to project structure. Other ones rely heavily on +libraries like Tailwindcss, which bloats the final HTML output (unpopular opinion, I know). Because we didn't like either of those options, we +decided to go the third, and arguably harder route: building our own library from scratch. The result of the last two months is what you see now: a +ready to go UI library which can be used in any Astro projects without additional dependencies. Plain Astro, baby. + +## Baby steps + +To be honest, when I proposed this UI library, I had no idea how I would implement any of it. I want to give a special shout-out to Dreyfus, +Otter and Arknoodle for their amazing feedback and inputs on the components. However, there's still a lot to be done. The library does not yet +meet accessibility standards, which we want to improve over time. We've got a planned accessibility audit coming up as part of StudioCMS beta.8, +which will definitely help in getting some crucial things fixed. Until then, I hope a combined community effort can find and weed out some of the +bigger issues. + +I also hope that the community can help this UI library grow by adding new components and showing off different ways of using it, in turn revealing +problems with it that we can then work on together. + +I want to encourage everyone to give StudioCMS UI a try. The more, the better! + +Thanks and until next time,
+**Louis and the StudioCMS team**