Head-to-Head: Headless UI Vue vs Element Plus Analysis
@headlessui/vue
v1.7.22(3 months ago)
@headlessui/vue is a set of completely unstyled, fully accessible UI components for Vue applications. It provides a collection of low-level utility components that help you build custom UI components with ease. These components are designed to be highly customizable and can be used to create complex interactive interfaces without the need for additional styling.
Element Plus is a Vue.js UI library that provides a set of high-quality and customizable components for building modern web applications. It is a fork of the popular Element UI library, with a focus on improving performance, accessibility, and developer experience. Element Plus offers a wide range of components such as buttons, forms, tables, and dialogs, along with themes and plugins to enhance the user interface.
@headlessui/vue and Element Plus are both popular npm packages in the Vue.js ecosystem. However, Element Plus has been around for a longer time and has gained more popularity among Vue developers due to its comprehensive UI component library.
Component Library
Element Plus is a complete UI component library with a wide range of ready-to-use components, including forms, tables, modals, navigation, and more. It provides a consistent and visually appealing design language. On the other hand, @headlessui/vue is a set of completely unstyled, headless UI components that provide a foundation for building custom UI components. It focuses on providing the necessary functionality without imposing any specific styling.
Customizability
While Element Plus offers a set of predefined styles and themes, it allows for customization through theming and CSS overrides. @headlessui/vue, being a headless UI library, provides maximum flexibility in terms of customization. It leaves the styling completely up to the developer, allowing for a truly custom look and feel.
Developer Experience
Both packages aim to provide a good developer experience. Element Plus offers a rich set of well-documented components with examples and an active community. It provides detailed API documentation, allowing developers to quickly understand and use the components. @headlessui/vue focuses on simplicity and provides minimalistic APIs for composing custom UI components. It has good documentation and examples, although the learning curve may be slightly steeper for beginners.
Size
Element Plus is a feature-rich library and, as a result, has a larger bundle size compared to @headlessui/vue. If bundle size is a concern for your project, @headlessui/vue might be a better choice as its components are more lightweight and don't come with pre-built styles.
