Head-to-Head: Pure.css vs styled-components Analysis
purecss
v3.0.0(11 months ago)
PureCSS is a minimal and lightweight CSS framework designed to help developers create responsive and mobile-first web pages quickly and easily. It provides a collection of commonly used CSS classes that can be applied to HTML elements to achieve commonly used layout and design patterns without having to write custom CSS code. With PureCSS, you can create responsive grids, forms, buttons, tables, and more with minimal effort.
Styled-components is a popular CSS-in-JS library for building user interfaces in modern web applications. It allows developers to define styles for their React components using JavaScript and provides simple, intuitive APIs for managing them.
Alternatives: emotion, jss, css-modules
Tags: reactcss-in-jsmodularperformancescalability
Fight!
Popularity
Styled-components has gained significant popularity in recent years due to its innovative approach to styling in React applications. PureCSS, on the other hand, is popular but has a smaller community and user base compared to styled-components.
Styling Approach
PureCSS is a pre-designed set of CSS classes and components that you can include in your project. It provides a ready-made styling solution with minimal customization options. On the other hand, styled-components is a CSS-in-JS library that allows you to write component-based styles as JavaScript code. It provides a more flexible and dynamic styling approach.
Scalability
Styled-components excels in terms of scalability as it encourages component-based styling and composition, making it easier to manage styles in larger codebases. PureCSS, being a set of pre-designed styles, may become less scalable as the project grows and customization requirements increase.
Developer Experience
Styled-components offers a pleasant developer experience with its intuitive API and the ability to directly manipulate styles via JavaScript. It also provides excellent support for features like theming and responsive styles. PureCSS, being a pre-designed CSS library, provides a straightforward experience but doesn't offer the same level of flexibility and customization options as styled-components.
Integration
Styled-components seamlessly integrates with React applications and can be used alongside other CSS libraries. It is especially well-suited for building component-based UIs in React. PureCSS, being a standalone CSS library, can be used with any HTML or front-end framework, including React.
Performance
PureCSS comes with pre-built CSS classes, which can be highly optimized for performance. On the other hand, styled-components generates unique class names at runtime, which can increase rendering and CSS processing time. However, the performance difference is generally negligible and depends on the use case.
