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Wednesday, October 25, 2023

NextJS UI Libraries: The Secret To Faster, Beautiful Web Design

Introduction

Next.js has rapidly become one of the most popular React frameworks for building modern web applications. With benefits like server-side rendering, easy page routing, and simplified production optimization, it's easy to see why. However, building an intuitive UI and UX from scratch can still be time consuming and challenging, especially for developers without strong design skills. This is where leveraging NextJS UI component libraries can help accelerate development by providing pre-built accessible and responsive components for every use case imaginable.

In this post, we'll evaluate some of the top NextJS UI libraries like Ant Design, Chakra UI, Mantine, and FloatUI. We'll explore the key benefits of using these libraries, how they can help you quickly build beautiful sites in half the time, and examples of implementing them in a NextJS project. The goal is to demonstrate how nextjs ui libraries can be the secret ingredient to faster and better web design. Let's dive in!

Overview of NextJS UI Component Libraries

NextJS UI component libraries are collections of pre-built React components that implement common UI elements like buttons, menus, modals, forms, and more. They build on top of base frameworks like React, providing an additional layer of pre-designed components to accelerate development.

The main benefits of using NextJS component libraries versus building UIs completely from scratch include:

  • Save 50-70% development time - Get started faster by using pre-built components for navigation, forms, tables, and more.
  • Consistency - Components have a cohesive look and feel across your entire application.
  • Best practices - Components follow web development best practices for accessibility, responsiveness, optimization etc.
  • Regular updates - Component libraries are actively maintained with new features, fixes, docs.

Some popular NextJS component libraries to consider include:

Ant Design

  • Extensive collection of customizable UI components
  • Good documentation and theming support
  • Components designed for enterprise apps and admin dashboards
  • Integrates nicely with NextJS and state management tools

Chakra UI

  • Focuses on accessibility, speed, modularity and customization
  • Components designed using React Hooks
  • Highly customizable with less bundled components
  • Built-in light and dark themes

Mantine

  • Mobile-first React components with focus on UX
  • Extensive theming capabilities
  • Animations and transitions built-in
  • Typescript typings

FloatUI

  • Beautiful Tailwind CSS components for NextJS sites
  • Easy to customize styles and layouts
  • Responsive design
  • SEO-friendly
  • Great for marketing sites, blogs, portfolios

The key advantage is that these nextjs ui libraries build on React and provide pre-made components so you can focus on business logic rather than building generic elements from scratch.

Benefits of Using NextJS UI Libraries

Let's explore some of the top benefits of using NextJS UI component libraries in more detail:

  • Accelerated development velocity - Add common UI elements with just a few lines of code instead of having to build them yourself. UIs that used to take weeks can now be built in days.
  • Intuitive user experiences - Components designed by experts look great right out of the box. This significantly improves overall user experience.
  • Visual cohesion - Apps look sleek and consistent when built using the same component library. Common elements like buttons and menus behave predictably.
  • Reusable front-end code - Components can be reused across multiple pages and projects. Drastically reduces duplicate code and maintenance overhead.
  • Active open source maintenance - Component libraries receive ongoing improvements, fixes, updates from the community. Your app improves over time.
  • Customizable design - Libraries allow styling, theming, overrides to adapt components to your brand.
  • Built-in accessibility - Components implement ARIA roles, keyboard interactions, screen reader support for accessibility.

In summary, NextJS UI libraries streamline development by up to 70%, improve UX drastically, enforce consistency, and free up developers to focus on app-specific logic and customization. They provide the foundations to build beautiful sites in record time.

Implementing NextJS UI Libraries

Now let's walk through examples of implementing some popular NextJS UI Libraries:

The general process involves:

  • Install library with NPM
  • Import and wrap components in provider
  • Pass theme configuration
  • Import and use components
  • Customize styles and theme
  • Follow library docs for details

Ant Design Implementation

npm install antd
  • Import components into app
  • Customize theme with built-in theming
  • Follow Ant Design Docs for NextJS

Chakra UI Implementation

npm install @chakra-ui/react
  • Import ChakraProvider at app root
  • Pass ChakraTheme for styling
  • Override styles and theme as needed

Mantine Implementation

npm install @mantine/core
  • Import MantineProvider and wrap app
  • Configure MantineTheme for customization
  • Override theme colors, typography, etc.

FloatUI Implementation

npm install @float-ui/react
  • Import FloatUIProvider and pass Tailwind styles
  • Customize styles by overriding Tailwind directives
  • Follow FloatUI Docs for usage with NextJS

The key steps are installing the library, configuring a theme provider, and then importing and using the components. Each library has great documentation on integrating with NextJS for details.

Next Steps and Resources

NextJS UI libraries can help you build beautiful sites incredibly fast by providing pre-built components designed by experts. Here are some recommendations on next steps:

  • Explore multiple libraries to find ones that fit your specific needs
  • Check out component library docs and follow their tutorials
  • Integrate components with data fetching, state management, backends, etc.
  • Customize components by overriding library styles and themes
  • Start small and add more components as your app evolves

The open source nature of these libraries allows deep customization to match your brand. Overall, leveraging quality nextjs ui libraries can accelerate your NextJS development drastically by letting you focus on business logic rather than building generic components from scratch.

Useful resources:

I hope this gives you a better idea of how NextJS component libraries can help boost your development velocity and let you build high quality sites faster than ever before. Let me know if you have any other questions!