@tailwindcss/typography vs @tailwindcss/forms vs tailwindcss-radix vs windicss
Tailwind CSS Plugins and Alternatives Comparison
1 Year
@tailwindcss/typography@tailwindcss/formstailwindcss-radixwindicssSimilar Packages:
What's Tailwind CSS Plugins and Alternatives?

These packages enhance the utility-first CSS framework Tailwind CSS by providing additional components and utilities that streamline the development process. They cater to specific design needs, such as form styling, typography, and more, while also offering alternatives to Tailwind's core functionalities. By utilizing these packages, developers can create visually appealing and consistent user interfaces with less effort and more customization options.

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@tailwindcss/typography3,722,4225,303110 kB173 months agoMIT
@tailwindcss/forms1,857,7574,38254.5 kB43 months agoMIT
tailwindcss-radix94,9482,14431.8 kB02 months agoMIT
windicss27,1626,5442.29 MB223-MIT
Feature Comparison: @tailwindcss/typography vs @tailwindcss/forms vs tailwindcss-radix vs windicss

Styling Consistency

  • @tailwindcss/typography:

    It standardizes typography styles, providing a cohesive design language for text elements, which is crucial for maintaining visual consistency in content-heavy applications.

  • @tailwindcss/forms:

    This package ensures that all form elements have a consistent look and feel across different browsers, reducing the need for custom styles and enhancing user experience.

  • tailwindcss-radix:

    By leveraging Radix UI, this package promotes consistency in component design while ensuring accessibility, allowing developers to create uniform UI elements easily.

  • windicss:

    Windi CSS generates styles on-demand, which helps maintain consistency by applying the same utility classes throughout the application without bloating the CSS file.

Accessibility

  • @tailwindcss/typography:

    While primarily focused on aesthetics, it indirectly supports accessibility by enhancing text readability, which is a key aspect of accessible design.

  • @tailwindcss/forms:

    This package focuses on making form elements accessible by default, ensuring that they meet common accessibility standards, which is essential for inclusive web design.

  • tailwindcss-radix:

    Accessibility is a core principle of Radix UI, and this package inherits those principles, providing components that are keyboard navigable and screen reader friendly.

  • windicss:

    Windi CSS does not directly address accessibility, but by using utility classes effectively, developers can create accessible components when following best practices.

Performance

  • @tailwindcss/typography:

    Optimizes typography styling without the overhead of additional CSS, ensuring that text elements render quickly and efficiently.

  • @tailwindcss/forms:

    Enhances performance by reducing the need for custom CSS, allowing developers to focus on functionality rather than styling, which can lead to faster load times.

  • tailwindcss-radix:

    Provides optimized components that are lightweight and performant, ensuring that the UI remains responsive and fast, even with complex interactions.

  • windicss:

    Windi CSS is designed for performance, generating only the styles that are used in the application, which minimizes CSS file size and improves load times.

Customization

  • @tailwindcss/typography:

    Highly customizable, allowing developers to tweak typography settings to match their design requirements while still adhering to a coherent style guide.

  • @tailwindcss/forms:

    Offers limited customization options, focusing on a predefined set of styles for form elements, which can be extended but may require additional effort.

  • tailwindcss-radix:

    Provides a base for building custom components, allowing developers to modify and extend the default styles to fit their specific needs while maintaining accessibility.

  • windicss:

    Extremely customizable, allowing developers to define their utility classes and configurations, making it a flexible choice for unique design requirements.

Ease of Use

  • @tailwindcss/typography:

    User-friendly with a clear API, making it simple for developers to apply typography styles without deep diving into CSS.

  • @tailwindcss/forms:

    Easy to integrate into existing Tailwind projects, providing a straightforward way to style forms without extensive configuration.

  • tailwindcss-radix:

    Designed for developers familiar with Tailwind, it simplifies the process of creating accessible components, although it may require some learning for those new to Radix UI.

  • windicss:

    Offers a familiar utility-first approach, making it easy for Tailwind users to adapt, but may require some adjustment for those used to traditional CSS frameworks.

How to Choose: @tailwindcss/typography vs @tailwindcss/forms vs tailwindcss-radix vs windicss
  • @tailwindcss/typography:

    Opt for this package if your project requires rich text formatting and typographic control. It offers a set of prose classes to style text content elegantly, ensuring readability and aesthetic appeal across various screen sizes.

  • @tailwindcss/forms:

    Choose this package if you need to quickly style forms with a consistent design that adheres to Tailwind's utility-first approach. It provides a set of pre-defined styles for form elements, making it easier to create responsive and accessible forms.

  • tailwindcss-radix:

    Select this package if you are looking for a collection of accessible UI components built with Radix UI and styled using Tailwind CSS. It provides a solid foundation for building interactive components while maintaining accessibility standards.

  • windicss:

    Consider using Windi CSS if you prefer a utility-first CSS framework that focuses on speed and performance. It offers on-demand generation of styles, which can significantly reduce the size of your CSS bundle and improve loading times.

README for @tailwindcss/typography

Tailwind CSS Typography

The official Tailwind CSS Typography plugin provides a set of prose classes you can use to add beautiful typographic defaults to any vanilla HTML you don’t control, like HTML rendered from Markdown, or pulled from a CMS.

<article class="prose lg:prose-xl">{{ markdown }}</article>

To see what it looks like in action, check out our live demo on Tailwind Play.


Installation

Install the plugin from npm:

npm install -D @tailwindcss/typography

Then add the plugin to your tailwind.config.js file:

/** @type {import('tailwindcss').Config} */
module.exports = {
  theme: {
    // ...
  },
  plugins: [
    require('@tailwindcss/typography'),
    // ...
  ],
}

Basic usage

Now you can use the prose classes to add sensible typography styles to any vanilla HTML:

<article class="prose lg:prose-xl">
  <h1>Garlic bread with cheese: What the science tells us</h1>
  <p>
    For years parents have espoused the health benefits of eating garlic bread with cheese to their
    children, with the food earning such an iconic status in our culture that kids will often dress
    up as warm, cheesy loaf for Halloween.
  </p>
  <p>
    But a recent study shows that the celebrated appetizer may be linked to a series of rabies cases
    springing up around the country.
  </p>
  <!-- ... -->
</article>

Choosing a gray scale

This plugin includes a modifier class for each of the five gray scales Tailwind includes by default so you can easily style your content to match the grays you're using in your project.

<article class="prose prose-slate">{{ markdown }}</article>

Here are the classes that are generated using a totally default Tailwind CSS v2.0 build:

| Class | Gray scale | | ------------------------ | ---------- | | prose-gray (default) | Gray | | prose-slate | Slate | | prose-zinc | Zinc | | prose-neutral | Neutral | | prose-stone | Stone |

Modifier classes are designed to be used with the multi-class modifier pattern and must be used in conjunction with the base prose class.

[!NOTE] Always include the prose class when adding a gray scale modifier

<article class="prose prose-stone">{{ markdown }}</article>

To learn about creating your own color themes, read the adding custom color themes documentation.

Applying a type scale

Size modifiers allow you to adjust the overall size of your typography for different contexts.

<article class="prose prose-xl">{{ markdown }}</article>

Five different typography sizes are included out of the box:

| Class | Body font size | | ------------------------ | ----------------- | | prose-sm | 0.875rem (14px) | | prose-base (default) | 1rem (16px) | | prose-lg | 1.125rem (18px) | | prose-xl | 1.25rem (20px) | | prose-2xl | 1.5rem (24px) |

These can be used in combination with Tailwind's breakpoint modifiers to change the overall font size of a piece of content at different viewport sizes:

<article class="prose md:prose-lg lg:prose-xl">{{ markdown }}</article>

Everything about the provided size modifiers has been hand-tuned by professional designers to look as beautiful as possible, including the relationships between font sizes, heading spacing, code block padding, and more.

Size modifiers are designed to be used with the multi-class modifier pattern and must be used in conjunction with the base prose class.

[!NOTE] Always include the prose class when adding a size modifier

<article class="prose prose-lg">{{ markdown }}</article>

To learn about customizing the included type scales, read the documentation on customizing the CSS.

Adapting to dark mode

Each default color theme includes a hand-designed dark mode version that you can trigger by adding the prose-invert class:

<article class="prose dark:prose-invert">{{ markdown }}</article>

To learn about creating your own color themes, read the adding custom color themes documentation.

Element modifiers

Use element modifiers to customize the style of individual elements in your content directly in your HTML:

<article class="prose prose-img:rounded-xl prose-headings:underline prose-a:text-blue-600">
  {{ markdown }}
</article>

This makes it easy to do things like style links to match your brand, add a border radius to images, and tons more.

Here's a complete list of available element modifiers:

| Modifier | Target | | ---------------------------- | ---------------------------- | | prose-headings:{utility} | h1, h2, h3, h4, th | | prose-lead:{utility} | [class~="lead"] | | prose-h1:{utility} | h1 | | prose-h2:{utility} | h2 | | prose-h3:{utility} | h3 | | prose-h4:{utility} | h4 | | prose-p:{utility} | p | | prose-a:{utility} | a | | prose-blockquote:{utility} | blockquote | | prose-figure:{utility} | figure | | prose-figcaption:{utility} | figcaption | | prose-strong:{utility} | strong | | prose-em:{utility} | em | | prose-kbd:{utility} | kbd | | prose-code:{utility} | code | | prose-pre:{utility} | pre | | prose-ol:{utility} | ol | | prose-ul:{utility} | ul | | prose-li:{utility} | li | | prose-table:{utility} | table | | prose-thead:{utility} | thead | | prose-tr:{utility} | tr | | prose-th:{utility} | th | | prose-td:{utility} | td | | prose-img:{utility} | img | | prose-video:{utility} | video | | prose-hr:{utility} | hr |

When stacking these modifiers with other modifiers like hover, you most likely want the other modifier to come first:

<article class="prose prose-a:text-blue-600 hover:prose-a:text-blue-500">{{ markdown }}</article>

Read the Tailwind CSS documentation on ordering stacked modifiers to learn more.

Overriding max-width

Each size modifier comes with a baked in max-width designed to keep the content as readable as possible. This isn't always what you want though, and sometimes you'll want the content to just fill the width of its container.

In those cases, all you need to do is add max-w-none to your content to override the embedded max-width:

<div class="grid grid-cols-4">
  <div class="col-span-1">
    <!-- ... -->
  </div>
  <div class="col-span-3">
    <article class="prose max-w-none">{{ markdown }}</article>
  </div>
</div>

Advanced topics

Undoing typography styles

If you have a block of markup embedded in some content that shouldn't inherit the prose styles, use the not-prose class to sandbox it:

<article class="prose">
  <h1>My Heading</h1>
  <p>...</p>

  <div class="not-prose">
    <!-- Some example or demo that needs to be prose-free -->
  </div>

  <p>...</p>
  <!-- ... -->
</article>

Note that you can't nest new prose instances within a not-prose block at this time.

Adding custom color themes

You can create your own color theme by adding a new key in the typography section of your tailwind.config.js file and providing your colors under the css key:

/** @type {import('tailwindcss').Config} */
module.exports = {
  theme: {
    extend: {
      typography: ({ theme }) => ({
        pink: {
          css: {
            '--tw-prose-body': theme('colors.pink[800]'),
            '--tw-prose-headings': theme('colors.pink[900]'),
            '--tw-prose-lead': theme('colors.pink[700]'),
            '--tw-prose-links': theme('colors.pink[900]'),
            '--tw-prose-bold': theme('colors.pink[900]'),
            '--tw-prose-counters': theme('colors.pink[600]'),
            '--tw-prose-bullets': theme('colors.pink[400]'),
            '--tw-prose-hr': theme('colors.pink[300]'),
            '--tw-prose-quotes': theme('colors.pink[900]'),
            '--tw-prose-quote-borders': theme('colors.pink[300]'),
            '--tw-prose-captions': theme('colors.pink[700]'),
            '--tw-prose-code': theme('colors.pink[900]'),
            '--tw-prose-pre-code': theme('colors.pink[100]'),
            '--tw-prose-pre-bg': theme('colors.pink[900]'),
            '--tw-prose-th-borders': theme('colors.pink[300]'),
            '--tw-prose-td-borders': theme('colors.pink[200]'),
            '--tw-prose-invert-body': theme('colors.pink[200]'),
            '--tw-prose-invert-headings': theme('colors.white'),
            '--tw-prose-invert-lead': theme('colors.pink[300]'),
            '--tw-prose-invert-links': theme('colors.white'),
            '--tw-prose-invert-bold': theme('colors.white'),
            '--tw-prose-invert-counters': theme('colors.pink[400]'),
            '--tw-prose-invert-bullets': theme('colors.pink[600]'),
            '--tw-prose-invert-hr': theme('colors.pink[700]'),
            '--tw-prose-invert-quotes': theme('colors.pink[100]'),
            '--tw-prose-invert-quote-borders': theme('colors.pink[700]'),
            '--tw-prose-invert-captions': theme('colors.pink[400]'),
            '--tw-prose-invert-code': theme('colors.white'),
            '--tw-prose-invert-pre-code': theme('colors.pink[300]'),
            '--tw-prose-invert-pre-bg': 'rgb(0 0 0 / 50%)',
            '--tw-prose-invert-th-borders': theme('colors.pink[600]'),
            '--tw-prose-invert-td-borders': theme('colors.pink[700]'),
          },
        },
      }),
    },
  },
  plugins: [
    require('@tailwindcss/typography'),
    // ...
  ],
}

See our internal style definitions for some more examples.

Changing the default class name

If you need to use a class name other than prose for any reason, you can do so using the className option when registering the plugin:

/** @type {import('tailwindcss').Config} */
module.exports = {
  theme: {
    // ...
  },
  plugins: [
    require('@tailwindcss/typography')({
      className: 'wysiwyg',
    }),
  ]
  ...
}

Now every instance of prose in the default class names will be replaced by your custom class name:

<article class="wysiwyg wysiwyg-slate lg:wysiwyg-xl">
  <h1>My Heading</h1>
  <p>...</p>

  <div class="not-wysiwyg">
    <!-- Some example or demo that needs to be prose-free -->
  </div>

  <p>...</p>
  <!-- ... -->
</article>

Customizing the CSS

If you want to customize the raw CSS generated by this plugin, add your overrides under the typography key in the theme section of your tailwind.config.js file:

/** @type {import('tailwindcss').Config} */
module.exports = {
  theme: {
    extend: {
      typography: {
        DEFAULT: {
          css: {
            color: '#333',
            a: {
              color: '#3182ce',
              '&:hover': {
                color: '#2c5282',
              },
            },
          },
        },
      },
    },
  },
  plugins: [
    require('@tailwindcss/typography'),
    // ...
  ],
}

Like with all theme customizations in Tailwind, you can also define the typography key as a function if you need access to the theme helper:

/** @type {import('tailwindcss').Config} */
module.exports = {
  theme: {
    extend: {
      typography: (theme) => ({
        DEFAULT: {
          css: {
            color: theme('colors.gray.800'),

            // ...
          },
        },
      }),
    },
  },
  plugins: [
    require('@tailwindcss/typography'),
    // ...
  ],
}

Customizations should be applied to a specific modifier like DEFAULT or xl, and must be added under the css property. Customizations are authored in the same CSS-in-JS syntax used to write Tailwind plugins.

See the default styles for this plugin for more in-depth examples of configuring each modifier.


Community

For help, discussion about best practices, or any other conversation that would benefit from being searchable:

Discuss the Tailwind CSS Typography plugin on GitHub

For casual chit-chat with others using the framework:

Join the Tailwind CSS Discord Server