Stop learning Bootstrap, make way for better UI libraries for your React applications!

People have been using Bootstrap for ages now and had it been 2018 or 2019 of course without a doubt even I would have preferred learning bootstrap and in my 1st year of Engineering, I did!

But it's 2023 now, and there are much better alternatives to developing a website or an application. Maintaining libraries or a set of components for your product that follows consistency is difficult.

Honestly, I stumbled upon Chakra UI while interning. It makes React projects easier, fully customizable, and not repetitive, same designs as bootstrap components.

So let's explore why use ChakraUI and what is the upside to it!

Benefits

• Components are easy to theme and fully customize

• Color modes and light and dark theme switches have been made easier

• Components are quite small and easy to combine to form bigger structures

• Responsive styles have been made very much handy, with no need of using media queries like in CSS (you can use them if you feel the need to)

• Default breakpoints but can be customized

• Another perk of using Chakra UI is Hooks

• Self-explanatory Documentation

Hooks

Some of the handy hooks which make your work faster and easier are:

• useColorMode / useColorModeValue - helps you switch between light and dark themes, allowing you to use your color customization

• useMediaQuery - the same as using media queries in CSS

Learn more about Hooks from the official ChakraUI documentation

Another reason why I liked working with ChakraUI is, they have some free templates to get started with. As a beginner, it helps add smaller components to your project like SignUp pages, Navbars, etc. Check out ChakraUI templates here - https://chakra-templates.dev/

Chakra UI Pro

It is a collection of much bigger components and if you are working for some company or your own and want the team to adapt to ChakraUI and develop products faster, ChakraUI offers its Pro plans, but their free components are quite common and useful.

I am currently learning more about Chakra UI and the community is yet small but powerful, so I think it's a good chance to grab the opportunity to learn something new!