Why Jinno is a Better Alternative to Storybook

If you’re using Storybook to document and test your React components, you know the hassle of setting up and maintaining separate component environments. While Storybook is a great tool for UI development, it requires extra effort to isolate components and work outside your actual project. But what if you could preview and test components directly inside your editor without extra setup? That’s where Jinno changes the game.

What Makes Jinno Better?

Jinno is a developer-first tool that seamlessly integrates into your existing codebase, enabling live previews of React components right inside your editor. Unlike Storybook, which requires you to manually isolate components and navigate away from your development environment, Jinno lets you isolate any component with one click and preview it instantly. Here’s why it’s a huge productivity boost:

🔥 Instant Component Previews

Jinno allows you to see live previews of your components without switching tabs or launching an external UI playground. Everything happens inside your editor, making the development process smoother and more efficient.

⚡ One-Click Component Isolation

Instead of writing extra configuration files or adjusting your code to work with Storybook, Jinno lets you isolate any component in one click. This means faster debugging and a more seamless workflow.

🚀 Faster Iteration and Hot Reloading

With Jinno, you don’t have to restart your entire app just to test a component. Your changes are instantly reflected inside your editor, speeding up the hot reload process and keeping you in the flow of coding.

How Jinno Handles Stories

Jinno offers a simple and flexible way to create stories for complex components, similar to Storybook but without requiring extra setup. If your component accepts complex properties (like another component), you can create a .story.tsx file next to your component file and define example input properties using regular TypeScript.

Example: Creating a Story in Jinno

For a UsersList.tsx component, you can create a UsersList.story.tsx file with the following:

// UsersList.story.tsx
import { User } from './types';
import { UserIcon } from './UserIcon';

export default {
  examples: {
    default: {
      users: [
        {
          id: '1',
          username: 'snow123',
          name: 'John Snow',
          age: 25,
          avatar: UserIcon,
        } as User
      ],
    },
  },
};

With this approach, you can easily define and test different component states without the need for external configurations or complex Storybook setups.

Conclusion

Jinno offers a smarter, faster, and more integrated approach to component previews and isolation than Storybook. If you’re tired of constantly switching tabs, dealing with slow reload times, and maintaining separate configurations, it’s time to ditch Storybook and switch to Jinno.

Give it a try and experience a truly seamless development workflow!