May 23, 2025 at 10:18:13 PM UTC

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The best path forward is to empower developers to write HTML and CSS in the editor of their choosing. Any abstraction that hampers that (whether it’s a web site builder or ✨Tailwind✨) has (in my experience) inhibited productivity and increased long-term maintenance costs.

The most disappointing thing about Figma sites is that they fell into the same trap as almost every other website builder.

They assumed (arrogantly) that HTML and CSS are over engineered and that they can make it much simpler.

They are not alone. So many tools before them has done the same.

👇

— Andreas Møller (May 23, 2025 at 9:07:33 PM UTC)

18 replies

Andreas Møller 43 min later

I don't think anyone has come up with a good abstraction on top of CSS. It is quite lean.

But after having used @nordcraft.com for the last couple of years, the thought of building UI in a text editor feels very backwards.

Best analogy I can come up with would be turning off hot reload.
1. Mariano 2 hr later
  
  I like nordcraft, but live reload of css has been there before 2016 right? on a local machine it's the same feedback loop. the argument is about learning an arbitrary text convention vs an rabitrary visual convention right? they can both be great for different people at different times
  1. Zach Leatherman 2 hr later
    
    I’d be fine leaving this at preference (I haven’t used nordcraft, fwiw!) and I think there is an overlap with a devtools-esque DX as long as the tool iterates quickly enough to adopt new standards, especially with how fast CSS has been moving! I’d be curious if it has @layer support, for example
    1. Mariano 2 hr later
      
      definetly uses @layer in the generated website
      1. Zach Leatherman 4 days later
        
        hmm, is that runtime CSS-in-JS 👀
        
        Andreas Møller 4 days later
        
        Its server side
        
        Zach Leatherman 4 days later
        
        great! 🏆
        
        Andreas Møller 4 days later
        
        Though I think that screen shot is from the editor
        
        Mariano 4 days later
        
        chrome dev tools on a preview page. I just searched for "layer" in the source panel 🙃
        but of course the css is there straight from the server already.
        I like the stuff nordcraft does on the server, some of it is still underrated 😀
    2. Andreas Møller 8 hr later
      
      In Nordcraft you define the styles for each element so there isn’t much use for @ layer since you are not dealing with the cascade
    3. Andreas Møller 8 hr later
      
      If we don’t support a property in the style panel yet, you can still add it in the css view so we are not stopping you from using any of the new properties
  2. Andreas Møller 2 days later
    
    For me the biggest benefit of @nordcraft.com has nothing to do with wether you have to learning code.
    
    It is about creating a more powerful editing experience with a tighter feedback loop.
    1. Andreas Møller 2 days later
      
      Before live reload you had to manually refresh the browser to see your changes.
      
      Live reload made you more productive by shortening that cycle.
      
      @nordcraft.com does the same again by having your site right in front of you and letting you update it in real time.
      1. Mariano 2 days later
        
        that's what I am saying: since live reload of css you can have your website in your local environment and see the changes in realtime by having the editor side by side with the browser.
        I think nordcraft value is more about having the visual interface that enables people who prefer that over text
        
        Andreas Møller 2 days later
        
        I think different people will have different features that they respond more to.
        
        For me the problem was never writing code, the main thing I like like is the instant feedback.
        
        Live reload is pretty fast (for smaller projects) but when you get to 60 fps it is a completely different experience.
        
        Andreas Møller 2 days later
        
        Especially when you are doing fine work like getting a gradient just right
        
        Mariano 2 days later
        
        I get now what you mean. I was thinking to the feedback speed alone, while you have fast feedbak plus a reactive interface to edit. of course you don't have that when coding directly (unless there are editor extension and autosave on keystroke and it would be messy)
Aurélien 11 hr later

I guess that's debatable, but I don't think Tailwind is an abstraction of CSS since knowledge of CSS is necessary for proper use. If anything, it's a low-level abstraction.
Regardless, it's kind of wild seeing it mentioned alongside website builders as if they're comparable.

That aside, I agree.