How do we approach UI?

[rasmuserik]

At the moment we use react-md, but I am wondering if this is the right choice.

In my opinion, the optimal ui-library would have the following:

• easily testable components (with jest/jsdom)
• following Material Design guidelines
• (just simple presentational components)
• (cross-platform - usable both within html5, and also react-native/react-xp)
• (using material-components, i.e. not reinventing the wheel)

It turns out that react-md is not friendly towards jest-testing - so I am tempted to play around with react-toolbox to see if that is better..

Or do you have any thoughts / opinions about ui-framework.

@aklt you had some thoughts about including styling etc?

[rasmuserik]

I'll check out if react-toolbox is better with regards to tests, and whether it makes sense to use react-native-web for general styling etc.

[rasmuserik]

I have now set up react-toolkit. It was more difficult to set up than react-md (which had an example in next.js), but it seems better in my opinion:

• Testing with jest works :)
• It has larger community / seems more mature
• I think the documentation/examples are more intuitive.

What are your opinions on this, - should we migrate from react-md to react-toolkit?

[jacobandresen]

:+1:

[aklt]

I don't think I have enough experience with react-md to fairly compare the two, but the three points you mention speak in favor of react-toolkit :-)

Regarding the thoughts on styling, I think that other concerns about the framework such as those you mention are more important.

I have not had much time to contribute and I have some busy days coming up, but I hope I can chime in with something more worthwhile thursday or friday :)

[rasmuserik]

Sounds good, then we use react-toolkit :)

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For our own styling, I think this approach looks interesting:

• https://github.com/necolas/react-native-web/blob/master/docs/guides/style.md
• https://facebook.github.io/react-native/docs/style.html

It also has the benefit, that it would make it easier to convert the webapp to an mobile app later on, if we decide to do that. (And I think it would be an interesting approach to dive into / learn).

I do not know if it is easy to integrate with the project, but I would like to check it out.

What are your opinions?

[jacobandresen]

looks like react-toolkit uses sass? I like the description "It's built on top of some the trendiest proposals like CSS Modules (written in SASS), Webpack and ES6" :P . I wonder if this would mix well with styling via JavaScript . Note that I have yet to write my first ReactNative app.

[jacobandresen]

how about we roll with react-toolkit now . and use whatever styling that offers out of the box? and hack on that later?

[rasmuserik]

Ok, yeah, let us focus on react-toolkit for now ;)