I want better ways to do fast UI without react or other massive libraries and I also want good seperation of HTML and styles, but honestly as I've come back to web dev after years away from it, I'm finding bootstrap to be the best way to prototype UI quickly that looks good.
In the long run if a product is successful I'd like to have an actual designer overhaul it, but for now there's a great library of templates out there, and while the HTML does get a little messy it's not that bad, especially using a template language.
I'm slowly adjusting to not separating HTML and styles and it does start to make sense when assume you have a template engine to define components.
A combination like Tailwind and HTMX makes it really easy to produce fast UI stuff especially if you've not been chasing frontend trends for a while.
Tailwind looks promising! It gave me some implementation issues in my particular context, but it's promising to have something other than React out there.
Bootstrap is an easy default because I used it back on the day, and the aforementioned quantity of templates, but soooo many classes...
I've really been drinking the HTMX Cool-aid lately. Coding modern UIs mostly server-side is kinda great all round.
It definitely appeals to my overall sense that the React-by-default frontend approach has gained lots of layers of complexity that aren't really needed most of the time.
My web background was Rails and I've been picking it up again... Their server-side UI rendering/refreshing system (Hotwire) is such a relief in an age where everything needs a full react front-end to be interactive.
