Atomic Power: the Story of StyleX

StylX is a tool for generating atomic CSS, maintained by Naman at Meta.

Early CSS lacked namespaces and variables, making it difficult to maintain and requiring repeated code.

CSS preprocessors like Sass and Less introduced features such as variables, nesting, and loops, improving CSS maintainability and functionality.

The community developed CSS modules and CSS in JS to address namespacing and scaling issues, with each approach offering different solutions and benefits.

Atomic CSS breaks styles into small, reusable pieces, maximizing reusability and scalability. It helps keep CSS size manageable as applications grow.

Tailwind CSS uses atomic styles to create a single small CSS file for the entire application, minimizing the need for lazy loading and improving performance.

While both generate atomic CSS, Tailwind works with almost any language and encourages repetition, while StylX is a JavaScript compiler that promotes reusability and is strongly typed.

React Strict DOM is a project that builds on StyleX to provide a common baseline for writing UI across web and React Native, offering web-like APIs that are not global.

Compilers have facilitated advancements in web development by enabling features like atomic CSS, improving performance, and enhancing developer experience.

Initially, web styling relied solely on HTML with limited capabilities like blink and marquee tags. CSS was later introduced to solve styling limitations, offering more power and reusability.