Over the past few months, I've been quietly hacking on a side project called Rails UI. It's a new Ruby on Rails engine that pairs professional design patterns with any new Rails application.
If you've ever scaffolded a Rails resource or installed the default "views" of any UI-related gem, you know they lack natural design flare. This issue got old as the number of applications I created grew.
After repeating myself repeatedly, I decided to scratch my own itch.
There are solutions out in the wild like Tailwind UI, but nothing as integrated as a gem could be. That concept sparked me to dig in to see what I could do to provide value to others and myself.
Rails UI is a work in progress at the moment, but so far, it includes the following:
This concept is in flux, but the way you can leverage Rails UI is by following these steps:
/railsui
locally to view your design system and other componentsThere's plenty to do before I have the v1 ready, but I'm getting close! I'm hoping by the holiday season of 2022, there could be an alpha version ready to try. If you join the waiting list, I'll reach out to do some early trials to get feedback.
Not at first, but I think down the line, yes, it will.
I think there will be a free version with two templates to choose from between each CSS framework. Past that, you can pay a yearly fee for unlimited access to current and future templates I'll be progressively adding. This way, I can design for many developers, and you can reap the benefits of a real product designer's work for super cheap. I have cost ideas, but I'm not yet 100% of those figures.
I'm super excited to be introducing this officially. I hope to do some vlog-style updates to document the journey and share a day in my life. I hope you'll stay tuned and follow along.
Be sure to subscribe for updates at https://railsui.com.