Through my experiences with frameworks like Bootstrap, Bulma, and Tailwind, I’ve come to appreciate the simplicity and elegance of pure CSS more.

While Frameworks offer valuable shortcuts in some scenarios, the benefits of pure CSS shine as projects become more complex.

Yes, frameworks can increase prototyping speed and facilitate design consistency across teams. However, they can also incur overhead and restrict fine-grained style control, leading to slower page loads and lower performance metrics.

Additionally, out-of-the-box components often fall short of accessibility standards, inadvertently excluding users.

Conversely, custom CSS allows you to prioritize accessibility from the start. You can create inclusive designs with adaptive colour schemes, semantic layouts, and interactive details without the constraints of predefined components.

Replacing Frameworks styles to fit your vision can become daunting as projects evolve.

However, pure CSS is well organized, and strategies like CSS variables offer a simplified and more sustainable approach.

Web design’s fundamental principle of separating structure, style, and interactivity underscores the importance of accessibility – a principle naturally supported through pure CSS.

Frameworks, too, are constantly changing, and updates can present unforeseen challenges, which you don’t have with custom CSS, as you have control over them, allowing for more gradual and stable improvements throughout the lifecycle of your project.

This approach aligns with the minimalist principles that I like. Also, it allows me to focus my efforts on what matters, avoiding the pitfalls of constantly adapting to external changes.

That’s why I advocate writing pure CSS when reasonable and possible, as this choice over convenience ensures that our digital spaces remain more open and simply more enjoyable for everyone.

As for Tailwind specifically, I recommend this reading.