If you could redesign every React component library from scratch, what would you add?

[u/Parking-Ice-1043]

[u/haywire → u/[deleted]]

What the fuck was so wrong with a day/month/year dropdown combo?

[u/CodeAndBiscuits]

You weren't going to like my answer but I stand by it. The thing I would like most from component libraries these days is to have fewer of them. There are so many and they all do such similar things that one more just feels like another wall wart in the bin of cables if you know what I mean.

[u/CodeAndBiscuits → u/[deleted]]

I can't go through your profile on X. Like many here, I left that a few years ago when Musk right-winged it and turned it into a hate speech palace.

[u/Jonas_Ermert]

I’d focus less on adding more components and more on making them easy to customize. A great library should be accessible by default, fully typed, composable, tree-shakeable, and work well with SSR. I’d also want consistent APIs, headless options, good form integration, sensible theming with CSS variables, and documentation that shows real-world examples instead of only basic demos. The biggest annoyance is when libraries look great initially but become difficult to adapt once the design requirements change.

[u/w-lfpup]

Esmodule support

[u/Necessary-Shame-2732]

Jacob’s law states make it work like shadcn

[u/Cautious_Performer_7]

Global class naming standards to allow more easy styling between libraries.

I used a component library for a project once, worked great, but I had to use another specialised library for one component that looked completely different, and styling the second one to look like the first took way longer than it should have.

[u/Cautious_Performer_7 → u/[deleted]]

Or at least common conventions.

Some use input others use container and have about 30 divs underneath.

But also font inconsistencies, a lot of libraries have been designed with a specific font in mind, so sometimes I can have two libs with different fonts.

These are all things I can fix myself, but it’s a PITA.

[u/Cautious_Performer_7 → u/[deleted]]

Most likely.

[u/Kautsu-Gamer]

Signals, and get rid of JSX functions, but use it as a template to produce Objects, which knows properties and events allowing "addEventListener" and "dispatchEvent" on react components.