Over the period that I ran Rails Designer, and many years before that, I have been in touch with many other Rails UI engineers or product designers. Initially through my SaaS businesses where I got questions on how I tackled certain UI issues in the Rails/Hotwire way, and later through the Rails Designer work (components, articles and UI consultancy).
These conversations were all (short), siloed conversations, that often could also helped other UI engineers. Also with AI (LLM) rising, many functionalities and features are often one prompt away. But it often is still lacking in best practices, clean, nicely written code and general good taste.
AI is lacking best practices, clean written code and has no taste
An AI (LLM) might suggest for each feature you request to create a separate Stimulus controller, but Stimulus shines by creating small reusable controllers that are configured through the HTML or its lazy default to prefix each JavaScript method with handle, e.g. handleClick (which is/was common in the React world). There are so many more examples like this where real-life, best-practices for Rails and Hotwire are missing. I want my JavaScript as cleanly written and, more importantly, readable like my Ruby classes (I even have written a book to share my thoughts on this).
Then finally with code most likely, becoming a commodity in a sense, real human-centric product engineering will become a step up for current developers. Developers should design. And that means not just pulling one of the UI components into your app, but actually learn and know what your user understands and craft a focused UI they find a joy to use.
That is why I am introducing: Rails Designers. A private community for Rails UI Engineers & Frontend Designers.
(get access today for just $49 (limited time deal!))
Rails Designers is a community that brings together Rails developers who care deeply about creating beautiful user interfaces and exceptional front-end experiences following the Basecamp philosophy that the best developers understand design, and the best designers understand code.
The best developers understand design, and the best designers understand code
Running, and more so building, a community is not easy as it, by definition, depends on the people joining and participating. So it probably takes a good while before it will take off and it will be a (somewhat) busy beehive. But I am pretty certain a good space like this is needed. It can help you become a better UI engineer and developer and stay relevant in the changing, AI (LLM) powered, web/development-engineering industry.
To get the ball rolling, you can join Rails Designers for the super-low, one-time price of just $49. Check it out. ❤️
Behind the scenes of building Rails Designers
Rails Designers is powered by Forge. The soon-to-come community platform that will be available for everyone. It is a (vanilla) Ruby on Rails application using modern features. It only uses a handful of third-party gems, like: Courrier, pagy, rails_vault, rails_icons.
The root folder:
Dockerfile Gemfile.lock Rakefile bin config.ru lib public storage tmp
Gemfile README.md app config db log script test vendor
The app folder:
assets channels controllers emails helpers javascript jobs models views
Turbo transition that I recently published, came straight from building Forge. There are 2-3 more tools that I plan to publish as OSS gems/packages soon too. I will of course, announce them first on Rails Designers. 🤫😊
(the improving UI of Forge while developing)
One conscious choice is to use vanilla CSS and not Tailwind CSS. For one I think open web standards, like CSS, is important to have and not be (too) reliant on semi-walled gardens like Tailwind CSS. I still love it, and will continue to use when appropriate. I wrote this article about modern CSS as a result of build Forge and there is another one about the various techniques I used to be published soon.
Other things that are unique to Forge:
- custom authorization set up, using a more readable interface like:
authorize Current.user, to: :create?, resource: message🔐; - A thin layer/wrapper around Rails’ partials that also includes component-based/scoped CSS ❤️;
- a system, powered by CSS’ OKLCH that changes the app’s theme by changing one value (including a dark theme) 🌈;
Forge will help you build your own private community that you can control and without big companies snooping/(ab)using your data. Forge will be available soon for a super-low one-time price (likely $199 🤯). It will get you access to the Forge repo that you can clone and merge updates from.
If you are already interested in using it, let me know. I will offer 50% discount for early birds as I extend features and fix bugs. Just reach out and I’ll get you set up.
