Component Libraries: Should You Build Your Own or Use a Prebuilt One?

Component libraries are a vital tool in web application development in maintaining uniform design, shortening the time taken to develop web applications and improving reusability of the code. Some developers find this dilemma; should they create a component library or use an existing one? In addition, they help reduce the struggle while building well-designed and interactive websites because of the availability of animation-oriented UIs such as Accentricity UI among others. Now, let’s get more to the point in order to help you find the right way.

What is a Component Library?

Component libraries are collections of reusable UI elements such as buttons, forms, modals, and more— and are intended to reuse the components across several projects. Such libraries not only guarantee a consistent look of an application but also save time and costs during its implementation because the elements have been already coded. So, there's no need to build components from scratch.

Prebuilt Component Libraries

Prebuilt component libraries are the ready-made collections of different UI components that are specifically designed and optimized for common use cases that developers can face during development. Some well-known examples include:

Material-UI (MUI):

A library based on React and it follows Google's Material-UI design, MUI allows a comprehensive set of components customization.

Ant Design:

It's an UI design system framework for enterprise-level products, ant design offers built-in themes and a rich set of UI components.

Bootstrap:

It's an widely-used CSS framework that provides basic components and a responsive grid system.

Pros of Prebuilt Libraries :

Rapid Development: Prebuilt libraries save a lot of time of the developers by providing pre-designed reusable components that you can quickly integrate into your project.

Standardized Design: They help ensure a consistent user experience across different screens and features.

Community Support: Many prebuilt libraries come with robust community support, providing a wealth of tutorials, plugins, and enhancements.

Cons of Prebuilt Libraries

Limited Customization: Customizing components to fit your unique design can sometimes be difficult, leading to constraints on flexibility.

Performance Overhead: Many prebuilt libraries come with extra features you may not need, which can bloat your codebase.

Pros And Cons of Prebuilt Libraries

Animation-Centric Libraries: Bringing UIs to Life

In recent years, a new category of libraries has emerged, specifically focused on providing built-in animations and smooth UI transitions. These libraries not only offer pre-designed components but also emphasize adding dynamic, interactive features to web applications.

Here are some popular examples of animation-focused libraries:

Lottie

Category: Animation Integration Library

What it Offers: Lottie allows you to render animations created in Figma or Adobe After Effects as JSON files using the built-in plugins. These animations are then rendered natively on the web, offering high-quality motion without a heavy performance impact.

Why It’s Useful: Lottie is perfect for apps or websites requiring rich, scalable animations that are lightweight. It’s commonly used for logos, loading animations, and subtle UI effects. Unlike other component libraries, it focuses purely on bringing visual design elements from tools like Figma & After Effects into the web environment.

Accentricity UI

Category: Hybrid Component and Animation Library

What it Offers:

Accentricity UI combines traditional UI components with built-in support for smooth animations and transitions. It offers a wide range of components like buttons, forms, modals, and navigation menus, but with an added layer of predefined animations, making it easier to create interactive, dynamic interfaces.

In addition to these standard components, Accentricity UI provides responsive behaviors and subtle animation effects like hover states, fade-ins, and sliding transitions that enhance user engagement. The library's components are fully customizable, allowing developers to easily adjust animation timings, easing functions, and durations to match the look and feel of their brand, ensuring both visual appeal and performance across devices.

Why It’s Useful:

Think about it, what would be easy for a dev? Making a custom component with tons of animation which the dev has to write from scratch and polish it before the deadline or use a library, where the dev can make use of the library with the built-in support to combine the custom designed elements with smooth animations and transitions offered by the library.

It’s particularly helpful for developers who want the convenience of a prebuilt library but need polished, built-in animations to enhance user experience without writing complex animation code from scratch.

Framer Motion

Category: Animation-focused Component Library (React)

What it Offers:

Framer Motion is a powerful library for React that allows you to create fluid animations and micro interactions with minimal effort. It supports interactive features like drag, scroll, and spring-based animations, which makes it ideal for interactive & highly animated UIs. It also provides easy-to-use APIs for gesture-based animations and layout transitions, offering developers extensive control over complex animations while maintaining simplicity in implementation.

Why It’s Useful:

Framer Motion combines the simplicity of component libraries with the flexibility of advanced animation frameworks, making it easy to enhance user interfaces with dynamic visual effects. It’s a great choice for React developers who want to integrate animation without compromising performance or adding significant overhead. With its built-in optimizations for smooth rendering, Framer Motion ensures high-quality animations that enhance both usability and visual appeal.

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