Modern UI Design with Open Props: A Guide

Crafting a Captivating User Interface: The Power of Open Props

First Impressions Matter

When it comes to modern web applications, the user interface plays a crucial role in making a lasting impression on users. In mere seconds, users form an opinion about an application, making UI styling a critical component of success. Fortunately, CSS libraries like Open Props make it possible to achieve a professional design without excessive coding.

The Flexibility of Open Props

Unlike other CSS libraries and frameworks, Open Props stands out for its flexibility and non-prescriptive approach. This open-source, color scheme-optimized CSS library provides fast, consistent, and customized design options while keeping your application’s CSS clean and simple. With Open Props, you can create your own custom class names for selectors, allowing for greater flexibility and customization.

Getting Started with Open Props

To get started with Open Props, you can add the CDN to your web application using CSS, PostCSS, or design tokens. In this tutorial, we’ll import the Open Props CDN directly into our CSS file. Let’s build a sample UI project to demonstrate the power of Open Props.

Creating the Folder Structure

First, create the app folder and add the necessary folders and files:

• mkdir assets/img for images
• mkdir assets/css for CSS files
• touch index.html for the HTML file
• styles.css within the assets/css folder for the CSS style file

Crafting the UI Markup

Next, let’s create the UI markup. Open the index.html file and add the following code snippet:

“`html

“`

Styling the UI with Open Props

Now, let’s style the UI markup using Open Props. We’ll add custom styling to the following UI components:

• Header
• Navigation bar
• Features section
• Images and buttons

Styling the Header

To style the header, open the styles.css file and import the Open Props CDN:

css
@import 'https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/open-props@latest/dist/open-props.min.css';


Next, add global styling to all elements in the markup, remove custom padding and margin, set the size of the header with the box-sizing property, and specify the font-family.

Styling the Navigation Bar

To style the navigation bar, move to the .nav-bar selector within the header element. Set the display property to flex, reset the flex direction to row, and add space between the logo and ul elements.

Styling the Features Section

To style the features section, move to the .features selector within the section element. Format the text using the margin-top, width, margin, and text-align properties.

Styling Images and Buttons

Finally, style the images and buttons by specifying the width and height equivalent to 100 percent of the parent element, and adding custom styling to the buttons.

With Open Props, the design possibilities are endless. Check out the Open Props documentation for inspiration on your next UI design project.