Aurelia UX (Where's the love?)

We are considering migrating from Aurelia Materialize Bridge to UX. I want to be sure that UX is production ready before we invest the time. Can’t seem to find much on it other than the UX repository. It is an active project but you don’t see much visibility of it anywhere. For example, there’s no dedicated UX category on here or on Discord.

A few questions for anyone that knows (and please forgive me if I’ve missed this somewhere. I’ve tried my best to look at everything first).

  • Anyone using UX in production or near production?
  • Using on Desktop, Mobile, or both?
  • Any hidden documentation anywhere other than https://aux-demo.web.app/getting-started and the included App in the UX repo?
  • Are there plans to add UX documentation to the standard Aurelia docs?
  • Can I use my own icon set? Any instructions on how?

Thanks in advance.

1 Like

As a long-term user and recent contributor I can give you some answers and my point of view.

I don’t think that officially Aurelia UX is considered production ready even though I know it is already used in production. In my work projects we are definitely using it in production in several apps (desktop, mobile, PWA, cordova).

As you said, one of the biggest missing piece is documentation and proper showcase. The demo app inside the lib is a good start. I’m currently working on a PR with more exemples and some configuration tools.

What I’ve found is that once you start using the components it’s pretty straightforward to get how they work. Basically you need to look at the @bindable to get the functional options and the properties in the theme files to get the styling options.

I am planning to continue contributing and enhance the documentation part. But to be honest it will probably take a few more weeks to get where I would like it to be.

Regarding the icons: YES you can use your own icon set. In this blog post you can find some exemples about the icons package.

Your icons need to be in SVG and you will have to register your set(s) using one of the following format:

  // array form
  [
    [
      "person", // icon name
      "<path d=\"M12 ...\"></path>", // svg path (without the svg tag)
      24, // optional (viewport width, default to 24)
      24 // optional (viewport height, default to 24)
    ],
    [
      "other-icon-name",
      "<path>...</path">
    ],
    ...
  ]

or

 // object form
  [
    {
      "name": "person", // icon name
      "svg": "<svg viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\"><path d=\"M12 ...\"></path></svg>" // svg path (with the svg tag)
    },
  ]
  

On a personnal note: I think I was one of the early adopters of Aurelia UX when it came out. I really liked the approach of theming and the components written “The Aurelia way”. However it’s been a quite difficult ride (esp. the begninning with breaking changes and important missing pieces). A few times I thought about giving up on it, but I always had the feeling that Aurelia UX had the potential and was not too far away from production-ready. It has pushed me to start contributing and I’ve found this experience very interesting and rewarding.

It’s not the more complete UX lib out there. It will definitely depends on your requirements. But it has strong benefits and has room for improvements and creative ideas.

8 Likes

I really want to use this, but I rely on too many other components.

1 Like

Feature request please :kissing_cat:

Unless the team can get to the level of support of something like Syncfusion or dare I say even Telerik, it just won’t work for my team. I need the capabilities syncfusion brings to controls like their text box which adds a lot to a native input.

I even stopped using native bootstrap styling in favor of just using syncfusion controls everywhere for styling consistency, which is why I’ve been working on a bridge for syncfusion to aurelia.

I think this project is great if you just need basic form items, but I am going to be brutally honest, if there are members of the core Aurelia team working on this, this is not worth the time. I just don’t think the UI world is a business Aurelia belongs in, it changes too rapidly and there are already great alternatives, free and paid.

1 Like

I think the scope and spec of UX is small enough (material & iOs) that it is beneficial to provide a base set of components. And, the direction of UX isnt competing with others like sync function so I see plenty of space for folks, who love to use UX and contribute to Aurelia. Though I love what you said, for the thoughts and words.

1 Like