Create studiocms-ui-v0-1-0-stable-release.md

src/content/blog/studiocms-ui-v0-1-0-stable-release.md

@@ -0,0 +1,53 @@
+---
+title: 'A new UI Library Approaches!'
+description: "@studiocms/ui is our first ever stable resource!"
+publishDate: 2024-12-08
+ogVariant: accent
+author: louis-escher
+---
+
+TL;DR: 
+We're releasing [@studiocms/ui](https://npmjs.org/package/@studiocms/ui), the library we use to build the StudioCMS ecosystem to the community!
+---
+
+Hi everyone!
+
+This isn't the usual post about how we're still working on beta.8 (although that is most certainly still the case). No, today's post is about 
+a pretty important milestone, as we're releasing yet another of our development tools early to the community. While building the new dashboard 
+for beta.8, we've seen first-hand how helpful an Astro-First UI library can be, so we figured we might as well bring out the Christmas presents 
+early:
+
+## StudioCMS UI v0.1.0 
+
+Starting today, we're releasing StudioCMS UI as its own project in the StudioCMS ecosystem, detached from our Monorepo and normal release schedule. 
+As of Version 0.1.0, it features over 15 components, all aimed at making your life a little easier while building your next big project. 
+Some highlights include our dropdown, modal and toast components, which take complex UI concepts and abstract away all the complexity into a 
+single component (and maybe a helper). 
+
+You can [check out the documentation](https://ui.studiocms.dev) to learn how to get started. We recommend using Astro v5, but the library should 
+be compatible with any Project running Astro v4.5.0 or higher, as long as the `experimental.directRenderScript` flag is set to `true`. 
+
+## Why we built an entire UI library from scratch 
+
+StudioCMS UI was created after we realized that building a dashboard from scratch wouldn't be easy. A lot of other things had to be taken care of, 
+so yours truly decided to do some research on UI libraries that might make our job a little easier. Surprisingly, there wasn't a lot of options at 
+the time! Most UI libraries were simply ported from React, which introduced unnecessary complexity to project structure. Other ones rely heavily on 
+libraries like Tailwindcss, which bloats the final HTML output (unpopular opinion, I know). Because we didn't like either of those options, we 
+decided to go the third, and arguably harder route: building our own library from scratch. The result of the last two months is what you see now: a 
+ready to go UI library which can be used in any Astro projects without additional dependencies. Plain Astro, baby.
+
+## Baby steps
+
+To be honest, when I proposed this UI library, I had no idea how I would implement any of it. I want to give a special shout-out to Dreyfus, 
+Otter and Arknoodle for their amazing feedback and inputs on the components. However, there's still a lot to be done. The library does not yet 
+meet accessibility standards, which we want to improve over time. We've got a planned accessibility audit coming up as part of StudioCMS beta.8, 
+which will definitely help in getting some crucial things fixed. Until then, I hope a combined community effort can find and weed out some of the 
+bigger issues.
+
+I also hope that the community can help this UI library grow by adding new components and showing off different ways of using it, in turn revealing 
+problems with it that we can then work on together.
+
+I want to encourage everyone to give StudioCMS UI a try. The more, the better!
+
+Thanks and until next time, <br />
+**Louis and the StudioCMS team**