Material UI — Usage Guidelines

Background of Material UI

Material UI is a popular open-source library of React components that follows Google’s Material Design guidelines. Material Design is a design language developed by Google that emphasizes a clean, modern, and flat aesthetic, with a focus on responsive animations and transitions. It was introduced in 2014 and quickly gained popularity for its clean and modern look and feel.

Material UI was created to help developers build web applications that follow the Material Design standard while providing a high level of customization and flexibility. It has since become one of the most widely used UI libraries for React.

When to use Material UI

Material UI is a great choice for projects where you want to create a consistent and modern user interface. It can be used for a wide variety of projects, including dashboards, e-commerce sites, and social networks. If you’re using React for your frontend development, Material UI is an excellent choice for quickly building a UI that looks and feels great.

Material UI is also a good choice if you’re looking for a library that provides a high level of customization and flexibility. Its theming and styling system makes it easy to create a consistent design across your entire application while still allowing for customization to match your brand or design requirements.

What to use for styling and customization

Material UI provides various options for styling and customization. Material-UI v5, recommends using Emotion or Styled Components for styling components due to performance improvements. However, you can still use CSS, SCSS, or the makeStyles function provided by Material UI if you prefer those approaches. Choose the styling approach that best suits your project and team’s preferences.

When not to use Material UI

While Material UI is highly customizable, it still follows the Material Design guidelines. Therefore, it may not be the best choice for projects that require a completely different look and feel. If you have specific design requirements that don’t align with Material Design, you might consider using alternative UI libraries or building your own components from scratch.

Usage Guidelines and Best Practices

When using Material UI, it’s important to follow the library’s best practices to ensure your code is maintainable and scalable. Here are some additional usage guidelines and best practices:

Use the Grid component provided by Material UI to create a responsive layout for your application. The Grid component allows you to easily create rows and columns, ensuring a consistent and responsive layout across different screen sizes.

import { Grid } from '@material-ui/core';

const MyComponent = () => {
  return (
    <Grid container spacing={2}>
      <Grid item xs={12} sm={6}>
        {/* Content for the left half of the screen */}
      </Grid>
      <Grid item xs={12} sm={6}>
        {/* Content for the right half of the screen */}
      </Grid>
    </Grid>
  );
};

Utilize the Typography component to create consistent and accessible typography throughout your application. Material UI provides a range of predefined typography styles that follow the Material Design guidelines, making it easy to maintain a consistent and visually pleasing typography system.

import { Typography } from '@material-ui/core';

const MyComponent = () => {
  return (
    <Typography variant="h2" component="h1" gutterBottom>
      Welcome to My App
    </Typography>
  );
};

Make use of Material UI’s built-in icons to provide visual cues and improve usability. Material UI offers a wide range of icons that align with the Material Design language, making it easy to enhance your application’s user experience.

import { IconButton } from '@material-ui/core';
import { Delete } from '@material-ui/icons';

const MyComponent = () => {
  return (
    <IconButton color="primary" aria-label="Delete">
      <Delete />
    </IconButton>
  );
};

Use Material UI’s Button component for all clickable elements in your application. The Button component follows the Material Design guidelines for buttons, providing consistent styling and behavior. It also offers various customization options to fit your specific needs.

import { Button } from '@material-ui/core';

const MyComponent = () => {
  return (
    <Button variant="contained" color="primary">
      Click Me
    </Button>
  );
};

Utilize Material UI’s Snackbar component to display notifications and alerts to the user. The Snackbar component provides a non-intrusive way to show temporary messages or feedback, ensuring a smooth user experience.

import { Snackbar } from '@material-ui/core';
import { Alert } from '@material-ui/lab';

const MyComponent = () => {
  const [open, setOpen] = useState(false);

  const handleOpenSnackbar = () => {
    setOpen(true);
  };

  const handleCloseSnackbar = () => {
    setOpen(false);
  };

  return (
    <>
      <Button onClick={handleOpenSnackbar}>Show Snackbar</Button>
      <Snackbar open={open} autoHideDuration={3000} onClose={handleCloseSnackbar}>
        <Alert onClose={handleCloseSnackbar} severity="success">
          This is a success message!
        </Alert>
      </Snackbar>
    </>
  );
};

Use Material UI’s Tooltip component to provide additional information or context for elements in your application. Tooltips can be helpful for displaying explanatory text or offering hints about the functionality of certain UI elements.

import { Tooltip, IconButton } from '@material-ui/core';
import { Info } from '@material-ui/icons';

const MyComponent = () => {
  return (
    <Tooltip title="Additional Information">
      <IconButton aria-label="info">
        <Info />
      </IconButton>
    </Tooltip>
  );
};

Make use of Material UI’s ThemeProvider component to customize the theme of your application. The ThemeProvider allows you to override the default theme values, such as colors and typography, to match your application’s branding or design requirements.

import { createTheme, ThemeProvider } from '@material-ui/core';

const theme = createTheme({
  palette: {
    primary: {
      main: '#ff0000',
    },
    secondary: {
      main: '#00ff00',
    },
  },
});

const MyComponent = () => {
  return (
    <ThemeProvider theme={theme}>
      {/* Your themed components */}
    </ThemeProvider>
  );
};

Material UI provides multiple options for styling components, including CSS, SCSS, makeStyles, emotion, and styled components. Choose the approach that works best for your project and team. However, with Material-UI v5, using emotion or styled components is recommended for better performance.

// Using styled components
import { styled } from '@mui/system';

const StyledButton = styled(Button)`
  background-color: #ff0000;
  color: #ffffff;
`;

const MyComponent = () => {
  return <StyledButton>Styled Button</StyledButton>;
};

When applying custom styles to Material UI components, avoid modifying the styles directly. Instead, use the classes prop or the createStyles function to apply custom styles in a more maintainable and scalable manner.

import { makeStyles } from '@material-ui/core';

const useStyles = makeStyles((theme) => ({
  customButton: {
    backgroundColor: '#ff0000',
    color: '#ffffff',
    padding: theme.spacing(1),
  },
}));

const MyComponent = () => {
  const classes = useStyles();

  return (
    <button className={classes.customButton}>
      Custom Button
    </button>
  );
};

Material-UI v5 provides support for React.lazy and Suspense, which can help improve the performance of your application by reducing the size of your initial bundle. By using lazy loading and suspense, you can load components only when they are needed, rather than loading everything up front.

Material UI also provides a number of tools and resources to help you get started, including documentation, examples, and a large community of users.

Edge over other libraries

Material UI offers several advantages over other UI libraries:

1. It follows the widely recognized Material Design standard, providing a familiar and consistent design language.
2. Material UI is highly customizable, allowing you to tailor the components to match your specific design requirements.
3. The library has excellent documentation and a large community of users, making it easier to find resources and get help when needed.
4. Material UI has improved its accessibility features in the latest version, ensuring your application is accessible to a wide range of users.
5. Material UI has improved its Server-Side Rendering (SSR) support, making it a suitable choice for projects that require rendering on the server.