MUI or Material UI is an open-source React Components library that is based on Google's Material Design and provides the predefined UI components for React.
Material UI is a UI library that provides predefined react components implementing Google's Material Design. Material UI is a design language built by Google in 2014 and works with various JavaScript frameworks apart from React such as Angular.js and Vue.js.
In this Material UI Tutorial, we will explore the advantages, features, and benefits of Material UI which will help in beautiful, consistent, and efficient UI in web development.
Material UI has more than 2500 contributors which are actively contributing to creating customized UI components and providing the latest features for developing web applications. The latest version of Material UI is version 6 which was released in May 2024.
Why choose Material UI?
The main reason to choose Material UI is the quality of the inbuilt designs of Material UI. Its easy implementation makes it the first choice of most developers. The inbuilt components are also customizable so it helps in easily recreating the designs. The material design provided by The MUI is also SEO friendly. One of the various advantages of Material UI is that it has a good depreciation policy which allows easy upgrades to old deprecated components. Since the introduction of Material UI the development of React applications has become a lot faster.
Features of React Material UI
React Material UI combines powerful customization, responsiveness, fast loading, theming, backend integration, and seamless upgrades. The key features of Material UI are:
- Highly customizable: The templates provided are easily customizable and require very less coding to make changes to existing templates
- Responsive: The inbuilt components are by default responsive so it is easy to create web applications for different screen widths.
- Fast loading: Loading of the components is faster as compared to other frameworks
- Themes: Vast variety of themes and easy customization is possible.
- Backend friendly: It is easily integrable with the backend.
- Depreciation policy: Material UI provides easy upgrades for old deprecated methods.
Getting Started with Material UI
1. Installation
Employ npm or yarn to seamlessly integrate Material UI into your project:
npm install @mui/material @emotion/react @emotion/styled
2. Import and Use Components
- Import the necessary components from Material UI and start incorporating them into your React application:
- Recent articles on React Material UI
import React from 'react';
import Button from '@mui/material/Button';
Check this page to see all Recent articles on React Material UI
Usage Practices of Material UI
There are some basic conventions which we must follow for effective usage of MUI components such as:
- Globals: All the MUI components are defined in a global scope and are isolated. These globals should only be used for website development
- Mobile-first component: The components codes are written for mobile first and then these components can be scaled up for bigger screen sizes
- Responsive meta tag: The meta tag should be made responsive to ensure touch zooming for all devices
- CssBaseline: The is another CssBaseline component which ensures consistency among different browsers
- Default Font: The default font used in material design is Roboto
Core Components
Material UI boasts a vast collection of reusable components that cater to a wide range of UI needs. Let's delve into some of the most commonly used ones:
- Buttons: Generate interactive buttons in various styles (contained, outlined, text) and sizes.
- Typography: Craft visually appealing and well-structured text elements using typography components.
- Cards: Present content in a clear and organized manner by utilizing cards.
- Lists: Create ordered or unordered lists with enhanced styling and functionality.
- Forms: Construct complex forms with a plethora of input elements (text fields, dropdowns, checkboxes, radio buttons) and validation capabilities.
- Dialogs: Implement modal dialogs for popups and alerts.
- Grid System: Establish a responsive layout foundation using the grid system.
MUI Theme and Customization
Material UI (MUI) theme is a configuration object that centralizes styling for a React application, defining colors, typography, spacing, and more to ensure consistent design and support customizations like light and dark modes.
Key Elements of MUI Theme:
- Palette: Define primary, secondary, and other color settings, allowing easy adjustments for light and dark modes.
- Typography: Controls font styles, sizes, weights, and line heights for headings, body text, and other text elements.
- Spacing: Manages spacing throughout the app using a consistent scale.
- Breakpoints: Responsive design by defining screen size for different devices.
- Shadows and Z-Index: Configures shadow and layering for different UI elements.
- Components Customization: Allows for global style overrides and custom variants to adjust how components appear and behave across the app.
Customization in MUI refers to the ability to modify the default styles of components to match your unique design needs. MUI provides several methods for customization:
Customization Methods:
- Theme Overrides: Apply global style directly through the theme configuration, affecting all instances of a component.
- CSS-in-JS with the
sx Prop: the sx prop apply inline styles that are responsive and theme-aware, making it easy to adjust styles at the component level. - Styled API: Create custom components with styles that provide the theme values, offering more control and flexibility.
- Global Styles: Implement global CSS rules that apply across the entire application, often used for base styles or overrides that are not specific to individual components.
- Dynamic Theming: MUI supports dynamic theming, allowing applications to switch between different themes, such as light and dark modes, based on user preference or system settings.
Benefits of Material UI
The Material UI offers many benefits:
- MUI enhances User Experience and User Interface
- The customizable components helps to easily redesign the existing components
- The codes are easier to maintain and debugging is easier
- Apart from styles it improves the components functionality and accessibility
Learn more about React Material UI
Alternatives to Material UI
The best two alternatives for React Material UI are ReactJS Blueprint and React Bootstrap
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