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Alex Smith
Software Engineer
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Building Forms Without a Form Library

· 8 min read
Alex Smith
Software Engineer

Building Forms Without a Form Library, drawn as a pixel art RPG character creation screen: a name field with a blinking cursor, a class picker with the cursor on Mage, stat sliders for STR, DEX, and INT, and a green status row reading form libs loaded: 0, ready.

A form in bestax-bulma is plain React: state goes in, props come out, and nothing new sits in between. There's no bundled form library and none is coming; the library's job ends at rendering Bulma correctly, so your form state stays yours. By the end of this post you'll have a validated signup form built with nothing but useState, and you'll know where every escape hatch is.

The Floor Is React 18

· 5 min read
Alex Smith
Software Engineer

The Floor Is React 18, drawn as a pixel art lava level: tiles labeled 16 and 17 sink into the lava while the React atom hops between a solid brick floor labeled React 18 and a floating 19 platform

In June, bestax-bulma v4.0.0 dropped support for React 16 and 17. That's the whole release: one breaking change, no new components, and if you're on React 18 or 19 you won't feel a thing. Here's why I moved the floor anyway.

The Forms Mega-Release

· 11 min read
Alex Smith
Software Engineer

Back in January, our Extra Components post ended with a promise: DateInput, TimeInput, and Colorpicker were coming. In June, v3.0.0 delivered the date and time pickers (plus a DateTimeInput we never promised) inside a release that added about 30 new components in one shot. Two out of three ain't bad.

Bulma Is the #3 CSS Framework. AI Will Never Tell You About It

· 22 min read
Alex Smith
Software Engineer

Tailwind is first. Bootstrap is second. Bulma is third.

That's the whole leaderboard, and it has been remarkably stable for years. Every survey, every npm download chart, every "what CSS framework should I use in 2026" thread lands in the same order.

So let's talk about third place, because third place is the interesting place to be.

Congrats on being different. Now here's what to do.

The State of React — July 2026

· 4 min read
Alex Smith
Software Engineer
The State of React — July 2026: React component libraries, compared

Picking a React component library is one of the bigger architectural calls in a project, and the honest answer to “which one” depends entirely on what you’re building. We maintain bestax, a component library for Bulma v1, so we spend a lot of time studying the field. This post maps it out fairly and in the open: every user-facing capability across seven React libraries, with each cell linking straight to that library’s own documentation so you can check our work.

It’s a point-in-time capture — the first edition of a series we’ll refresh regularly. We’re calling it The State of React, with a nod to Armin’s long-running radio show. Over time we’d like it to grow into a wider read on the React ecosystem; for now, it stays focused on component libraries.

Snapshot — July 2026

The table below reflects each library as of July 27, 2026. Component catalogs move fast — the latest edition of The State of React always has the freshest data.

In the ring: bestax (Bulma v1), react-bulma-components (the other Bulma wrapper), Mantine, MUI, Chakra UI, shadcn/ui, and React-Bootstrap.