Penguin UI's Half-Year Mark: A Look Back and Ahead
It's been 6 months since the release of Penguin UI, and I've been thrilled with the feedback I've received for this UI component library. In this blog post, I'd like to share a summary of Penguin UI's progress, features, and future plans.

How it started
I learned Laravel at my first job and it quickly became my
favorite framework for building web applications. Like most
developers, I often come up with these great million dollar
ideas! (or at least that's what I think) and want to quickly
build a prototype or a proof of concept.
If you're familiar with Laravel, you know how easy it is to
create a web application, test your concepts, and even scale
them up with it. However, there is one hurdle that can slow the
process down: the user interface - every back-end developer's
worst nightmare and every front-end developer's obsession.
I wanted to simplify UI development for myself, so I began
exploring existing component libraries. While I found some
excellent choices for Tailwind CSS, including Tailwind UI by the
framework's creator, there was a lack of a comprehensive
component library that could be fully integrated with the TALL
stack (mainly Tailwind CSS, Alpine.js).
There are some UI libraries for Alpine.js, but they either
lacked some of the items that I needed or were missing important
accessibility features. So, I decided to build my own component
library to quickly create Laravel applications.
As I played around with different ideas and features, I found
myself getting more and more obsessed with user interface design
and front-end techniques. What started as a side project to help
me with other applications turned into my main project and the
coolest thing I've built thus far.
How it's going?
Although it's not a very well-known library yet, Penguin UI is
continuing to grow. Currently, it contains over 170 components
that are meticulously built and tested across multiple browsers,
devices, and even screen reader simulators to make sure that
they work well with different projects.
Additionally, there are 13 pre-designed themes for both dark and
light modes, which you can fully customize to match your style.
Recently, I've added a collection of UI components designed for
AI applications to help you develop your AI ideas easier and
faster.
It has been a blast to work on this library and contribute to
the web development world. I'll continue developing and
maintaining it, and have some exciting ideas for the future.
Future Plans
Before I start talking about any future plans for Penguin UI, I'd like to say that this library is here to stay. As long as Tailwind CSS and Alpine.js are around, Penguin UI will be too. With that, a sneak peek into some of the exciting additions coming in the near future:
New Components
There is a list of components that will be added to the library,
with the most requested items like sidebar, drawer, and toast
notification at the top.
In addition to individual components, there will be some
collections, one of which will are charts and graphs.
Tailwind 4 support
There are some amazing new features in Tailwind CSS 4, including a new way of defining themes. Penguin UI will support Tailwind 4 shortly after its stable version is released. My goal is to adjust the library to support both version 4 and 3.4.
Full page templates
One of the items on top of my to-do list that I'd love to complete is creating full-page templates using Penguin UI components. I believe this has several advantages: it can serve as a great showcase for the library, and building these pages can help me identify and fix potential integration issues with each component.
Blog and Tutorials
While building this library, I've learned so much about user interface design, accessibility, and how
things should work on a website. My goal is to share all of this through this platform.
Although I'm still improving my writing skills, I will do my best to gather all my learnings and share
them with other developers through blog posts, infographics, and possibly tutorial videos.
And more, maybe…
As I mentioned, this is an ongoing project with an unlimited number of possible features and ideas that
can be built and added to the platform.
While it's not possible to develop every single one, if a feature appeals to me and my users that that
seems unique and useful, I will add it to Penguin UI. This way, it will become more than a component
library, rather a valuable resource for web development.
Final Notes
Finally, if you've given Penguin UI a try, I'd love to hear your feedback and ideas. If you haven't tried it yet, it would mean a lot if you could. Just give it a shot and share your thoughts. Your input will help me improve the library so that everyone can get the most out of it.