Skeleton Next - Update 13 - Components, Docs, and Themes

[endigo9740]

Hey everyone, Chris here from Skeleton 👋 We've had some questions around the status of Skeleton v3, so I wanted to take a moment to share a quick progress update. This will cover a few topics, including: the current status of components, recent updates to the Skeleton documentation, a sneak peek at our upcoming Theme Generator overhaul, and discussing the (potential) Svelte 5 launch at next month's Svelte Summit.

As always, you can review our full list of remaining v3 milestone issues here.

Video Progress Update

• Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/VASkwXWkKQ8

Component Status

First I'm happy to announce we've now reached feature parity with Skeleton v2 in terms of components. This means the core components we plan to provide at launch are now available for Svelte 5 and React. Just note this comes with a few exceptions.

The first being the Listbox component, which unfortunately does not have a 1:1 equivalent in Zag. However, this has always been an odd component that folks never quite understood, so we're going to keep it simple and cut this one for now. We may revisit in the future.

The second is the Tree View component, which Zag will have an equivalent for, but is currently only available as an early access preview in Ark. Ark being the first party component library provided by the Zag team. As soon as this is available in Zag, and to us, we'll plan to implement right away. Just note this may come post-release of Skeleton v3.

Finally, we're still investigating our long term solution for popovers/modals/toasts and similar "overlay" components. You may recall members of the Skeleton team working on Floating UI Svelte - a Svelte-specific port of the Floating UI React library. However, after using Zag, we are now planning to review their solutions for these features:

• Zag Popovers
• Zag Modals
• Zag Toasts

By leaning into Zag, we can deliver these features much more quickly - and of course retain cross-framework support. This aligns better with our long term goals and ensures more consistency between frameworks. Keep an eye out though, and we'll let you know where we land on this soon.

Documentation Updates

Alongside components, we've made some notable improvements to our v3 documentation website, this includes but is not limited to the following:

• A revised homepage
• Improved information for the various "Getting Started" sections
• Improved instruction and examples for the "Design" sections
• Placeholders have been added for our upcoming "Integrations" section; expect more news on this soon
• Updated the "News" section to pull the latest updates from our Bluesky feed
• Greatly improved mobile navigation
• And of course applied small cosmetic updates throughout

This does not represent the final wave of changes, but should provide a better experience for our early adopters.

Theme Generator

Additionally, we want to provide a sneak peek of our upcoming revision to the v3 Theme Generator. We have now started the process of replacing our early prototype with a proper MVP for launch, including the following updates:

• The interface has been completely overhauled to take advantage of our newly available v3 components
• State management has been refactored to make it easier for us to maintain long term.
• This now features a slew of components and Tailwind elements styles for previewing theme styles
• UX has been improved and should feel much more intuitive
• Color settings now allow for both the minimal 3x shades -or- manual editing all 11x shades if you prefer
• Background settings now have their own dedicated section
• Typography settings should be much more intuitive and friendly
• Spacing settings now provide visual previews of each available option
• You can also toggle between the Preview and theme Code panels from the top of the page

Note that we do have a number of items remaining before this is ready to ship:

• We still need to re-implement the automatic color contrast balance (this is non-functional in today's preview)
• You may note a new "Import" option, which is a highly requested feature that will allow you to edit existing themes!
• And of course we'll be updating and expanding our preset themes, including porting the v2 themes soon!

Expect these updates to remain the priority over the next couple weeks.

Svelte Summit and Svelte 5

Finally, the team and I wanted to draw attention to the Svelte Summit on October 19. In addition to being a great online conference for the Svelte community, we have an inkling that we may see a release (or at least a notable update) regarding Svelte 5, which remains in a Release Candidate status. Keep in mind that Skeleton v2 does have rudimentary support for Svelte 5, but one of the primary goals of Skeleton v3 is fully support for all Svelte 5 APIs. We ask for your patience if and when Svelte 5 does release, as we have always anticipated it will proceed the launch of Skeleton v3. We still have plenty of work to do, and we don't want to release until we're confident everything is stable and ready for production use.

Feedback and Support

If you have any questions or feedback about today's changes or v3 in general, please feel free to reach out in the comment section below. You may also contact us on the Skeleton Discord via the #skeleton-next channel.