Skip to main content

A State of React Libs — July 2026

· 3 min read
Alex Smith
Alex Smith
Software Engineer
A State of React Libs — 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 six 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 something we plan to refresh regularly. Call it A State of React Libs (with apologies to Armin).

Snapshot — July 2026

The table below reflects each library as of July 27, 2026. Component catalogs move fast; for the newest edition, see the latest A State of React Libs.

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

Configurable and Themeable

· 10 min read
Alex Smith
Alex Smith
Software Engineer

We're excited to announce version 2.0.0 of @allxsmith/bestax-bulma, bringing powerful new configuration and theming capabilities that fully embrace Bulma v1's modern approach to CSS customization.

This release introduces two major features that transform how you can customize and integrate Bulma components: ConfigProvider for global component configuration (including CSS class prefixing), and Theme for comprehensive CSS variable-based theming.

Theming

With ConfigProvider, you can now globally configure all bestax-bulma components using the useConfig hook, enabling seamless integration with other CSS frameworks through class prefixing. The new Theme component allows you to customize Bulma's appearance using CSS variables at both global and scoped nested levels, giving you unprecedented control over your design system.

2.x.x compatible with 1.x.x

We need to address an important note about versioning: we accidentally bumped this release to 2.0.0 instead of the intended 1.2.0. This became a major release due to a semantic-release configuration issue, when it should have been a minor release.

However, all changes are completely backward compatible - version 2.x.x is fully compatible with 1.x.x. We decided it's easier to move forward with the new version number rather than create confusion with republishing.

First full release

· One min read
Alex Smith
Alex Smith
Software Engineer

We completed the first full release, with a react component per each Bulma component.

The first release is published under @allxsmith/bestax-bulma.

info

The package name changed from bestax-lib to bestax-bulma to help users search and find the project.

We reset the package version number from 1.x and 2.x to 1.0.0 since this is the first true release under the new package name.