End of Life of Floating UI Svelte

[endigo9740]

Hey everyone, Chris here from the Skeleton Labs team. It likely will not come as a surprised due to the inactivity on this project, but starting today the project will officially be deemed end of life. This means we will no longer be supporting the project, the repo will be moved into a archived state, and the package deprecated.

Reasons

• The core Skeleton project has taken precedence
• We went through a couple massive Skeleton updates that have dominated our time
• I originally worked full time on FOSS, but over the last year have transitioned to part-time
• The native APIs we intend to replace this are nearly available from all major browser vendors

TL;DR: we've not had time and better alternatives are on their way.

Alternatives

That said, we will list a few alternatives below. Please choose the option that best works for your project.

Skeleton Overlay Components

If you're coming to this project from Skeleton, then please note we've launched our major v4.0 release. This includes a number of new components, and includes our overlay components moving to the core component library for all frameworks. These should provide simple drop-in replacements for many common use cases:

• Combobox
• Dialog
• Popover
• Tooltip

Note that the Skeleton component library can be used without the core library, and that these components are provided fully headless out of the box. This allows for a high level of customization customization.

Additionally, if you're looking for tooling to build your own overlay interfaces, we also provide a Portal component that may aid in this process. This allows you to move elements out of the flow of the page contents. The components above make use of this out of the box:

• Portal

Svelte Attachment Guide

If you're seeking more of a "build it yourself" option, but don't want to go all in on Floating UI directly. Then please consider reviewing our Floating UI Attachment guide. This details how to pair the Floating UI core library with the new Svelte Attachment feature. We provide a solid foundation that should allow you to generate overlays of nearly any type with a bit of effort. Had Floating UI Svelte continued, we would have moved to use this as the default solution.

Use Floating UI Directly

It should go without saying, but you can always reach for the core library itself. The APIs may seem complex, but honestly they're much easier to work with in practice than you might expect. The documentation is extremely high quality:

• Floating UI

Native Elements and APIs

Finally, at Skeleton Labs we strongly embrace the concept of "native first". As such, we recommend you keep an eye on the following native elements and APIs, as these ideally should be the long term replacement for Floating UI itself. Native interface benefit from requiring no dependencies, working consistently cross-browser, and of course almost always provide the best performance and accessibility story. There's typically very few downsides to going with the native option when possible.

• Dialog element
• Popover API
• CSS Anchoring API

Of these, the latter is currently the only remaining API not widely available, as it's awaiting Firefox support at the time of posting this. If you're viewing this in the future, make sure to double check as this may no longer be the case!

Finally, if you're a Skeleton user that needs a little head start, we've provided a dedicated guide for styling the native Dialog element. Find it here:

• Skeleton Dialog guide