- A CSS architecture approach where styles are composed of small, single-purpose utility classes that each apply one specific style property, rather than semantic class names tied to components. Each class does one thing atomically (e.g.,
.m-10 for margin, .text-center for text alignment), allowing developers to build interfaces by combining multiple utility classes directly in HTML. Popular implementations include Tailwind CSS, Tachyons, and Atomizer (originally created by Yahoo), which can generate atomic CSS classes on-demand based on class names used in markup, reducing file size by only including classes actually used in the codebase.
- Related terms: Utility CSS, CSS Module, Utility class, CSS Object Model
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