Let me first backtrack a bit here and state I’ve created open source software and I really should have first mentioned in my last comment that I do appreciate all the work and achievements of Storybook. The CDD approach is really nice for the dev UX in particular and actually creating verified components you can connect to a CI/CD system.

My complaint if you will was more in terms of the publishing options specifically since I generally end up publishing this sort of work so I suppose I prioritize that aspect highly.

Yes, I noticed the declarative theming props which I agree is pretty thin so far (as stated “by design”). It’s nice to know you plan to expand it. I suppose there’s more one can do per the docs, but I don’t really want to go against the grain as they pretty overtly warn something to the affect of “hey, don’t assume we won’t change the markup structure and use at your own risk”. Obviously means doing so is not upgrade safe which I generally avoid. So, maybe I’ll try the very thin theme api approach which I suppose will at least give me the font and colors, and see how it goes.

You point out it’s the most popular used doc tool which I suppose you get to do since it’s true I think :-) Congrats for that and yes, again, there’s a lot that IS great about Storybook especially from the CDD perspective. Your initial tutorial guide itself proves that it’s a fully comprehensive and revolutionary approach to developing components with stories that reflect the various states your components can be in, mock data and snapshots built in, etc., so again kudos for that.

However, I’ve chosen to build 2 design systems with react-styleguidist (not without it’s own quirks) because I found it more customizable specifically for publishing a nice design system. I’d agree there were definitely pros/cons to doing so and there’s of course no perfect world with any tool. Storybook is clearly superior for the whole CDD thing. Styleguidist allowed me more flexibility with complete re-skinning. They’re really so different and so hats off to both for great contributions.

Digression: There’s an entirely different objection I find myself having with even being tied to React (switching jobs and there I go having to build an entirely new set of components because maybe they use Svelte or Vue!) Stencil is pretty awesome in this regard as are web-components, but, when you actually go see all the hoops React makes you jump through to accommodate Stencil with having to use refs to connect any event handlers you quickly become sad. But I digress drastically and that’s a whole ‘nuther problem.

I don’t think your comparison to Medium is quite fair to my aesthetic at least (sorry, I think they’ve differentiated themselves as a clear leader in layout and typography and authoring experience to final published post. You can compare a Medium page to the best blogs and I think it stands up. Storybook components pages don’t stand up to curated ones like Material, Lightning, Carbon, etc. in my humble opinion. Further, I happen to have a blog on Medium now that they’ve amplified the paywall AND my own blog and so now I’m in a bit of a messy in between world lol). But, my point is, Carbon, Lightning, Material…they all have their own look and feel without compromise and I’d like to be able to compete at that level if possible.

I am now using Svelte for a new project and I went through the really well done tutorial for using Storybook w/Svelte; it makes it clear I could easily drop in Storybook to create my new component library and this makes me seriously consider using it if I can get around what I see as a “skinning issue”. Perhaps I’ll try to just theme it as best as I can with the thin props available and see how it goes.

With that said, I was very impressed with how these guys sort of explicitly made one of their navigational links literally called Storybook so as to feel no shame in having it be a bit different then the underlying design system: https://cultureamp.design/ — I could probably be satisfied with that approach too and find that the closest to an uncompromising design system that still has the identifiable Storybook look to it. I wish there was a more drastic reskin example I could find.

Thanks again for Storybook and for the reply. I look forward to tracking how the theming stuff shapes up over time and seeing if I can customize it for my Svelte based component library should I use it.