tabula — React Admin dashboard Template

SHA-256: 2f424f5e1351be7186eae85853d267e91259c5993018027d9c3583a275bf043a

2026-10-02T07:06:41.952Z

# Tabula

An open design system for data-dense products: tables, trees, charts and reports that people read all day. It is dense, sharp and quiet. Everything is a token or a class, so it drops into any front end, with thin React wrappers when you want them.

Version 0.1, September 2026. Designed and built by [Alex Oprea](https://opreadoru.com). Free and open source under the MIT licence.

See it live: [the documentation](https://opreadoru.github.io/tabula/) and [the template pages](https://opreadoru.github.io/tabula/pages/dashboard.html).



https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/67ce81c7-9cdc-45e6-8b68-1590ae0ab2a7



## What is inside

- **150 tokens** in `src/tokens.css`: 57 palette values behind 93 role tokens, six of them for chart series. Components use roles only, so the brand changes one file.
- **Light and dark themes.** The `tb-dark` class redefines 40 roles. Nothing else changes.
- **16 components** (8 controls, 8 surfaces) and **19 patterns**, including the app shell, edit mode, a timeline, a chart library and tree views.
- **Behaviours** in plain JS: dropdowns, dialogs, tabs, tooltips, sortable tables, toasts, card collapse, card focus, expandable charts, a layout editor and widget zones, the app shell, eight chart builders and the tree views.
- **Formatters** in `src/format.js` for every number, amount, percentage, date and file size.
- **Template pages** in `pages/`: a dashboard, analytics, a data table, a record in detail, a report and a layout editor, on one seeded set of generic business data.
- **A documentation site** with a live example, the exact markup, rules and do and don't for every component, plus the foundations: colour, type, spacing, shape, formatting, states and icons.

## Run the docs on your machine

The docs and templates are [live on GitHub Pages](https://opreadoru.github.io/tabula/), so this is only for working on Tabula itself. It needs Node.js, and `npm install` only fetches Vite, the local server. Using Tabula in a project needs none of this (see "Use it" below).

```
npm install
npx vite --port 5190
```

The documentation opens at `http://localhost:5190/`, and the templates at `http://localhost:5190/pages/dashboard.html`.

## Use it

Copy the `src` folder into your project. Download the ZIP from the green Code button or clone the repo. There is no package to install, and nothing to build.

In plain HTML, load the styles and the small behaviour layer, then use the classes:

```html
<link rel="stylesheet" href="src/tabula.css">
<script type="module">
  import { tb } from './src/tabula.js'
  tb.init(document)
</script>

<button class="tb-button tb-button--primary" type="button">Save</button>
<span class="tb-tag tb-tag--danger">Overdue</span>
```

`tb.init(root)` wires the behaviours through `data-tb-*` attributes, so markup from any framework works. Call it again after rendering new markup. `tb.toast({ message, intent })` shows a toast.

Card collapse, card focus and expandable charts are opt-in: import `src/collapse.js`, `src/focus.js` or `src/expand.js` once. Edit mode and widget zones are mounted by the page with `mountEditMode` from `src/edit.js` and `mountZone` from `src/zone.js`, with the product's widget catalogue passed in.

The app bar is mounted with `mountShell` from `src/shell.js`, with the product's brand, tabs, submenus and account passed in; it also loads collapse, focus and expand. Charts come from `src/charts.js` and the four tree views from `src/tree.js`. The templates in `pages/` show each of them on a full page.

In React, the wrappers in `react/` map props to the same classes. They are source files to copy next to your own components. See `react/README.md`.

For the dark theme, put `tb-dark` on `<html>`.

## Conventions

- Classes start with `tb-`. Modifiers use `--`, states use `is-`, behaviours use `data-tb-*`.
- Tokens only. No raw colours in components or pages.
- Numbers on screen go through the formatters in `src/format.js`.
- A pattern used on two pages moves into the system.
- The documentation changes with every component change.

## Folders

```
src/     the system: tokens, base styles, components, behaviours, formatters
docs/    the documentation site
pages/   template pages built on the system, with their shared data
react/   thin React wrappers, source only
```

## Credits

Icons from [Lucide](https://lucide.dev), ISC licence, inlined as SVG. Instrument Sans, SIL Open Font License.

## Licence

MIT. See `LICENSE`.