Skeleton Progress Update - July 2025

[endigo9740]

Hey everyone, Chris here from Skeleton. The goal of this post is to highlight the biggest updates that have occurred over the last month. There's a few notable things in the works, so let's discuss those now.

Latest Release

A handful of updates to the Core/Svelte/React package have just dropped. See the release section for details. Note these are primarily maintenance updates, and include a few additional documentation improvements not reflected in this list. Thanks to everyone that contributed and helped with this!

Setting Expectations Going Forward

As mentioned in our May update, I serve as the core maintainer for the project, which means any changes to my availability can and will have impact on the velocity of updates to Skeleton. As usual, I want to continue to be transparent about the status of the project. I have a few things to share on that front.

As some of you know, I've currently have a lot going on in my personal life outside the scope of Skeleton. After returning from the Svelte Summit trip to Spain, my schedule has been completely up in the air leaving very little time to contribute to Skeleton itself. I completely missed our June update for example.

This is in large part due to the fact my partner and I been in the process of prepping for major move cross-country from my current home in Dallas, Texas up to our new home in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Moving is difficult and moving across the country is even harder, so this has taken a lot of time and energy, but I'm happy to report we've found a home and will be moving at the end of this month!

I also mention in my previous post that I have been seeking new employment to support myself financially. I'm happy to report I've since accepted a new position and am working part time with wonderful team at a new startup. Going forward I will be devoting a good portion of my time towards this new new company, which will impact my my contributions to Skeleton.

However, it's worth noting that we're actively using Skeleton in this project, so I very much expect to continue contributing to Skeleton both as part of my new job, as well as as on my own time as frequently as possible. That said, I want to set clear expectations that updates may more be irregular going forward. At least until I can settle into my new schedule sometime in early August.

The good news is volunteers in the community are still helping implement big features such as components, I will be working with Hugo on the new Component API changes, and of course I will continue providing support and triage every moment I can.

This does mean the team and I cannot commit to estimates for when the next major release to the library will emerge. However we're just coming out of the major v3.x release that updated and future proofed many portions of the project. So an extended period of maintenance and a focus on stability is likely welcome by all.

If you have any questions or comments regarding these changes, please feel free to reach out either here or on Discord. My DMs are always open! And thanks again for your patience during this transitory time!

Floating UI Svelte

With the context above, I want to finally officially confirm we are putting Floating UI Svelte on hold for now. While I'm super excited about the project, plain and simple there's just not enough hours in the day for me to properly contribute right now. We will likely move the project to a "maintenance mode" status soon and will of course echo this news on that side asap.

I also want to use this an opportunity to encourage anyone interested in taking over the project to please reach out. I'm happy to work with anyone in the open source community to pass our work forward, so if you're interested in taking over the project, then please let me know!

Otherwise I encourage everyone to adhere to the Skeleton philosophy of native-first and keep an eye on these two APIs that will hopefully be available to all browser vendors in the near future:

• Popover API
• CSS Anchoring API

Additionally, I want to encourage folks needing more control over their modal and popover interfaces to consider using Floating UI directly. They provide a wonderful set of documentation that clearly explains all concepts and shows many examples:

https://floating-ui.com/

If things change in the future and we have more time to devote to this, we'll update and let everyone know!

[oatmealproblem]

With floating ui svelte on hold, will support for the zag-based svelte popover components be extended?

[oatmealproblem]

Fair, that warning has been there since that start. 2 concerns though:

• Will these components continue to be maintained in v4 (if there's still no suitable replacement, native or otherwise)? That's not quite clear to me
• It's not clear how long the current major version will be supported. When released, I expected a lifecycle similar to skeleton v2 or longer. But since then, it seems the emphasis has shifted to working on the v4 component API. (I guess this isn't really a concern if the answer to the above is "yes")
  • I think this is the core of my concern. It feels like the support window for v3 (and these components?) has shortened, so it would feel appropriate to more strongly discourage their use and point people towards admittedly imperfect alternatives
  • For what it's worth, I like the direction the library is headed and am looking forward to v4 <3

I cannot recommend Ark any more than other headless component offerings

I just meant it could be nice to have ark integration guide, equivalent to / alongside the existing bits/melt/radix guides. And those guides collectively could be recommended over these semi-deprecated components (perhaps in that warning, along with the floating-ui attachment guide when that's available). Would an ark guide be a welcomed contribution?

[endigo9740]

In short, the components will be maintained - not only an alternative is found - but the next major release is dropped AFTER that. So imagine:

• Tomorrow we find a perfect alternative
• We implement the guide for this
• The components will be maintained until v4 - as that's the next major release

If an alternative is not provided until after v4, then they'll remain to v5, etc. Basically we will never strand folks without a direct alternative to move to. And personally I have a feeling that alternative will be the native browser APIs, but not until they're widely available.

Would an ark guide be a welcomed contribution?

100%. It would be almost identical in format to the Bits or Melt guides in most regards. The only difference is it would need to be catered to multiple frameworks (which our code blocks now support). I'd welcome either a contribution for this (if you're volunteering) or a feature request if you're not in a hurry.

[oatmealproblem]

Thanks, that helps to clarify! As an alternative to the final sentence of the warning, I'd perhaps suggest "After an alternative is available, these components will be marked as deprecated, and support will end with the next major version of Skeleton." That's clearer to me (but maybe that's just me)

And personally I have a feeling that alternative will be the native browser APIs, but not until they're widely available.

Unfortunately, one of the main projects I use Skeleton for is a Tauri app, and the Linux webview (WebkitGTK) can lag behind the browsers :( I definitely don't expect Skeleton to include that in its definition of "widely available". Worst case, I migrate to one of the headless options

I'd welcome either a contribution for this (if you're volunteering) or a feature request if you're not in a hurry.

Yep, I'm volunteering :)

[endigo9740]

Nice, well if you do submit a PR feel free to tweak the message too. Whatever helps folks I'm down for.

And yeah that's a bummer about the Linux webview. Remember even when we stop maintaining the components, there's nothing preventing you from copying the source and running them local to your own projects. Likewise if you really want to stick with Zag, you can use it directly and roll your own components.

[endigo9740]

@oatmealproblem If you get a moment I'm preparing to launch the new Svelte attachments integration guide for Floating UI:

Preview the guide:
https://skeleton-2qamrp537-skeleton-labs.vercel.app/docs/guides/cookbook/floating-ui-attachments

Leave any feedback in the PR here please:
#3632

No issue if you can't get to it right away. But given our recent conversation I thought you might be interested to check it out. Again as stated above, this is NOT our long term replacement for the components - merely an alternative for power users that wish for more direct control.

My hope is between this and the components we can cover users at all skill levels until the long term alternative arrives (native APIs, etc).