Downgrade Tailwind v4 to v3 in the latest release of _TW

[sameasterling]

Can anyone provide the process for downgrading TW v4 to v3 in the latest _TW release?
Thanks!

[gregsullivan]

Hi again, Sam!

Because Tailwind 4 works so differently from Tailwind 3, it's not necessarily a straightforward process.

What is the status of the project you're working on? (Meaning, how far along is it?)

I have a local version of the generator that I could revert back to the pre–Tailwind-4 edition, and I could generate you a theme from that time. This is the last commit on Tailwind 3 that I would recommend using:

https://github.com/gregsullivan/_tw/tree/8e19480fb5e80e714d8cf7bb21767710a0e68122

I've also had some success having an LLM run the update from Tailwind 3 to Tailwind 4 by providing the initial commit of the project and then the version of _tw I want to use for the update. You'd need to provide a bit of guidance along the way, but it got there eventually.

[sameasterling]

Hey again, Greg!

The project is too far along to turn back now. I waited too long to pick up an iPad with iOS 15.

It looks like breakpoints are the only issue I'm having with iOS15. Small screens should be ok since those styles come first so it may only be tablets that are affected. Right now I have replaced TW's classes with standard CSS classes in key places to get by.

Research seems to show that TW3 didn't have this issue. Are you having this issue with TW4? Maybe something else is going on.

Thanks!

[gregsullivan]

Tailwind 3 definitely doesn't have that issue!

The support matrix is a bit of a gotcha with Tailwind 4. I haven't done any WordPress sites with Tailwind 3 since I updated _tw to use Tailwind 4, but I've done some static sites for conservative clients (in terms of browser support) where I've elected to use Tailwind 3, just to be safe.

If you think you're too far along to turn back, I think it's likely the case that we should focus on trying to fix your issues on the custom variant side, in that discussion.

For anyone else reading this in the future, I do think it's potentially viable to use an LLM to do this kind of work, and I've definitely used one to go in the other direction. It requires a bit of patience, though, and a good understanding of the gotchas involved in upgrading / downgrading.