UI Suite Monthly #28 - Adoption Surge and Major Milestones Ahead

Overall Summary

Our June 2025 monthly meeting marked what Pierre described as "the best month ever since we started five or six years ago," with UI Suite experiencing unprecedented growth across all modules. We welcomed several new community members, including representatives from French company Cap Gemini, and celebrated record-breaking adoption rates that have propelled UI Suite into the top 500 Drupal modules.

The meeting highlighted our continued progress toward making Drupal the first design system native CMS, with significant developments in UI Patterns 2, Display Builder, and various theme implementations. We're now reaching approximately 1.8% of all Drupal websites, with UI Patterns 2 alone achieving over 700 installations and a remarkable 35% growth month-over-month.

Key Topics Discussed

Explosive Growth Metrics

Our adoption statistics this month were truly exceptional:

• UI Patterns 2: +35% usage, reaching both 600 and 700 installation marks
• UI Patterns 1: Still growing strong with +10% adoption
• UI Styles: +32% growth, surpassing 900 and 1,000 installation marks
• UI Skins: +29% increase
• UI Icons: Impressive +75% growth, hitting 600 installations

This surge has positioned us at #496 in the top 500 Drupal modules for the second consecutive week, demonstrating sustained momentum in the community.

UI Patterns 2 Enhancements

Mikael announced the release of version 2.0.5, featuring significant improvements to user experience. The most notable enhancement is the new visual labeling system for data sources, which addresses previous confusion about navigating Drupal's data model. We've introduced small arrow indicators that help users understand when they're switching between field contexts and entity references, making it much easier for newcomers to utilize this powerful killer feature.

Performance optimizations and normalization improvements round out this release, with the new labeling system representing a major step forward in usability for content creators working with complex data relationships.

Display Builder Reaches Alpha

Jean provided an exciting demo of Display Builder alpha 1, showcasing our vision for the future of page layout editing in Drupal. The module now offers real-time preview capabilities while building, with the ambitious goal of eventually eliminating the need for separate preview modes. Key features include:

• Live component placement and configuration
• Integration with UI Suite Bootstrap theme components
• Support for UI Styles utilities from our ecosystem
• Keyboard navigation and accessibility considerations
• Flexible toolbar configuration for different user roles

Display Builder represents a paradigm shift, enabling page layout editing and advanced display mode configuration that wasn't previously possible in Drupal.

Icons System Evolution

Jean demonstrated the improved UI Icon field interface, now featuring better compatibility with the Gin admin theme and enhanced visual design. We're moving toward a grid-based icon selection system while maintaining autocomplete functionality, making it more practical for managing large icon libraries. The work aligns with our broader goal of getting icon functionality into Drupal core.

Theme Ecosystem Thriving

Our contributed themes continue to drive adoption, now representing 52% of UI Patterns 2 usage. Florent's Bootstrap theme saw the release of branch 5.2, offering a cleaner implementation with layout option dependencies removed. The DSFR theme reached stable version 1.1.0 and is rapidly targeting DSFR 1.14, with exciting plans to implement DSFR Chart functionality for data visualization.

Key Action Points

Immediate Development Priorities

We're focusing our efforts on several critical areas over the coming months. Config migration work is progressing well with Edouard, Lauren, and Nicolas leading the effort, though it started later than planned due to specification delays. The CKEditor 5 integration is moving forward on schedule, with Michael emphasizing the powerful combination of UI Patterns UI and CKEditor 5 for simplified component forms.

Form API compatibility merged successfully in Drupal 11.2, and we're now working on defining form elements from SDC. This foundational work will enable the next phase of our core integration strategy.

Core Integration Strategy

Our multi-pronged approach to getting UI Suite functionality into Drupal core is gaining momentum. We're proposing both Style API and CSS Variable API for Drupal 11.3, which would provide 90% similarity to our current US Sweet implementation but with improved render properties. These APIs have garnered support from other projects, including Experience Builder, indicating broader community need.

The core integration work will also provide an opportunity to unify UI Styles and UI Skins, addressing architectural issues we've identified over several years of development. This consolidation will result in cleaner, more maintainable code and better developer experience.

Community Growth and Education

With our rapid growth comes the responsibility to better support new users. We're collecting success stories like Ben's experience of building a project with just 120 lines of CSS, and we need to formalize this into customer testimonials and case studies. Mona's Adobe Spectrum implementation demonstrates the learning opportunities available to newcomers, and we're committed to providing workshops and pairing sessions for developers interested in creating their own design system implementations.

Upcoming Deadlines / Releases

Upcoming Events

Our trajectory toward making Drupal the first design system native CMS continues to accelerate, with each month bringing us closer to seamless integration between design tools and Drupal's content management capabilities. The community's enthusiasm and adoption rates validate our approach, and we're excited to see where this momentum takes us through the remainder of 2025.