HTML tutorial — Lily Design System

What you'll build

A small contact form — labelled inputs, a submit button, real keyboard and screen-reader behaviour — first bare, then styled, in about 10 minutes.

Before you start

You need a browser and a text editor. That's all. (git helps for grabbing the component files, but you can copy them from GitHub in the browser too.)

Step 1 — Get the code

git clone https://github.com/LilyDesignSystem/lily-design-system-html-headless
cd lily-design-system-html-headless

Every component is a standalone file in components/ — button.html, text-input.html, and so on — with a header comment documenting its HTML tag, class hook, keyboard behaviour, and accessibility contract. The files are the library — copy what you need and go.

Step 2 — Your first component

Open components/button.html, or just write the markup — the class hook is the contract:

<button class="button" type="button">
  Save
</button>

Because it's a real <button>, keyboard focus, Enter and Space activation, and the implicit button role are already correct.

Step 3 — Compose a small form

<form class="form">
  <div class="field">
    <label class="label" for="name">Full name</label>
    <input class="text-input" type="text" id="name" name="name" required />
  </div>
  <div class="field">
    <label class="label" for="email">Email</label>
    <input class="email-input" type="email" id="email" name="email" required />
  </div>
  <button class="button" type="submit">Save</button>
</form>

Note the pattern: every control links its <label for>, uses the most specific input type, and carries exactly one kebab-case class hook.

Check your work: open the page in a browser. It looks plain — exactly as intended: styling is still ahead. Press Tab: focus moves through every control, the labels are announced, and submit works. The behaviour is done; the look is yours, and it's next.

Step 4 — Style it

Write CSS against the hooks:

.button {
  background: #2563eb;
  color: #fff;
  padding: 0.75rem 1.5rem;
  border: 0;
  border-radius: 0.5rem;
}
.text-input,
.email-input {
  padding: 0.5rem 0.75rem;
  border: 2px solid #6b7280;
  border-radius: 0.25rem;
}
.label { display: block; font-weight: 600; margin-bottom: 0.25rem; }

Or skip hand-writing CSS entirely — link one of the 45 ready-made themes and the same markup lights up:

<link rel="stylesheet" href="/themes/united-kingdom-national-health-service-england-for-patients.css" />

Step 5 — Explore further

The repo's tests run real browsers: pnpm install && pnpm test (WebDriverIO).
Storybook for every component: pnpm run storybook.
The HTML+CSS+JS example app shows all 490 components styled, searchable, and demoed.

Next steps

Theming — runtime theme switching with theme-select.
Preference helpers — language and text size.
Component catalog — the full reference.

Questions along the way? The help page is full of answers — and if a step could be clearer, tell us and we'll gladly improve the tutorial.