What is govuk-frontend?
The govuk-frontend npm package provides a set of reusable, accessible components and styles for building user interfaces that align with the UK Government Digital Service (GDS) design principles. It is designed to help developers create consistent, user-friendly, and accessible web applications and services.
What are govuk-frontend's main functionalities?
Typography
GOV.UK Frontend provides a set of typography styles that ensure text is readable and accessible. The 'govuk-body' class is used to style paragraphs according to GDS standards.
<p class="govuk-body">This is a paragraph with GOV.UK Frontend styling.</p>
Buttons
GOV.UK Frontend includes styles for buttons that make them visually consistent and accessible. The 'govuk-button' class is used to style buttons.
<button class="govuk-button">Submit</button>
Forms
GOV.UK Frontend provides styles and components for creating accessible forms. The 'govuk-form-group', 'govuk-label', and 'govuk-input' classes are used to style form elements.
<form><div class="govuk-form-group"><label class="govuk-label" for="input-id">Label text</label><input class="govuk-input" id="input-id" name="input-name" type="text"></div></form>
Navigation
GOV.UK Frontend includes styles for navigation elements to ensure they are accessible and consistent. The 'govuk-nav', 'govuk-nav__list', 'govuk-nav__item', and 'govuk-nav__link' classes are used to style navigation menus.
<nav class="govuk-nav"><ul class="govuk-nav__list"><li class="govuk-nav__item"><a class="govuk-nav__link" href="#">Home</a></li><li class="govuk-nav__item"><a class="govuk-nav__link" href="#">About</a></li></ul></nav>
Notifications
GOV.UK Frontend provides components for displaying notifications and alerts. The 'govuk-notification-banner', 'govuk-notification-banner__header', 'govuk-notification-banner__title', and 'govuk-notification-banner__content' classes are used to style notification banners.
<div class="govuk-notification-banner"><div class="govuk-notification-banner__header"><h2 class="govuk-notification-banner__title">Important</h2></div><div class="govuk-notification-banner__content"><p class="govuk-notification-banner__heading">This is a notification message.</p></div></div>
Other packages similar to govuk-frontend
bootstrap
Bootstrap is a popular front-end framework for developing responsive and mobile-first websites. It provides a wide range of components and utilities similar to GOV.UK Frontend but is more general-purpose and not specifically tailored to government services.
foundation-sites
Foundation is another front-end framework that offers a variety of responsive components and styles. Like Bootstrap, it is a general-purpose framework and does not specifically adhere to government design principles.
uswds
The U.S. Web Design System (USWDS) provides a set of design guidelines and components for building accessible and consistent government websites in the United States. It is similar to GOV.UK Frontend but tailored to U.S. government standards.
GOV.UK Frontend
GOV.UK Frontend contains the code you need to start building a user interface
for government platforms and services.
See live examples of GOV.UK Frontend components, and guidance on when to use
them in your service, in the GOV.UK Design System.
Contact the team
GOV.UK Frontend is maintained by a team at Government Digital Service. If you want to know more about GOV.UK Frontend, please email the Design System
team or get in touch with them on Slack.
Quick start
There are 2 ways to start using GOV.UK Frontend in your app.
Once installed, you will be able to use the code from the examples in the
GOV.UK Design System in your service.
1. Install with npm (recommended)
We recommend installing GOV.UK Frontend using node package manager
(npm).
2. Install by using compiled files
You can also download the compiled and minified assets (CSS, JavaScript) from
GitHub.
Importing styles
You need to import the GOV.UK Frontend styles into the main Sass file in your
project. You should place the below code before your own Sass rules (or Sass
imports) if you want to override GOV.UK Frontend with your own styles.
To import add the below to your Sass file:
@import "node_modules/govuk-frontend/govuk/all";
More details on importing styles
Importing JavaScript
Some of the JavaScript included in GOV.UK Frontend improves the usability and
accessibility of the components. You should make sure that you are importing and
initialising Javascript in your application to ensure that all users can use it successfully.
You can include Javascript for all components either by copying the all.js
from node_modules/govuk-frontend/govuk/
into your application or referencing the file directly:
<script src="<path-to-govuk-frontend-all-file>/all.js"></script>
Next you need to initialise the script by adding:
<script>window.GOVUKFrontend.initAll()</script>
More details on importing Javascript and advanced options
Importing assets
In order to import GOV.UK Frontend images and fonts to your project, you should configure your application to reference or copy the relevant GOV.UK Frontend assets.
More details on importing assets
Getting updates
To be notified when there’s a new release, you can either:
Find out how to update with npm.
Licence
Unless stated otherwise, the codebase is released under the MIT License. This
covers both the codebase and any sample code in the documentation. The
documentation is © Crown copyright and available under the terms of the
Open Government 3.0 licence.
Contribution guidelines
If you want to help us build GOV.UK Frontend, view our contribution guidelines.
4.6.0 (Feature release)
New features
Updated the appearance of disabled form controls
We’ve updated the disabled state of Text Input, Textarea, Select and File Upload components so it is consistent across browsers and devices. They’re also now consistent with the existing disabled styles for Buttons, Checkboxes, and Radios.
Disabled form controls appear at 50% opacity and with an alternative cursor appearance when hovered over.
This was added in pull request #3187: Add disabled styles for form controls.
Added a top-level disabled
parameter to form controls
We’ve updated the Nunjucks macros for Text Input, Textarea, Select and File Upload components to include a top-level disabled
parameter. This will make it easier to enable the disabled state for these controls.
{{ govukInput({
id: "disabled-input",
name: "disabled-input",
value: "Unchangeable value",
disabled: true
}) }}
Disabled form controls have poor contrast and can confuse some users, so avoid them if possible.
Only use disabled form controls if research shows it makes the user interface easier to understand.
This was added in pull request #3187: Add disabled styles for form controls.
Configure whether the Accordion remembers and restores sessions
By default, when a user leaves a page, the Accordion will remember the layout of expanded and collapsed sections selected by the user. If the user returns to the page, this layout will be restored and override any sections manually set as expanded in code.
You can now disable this functionality by using the rememberExpanded
option in the govukAccordion
Nunjucks macro.
If you're not using the Nunjucks macro, you can disable it using the data-remember-expanded
HTML attribute.
This was added in pull request #3342: Add option to disable sessionState in Accordion.
Added id
parameter to Buttons
We’ve updated the Button Nunjucks macro to include an optional id
parameter.
{{ govukButton({
text: "Save and continue",
id: "continue-button"
}) }}
This was added in pull request #3344: Adding optional ‘id’ attribute to button component.
Thanks to Tom Billington for this contribution.
Added a modifier for text input styles that accept sequences of digits
We've added a new .govuk-input--extra-letter-spacing
class for Text Input. This increases readability of text inputs that receive sequences of digits (like security codes, references or phone numbers).
You can add it through the classes
option when using Nunjucks, or directly in the class
attribute of the <input>
when using HTML.
This was added in pull request #2230: Add extra letter spacing modifier for inputs
Deprecated features
Stop using JavaScript API properties other than the init
method
We have deprecated all of the JavaScript properties in the API, except for the init
method for each component. We'll make all of the deprecated JavaScript properties private in our next main release.
Please let us know if you're using parts of the API other than the init
method by filling in this form. We'll use this information when prioritising future additions to the public API.
This was added in pull request #3499: Deprecate all JavaScript instance properties the except init
method.
Stop using the .govuk-button--disabled
class on buttons
We have deprecated the .govuk-button--disabled
class and will remove it in the next major release.
If a Button uses a <button>
or <input>
element, use the disabled HTML attribute instead.
You will not need to make any changes if you're using the govukButton
Nunjucks macro.
Disabling links that are styled to look like buttons will not be supported by future releases.
This was added in pull request #3326: Deprecate govuk-button--disabled
class.
Stop using the deprecated Internet Explorer 8 mixins and settings
The next main release of GOV.UK Frontend will remove support for Internet Explorer 8 (IE8). In preparation for this, we've deprecated the settings and mixins used when generating IE8 specific stylesheets.
You'll start seeing deprecation warnings if you're:
If you no longer need to support IE8, we recommend you stop generating an IE8 specific stylesheet and remove references to the IE8 mixins from your code.
You can also silence these deprecation warnings by adding ie8
to the $govuk-suppressed-warnings
setting, but once we’ve released v5.0 you will need to address them as part of the upgrade process.
Fixes
We’ve made fixes to GOV.UK Frontend in the following pull requests: