In this episode, we focus on taking our working (but very plain) modal and turning it into a polished, flexible component. Right now, the modal pops up, but it doesn’t actually look like a proper modal—so that's exactly what we're addressing!
We start by creating a fresh base modal component (separate from Laravel Breeze's default modal to avoid any confusion). We use Headless UI to handle all the dialog and animation logic, which makes things a lot smoother and more customizable. Even if you already have a modal, it’s worth watching since we cover techniques for reusing and tweaking these styles for different instances.
Once we’ve set up the component, we get into styling: making the modal appear centered, adding a shadow and rounded corners, and ensuring it overlays the rest of the page. We also add a nice dark background overlay with a subtle fade transition to really make the modal stand out.
We wire up the transition and rendering logic—so now, the modal appears and disappears with smooth scales and fades, both for the content and the background. Finally, we set things up so it’s easy to customize the modal’s size and style in the future (though closing and further tweaking the modal will come in the next episodes).
By the end of this video, you’ll have a slick, reusable modal container that’s already looking great and is ready for further customization!