Yes it is a placeholder.
The difference is you're writing a single "x" instead of crafting a full skeleton layout with specific widths and heights.
But yeah, the DOM needs something to measure.
If user is undefined, then {user.name} renders nothing and the element has zero size. In that case you do need a fallback like {user?.name ?? "x"} so the element has dimensions to measure.
But it's not "placeholder data" in the traditional sense, it's just ensuring the DOM element exists and has a size. The text is invisible during loading anyway.
For static layouts (headings, labels, images with width/height), it works with no fallbacks at all. The structure itself is the skeleton.
The real content is the placeholder, that's the whole point.
You don't need to write separate placeholder values, phantom-ui measures the actual DOM and generates shimmer blocks from it.
The text/images are hidden during loading, only the skeleton overlay is visible.
For UI toolkits that already ship skeleton components, yeah you'd probably stick with those. phantom-ui is more useful when you don't have that, or when you're using multiple frameworks and want one solution everywhere.
If user is undefined, then {user.name} renders nothing and the element has zero size. In that case you do need a fallback like {user?.name ?? "x"} so the element has dimensions to measure. But it's not "placeholder data" in the traditional sense, it's just ensuring the DOM element exists and has a size. The text is invisible during loading anyway. For static layouts (headings, labels, images with width/height), it works with no fallbacks at all. The structure itself is the skeleton.