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I created an easy way to browse & find Google books (today is my birthday 🎈)

Liyas Thomas on July 12, 2019

Books 📚 Find books from Google Play Books Feel free to contribute on GitHub I was casually surfing online and saw ...

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Ahmed Musallam • Jul 12 '19

That's Awesome!

I got lost here as well: liyasthomas.github.io
Really cool work!

Could not help but notice a lot of UI similarities in your projects, do you use a certain UI library? or just re-use your own styles?

Liyas Thomas • Jul 12 '19

I currently don't use any 3rd party libraries. Just pure JavaScript, HTML & CSS. Of course I reuse most of my components, especially light/dark mode toggle, font stylings etc.

Ahmed Musallam • Jul 12 '19

I was looking at github.com/liyasthomas/books/blob/...

A lot of awesome things in there. and only 8KB unzipped or minified!

While inspecting the source I saw that

.category {
      height: 25vh;
}

Curious why you picked vh vs other units in this case?

I know users wont do this, but when shrinking the view-port height the title inside .category pops out :)

Liyas Thomas • Jul 12 '19

Nice you noticed that. What you explained is a bug/issue for sure.

But, sometimes some bugs are beautiful. At some use cases most of my apps would fail. But I don't mind that. Nothing is perfect. I'll certainly look into it and make it more better. Will add more bugs to fix later 🤪

Ahmed Musallam • Jul 12 '19

hahaha. I was more curious about the vh and the use-case for using it than to report a bug that almost no one will notice.. lol 😁

Liyas Thomas • Jul 12 '19 • Edited

As vh and vw changes with viewports, I like the ratio or say the proportion of UI more than giving a fixed unit. That's why I did that.

Ahmed Musallam • Jul 12 '19

I see, makes sense. thanks and keep on rockin' !

Priyanka Kore • Jul 12 '19

Hey Liyas,

A very happy birthday! Amazing app 👏🏻 looks wise and also functionally, all the book worms of the world thank you.

I see that you have chosen one of the most amazing color schemes. Is there any specific way you do that? any place you can check which colors look good together something like that?

Liyas Thomas • Jul 12 '19

Thanks for the appreciation ✨

Thanks for this question. See, I'm a self learnt and self sustaining developer. If I couldn't find a tool for my needs, I would make one. Which makes me a better learner.

Regarding color scheme:

I use a tool called Colorbook which I made myself for creating color combination schemes for UI. I wrote about it on DEV.to here. Colorbook is an easy & great tool for playing around different color combos and copying color codes for development. GitHub link. Check out my GitHub profile for more tools and resources.

Bill • Jul 12 '19

Hey Liyas,

Happy birthday, have an awesome day!

I really like your project. Great design, performant, and user friendly. I'd love to try and contribute and I may do soon. Nice work on the banner generator too!

Liyas Thomas • Jul 12 '19

Thanks. I'm rocking. Follow my other projects on GitHub
You drink water, keep hydrated and stay healthy 🤸‍♀️

Wiktor Olejniczak • Jul 12 '19

Wow, The UI is really awesome! Everything feels so smooth and well-animated 👏 I took a look at your other projects, and wow, they're really inspiring 🤩

The only thing that slightly falls behind here is the shadow animation, a bit laggy 🙁

Oh, and happy birthday!

Liyas Thomas • Jul 12 '19

Thanks for the appreciation ✨
I'll fix all issues you've faced in next commit.

Abhi • Jul 12 '19

Wow! such a beautiful UI. What was the inspiration behind the UI design?

Liyas Thomas • Jul 12 '19

Maybe I spent so much time on Dribbble & Behance? Maybe I like minimalistic UI. Maybe I'm too lazy to come up with a new design at all. 💁‍♂️ who knows?

Shane Dowling • Jul 12 '19

Wow, looks great, you could turn this into a lightweight Goodreads alternative! Happy birthday!

Liyas Thomas • Jul 12 '19

I would love to see what future brings. Watch project on GitHub for updates.

Shane Dowling • Jul 12 '19

Done! :)

Kevin G. Kayisire • Jul 12 '19

Happy birthday, Unicorn.

Nice UI also, keep it up!

Liyas Thomas • Jul 12 '19

Always be yourself unless you can be an unicorn 🦄
Then always be an unicorn 🦄

Arsam Sarabi • Jul 12 '19

Happy birthday! ☺️

Liyas Thomas • Jul 12 '19

Advanced birthday wishes for you too...! 🎈✨🎉
Follow my other projects on GitHub

Rong Sen Ng • Jul 12 '19 • Edited

TLDR; Happy Birthday to you!!! 🎉🎂🎊

BTW some of the Books links are pointing to the wrong site but that's an awesome site.

Liyas Thomas • Jul 12 '19

Thanks. You'll shine ✨

Issue has been identified, will look into it ASAP.

Mayuran • Jul 12 '19

Well done Liyas, I just forked your repo. Planning to raise some improvements PRs. I believe we can both learn from each other.

Liyas Thomas • Jul 12 '19

Sure, I'm in. Follow my other projects on GitHub

GaneshMani • Jul 12 '19

Great Site. BTW Happy birthday

Liyas Thomas • Jul 12 '19

Thanks.

Valentino Gagliardi • Jul 12 '19

Happy birthday then!

Liyas Thomas • Jul 12 '19

God bless you. Follow my other projects on GitHub

ogoh cyril • Jul 12 '19

Happy birthday

Liyas Thomas • Jul 12 '19

My warm wishes for your next birthday! 🎉✨🎈
Follow my other projects on GitHub

Gift Egwuenu • Jul 12 '19

Happy Birthday 🎉 Love the design!

Liyas Thomas • Jul 12 '19

Glad you liked it. Follow on GitHub for more updates and future projects.

Fernando B 🚀 • Jul 13 '19

Wow another great project! Happy Belated birthday!

Liyas Thomas • Jul 13 '19

Hi there my friend ✨
Glad you liked this. You should definitely check out my new tutorial on How to create your own custom URL shortener in 10 minutes for free & deploy to GitHub 🚀

Doaa Mahely • Jul 12 '19

It's so pretty I love it 🥰
Happy birthday!

Liyas Thomas • Jul 12 '19

Thank you. God bless you 💫

Ryoka • Jul 12 '19

That's great! Happy birthday to you...

Liyas Thomas • Jul 12 '19

May you live healthy 🏋️‍♀️
Follow my other projects on GitHub

Praveen Kumar Saini • Jul 12 '19

Hello Liyas.
Happy Birthday.

I love your project. I love the way you put everything and would happy to contribute to this.

Liyas Thomas • Jul 12 '19

Sharing is caring 💚

Pavan Bawdane • Jul 12 '19

That's an awesome design Liyas. I looked at your Github projects. They are phenomenal.

Liyas Thomas • Jul 12 '19

Your words are inspiring. I promise I'll do more projects and write about it here more frequently 💫

Charlot • Apr 1 '20

This is so cool!

Liyas Thomas • Apr 1 '20

Thank you ❤️
You can find the source code of the project in my GitHub. May that help/inspire you.

Luis Rey • Sep 27 '19

Hi, you did a great job! Happy birthday btw (I know, your birthday is not today).
Are you using the free endpoint without any API key? Or are you using an API key with the 1000 free request per day?