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

Publish Date: Jul 12 '19

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Books 📚

Find books from Google Play Books

Feel free to contribute on GitHub

I was casually surfing online and saw an article about Google Books API. I read the docs, and decided to create a minimal, lightweight and beautiful web app to browse & find books using Google Books API.

That's why I created Books 📚.

Books is an open-source project which make use of Google Books API.

Some of its features are:

Search book by title, author, category, genre etc.
Minimal and elegant UI.
PWA support.
Dark mode. Can't live without it!

Bonus: 🌗 I also added dark mode so that your eyes won't hurt during night!

Demo 🚀

Feel free to contribute on GitHub

I'm writing a book: De-Coding The Passion Project 📘

Liyas Thomas ・ May 24 '20

#books #productivity #startup #watercooler

If you want a heads up on my next projects, or just want to chat about the web, life and happiness make sure to follow me @liyasthomas on Twitter 💙. If any of my projects helped you please consider making a donation.

Comments 52 total

Arsam SarabiJul 12, 2019

Happy birthday! ☺️
- Liyas ThomasJul 12, 2019
  
  Advanced birthday wishes for you too...! 🎈✨🎉
  Follow my other projects on GitHub
BillJul 12, 2019

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 ThomasJul 12, 2019
  
  Thanks. I'm rocking. Follow my other projects on GitHub
  You drink water, keep hydrated and stay healthy 🤸‍♀️
MayuranJul 12, 2019

Well done Liyas, I just forked your repo. Planning to raise some improvements PRs. I believe we can both learn from each other.
- Liyas ThomasJul 12, 2019
  
  Sure, I'm in. Follow my other projects on GitHub
Valentino GagliardiJul 12, 2019

Happy birthday then!
- Liyas ThomasJul 12, 2019
  
  God bless you. Follow my other projects on GitHub
ogoh cyrilJul 12, 2019

Happy birthday
- Liyas ThomasJul 12, 2019
  
  My warm wishes for your next birthday! 🎉✨🎈
  Follow my other projects on GitHub
RyokaJul 12, 2019

That's great! Happy birthday to you...
- Liyas ThomasJul 12, 2019
  
  May you live healthy 🏋️‍♀️
  Follow my other projects on GitHub
Rong Sen NgJul 12, 2019

TLDR; Happy Birthday to you!!! 🎉🎂🎊

BTW some of the Books links are pointing to the wrong site but that's an awesome site.
- Liyas ThomasJul 12, 2019
  
  Thanks. You'll shine ✨
  
  Issue has been identified, will look into it ASAP.
Kevin G. KayisireJul 12, 2019

Happy birthday, Unicorn.

Nice UI also, keep it up!
- Liyas ThomasJul 12, 2019
  
  Always be yourself unless you can be an unicorn 🦄
  Then always be an unicorn 🦄
Praveen Kumar SainiJul 12, 2019

Hello Liyas.
Happy Birthday.

I love your project. I love the way you put everything and would happy to contribute to this.
- Liyas ThomasJul 12, 2019
  
  Sharing is caring 💚
AbhiJul 12, 2019

Wow! such a beautiful UI. What was the inspiration behind the UI design?
- Liyas ThomasJul 12, 2019
  
  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?
GaneshManiJul 12, 2019

Great Site. BTW Happy birthday
- Liyas ThomasJul 12, 2019
  
  Thanks.
Priyanka KoreJul 12, 2019

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 ThomasJul 12, 2019
  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.
Adam Crockett 🌀Jul 12, 2019

Love that UI!
- Liyas ThomasJul 12, 2019
  
  Glad you liked it. Check out my other projects on GitHub
Gift EgwuenuJul 12, 2019

Happy Birthday 🎉 Love the design!
- Liyas ThomasJul 12, 2019
  
  Glad you liked it. Follow on GitHub for more updates and future projects.
Shane DowlingJul 12, 2019

Wow, looks great, you could turn this into a lightweight Goodreads alternative! Happy birthday!
- Liyas ThomasJul 12, 2019
  
  I would love to see what future brings. Watch project on GitHub for updates.
  - Shane DowlingJul 12, 2019
    
    Done! :)
Ahmed MusallamJul 12, 2019

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 ThomasJul 12, 2019
  
  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 MusallamJul 12, 2019
    
    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 ThomasJul 12, 2019
      
      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 MusallamJul 12, 2019
        
        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 ThomasJul 12, 2019
        
        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 MusallamJul 12, 2019
        
        I see, makes sense. thanks and keep on rockin' !
Pavan BawdaneJul 12, 2019

That's an awesome design Liyas. I looked at your Github projects. They are phenomenal.
- Liyas ThomasJul 12, 2019
  
  Your words are inspiring. I promise I'll do more projects and write about it here more frequently 💫
Doaa MahelyJul 12, 2019

It's so pretty I love it 🥰
Happy birthday!
- Liyas ThomasJul 12, 2019
  
  Thank you. God bless you 💫
Wiktor OlejniczakJul 12, 2019

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 ThomasJul 12, 2019
  
  Thanks for the appreciation ✨
  I'll fix all issues you've faced in next commit.
Liyas ThomasJul 12, 2019

Glad you liked it. Check out my other projects on GitHub ✨
Fernando B 🚀Jul 13, 2019

Wow another great project! Happy Belated birthday!
- Liyas ThomasJul 13, 2019
  
  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 🚀
Luis ReySep 27, 2019

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?
- Liyas ThomasSep 27, 2019
  
  Glad you liked it!
  I use free endpoint without API key
  
  You might want to checkout my other posts or my latest project postwoman.io github.com/liyasthomas/postwoman
CharlotApr 1, 2020

This is so cool!
- Liyas ThomasApr 1, 2020
  
  Thank you ❤️
  You can find the source code of the project in my GitHub. May that help/inspire you.

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Liyas Thomas @liyasthomas