Frontend Mentor - GitHub user search app solution

This is a solution to the GitHub user search app challenge on Frontend Mentor. Frontend Mentor challenges help you improve your coding skills by building realistic projects.

Table of contents

• Overview
  • The challenge
  • Screenshot
  • Links
  • My process
  • Built with
  • What I learned

Note: Delete this note and update the table of contents based on what sections you keep.

Overview

The challenge

Users should be able to:

• View the optimal layout for the app depending on their device's screen size
• See hover states for all interactive elements on the page
• Search for GitHub users by their username
• See relevant user information based on their search
• Switch between light and dark themes
• Bonus: Have the correct color scheme chosen for them based on their computer preferences. Hint: Research prefers-color-scheme in CSS.

Screenshot

Links

• Solution URL: https://github.com/adamdotjs/devfinder
• Live Site URL: https://adamdotjs.github.io/devfinder/

My process

I first started building out the UI with static data, and then implementing the API afterwards. I find this much easier than trying to do both at once as the API layer adds additional complexity that I don't want getting in my way of styling the app.

Built with

• React
• Vite
• SWR
• Tailwind CSS

What I learned

The tablet > desktop layout was tricky with the repositioning of elements. I had to really think about the HTML structure and how everything worked together. I ended up creating two blocks with the same grid columns, which ended up working well in the end.

I used SWR as my data fetching library of choice because I love how simple it is and how because if its caching, if you go back to a previous search the result loads instantly. I learned how to add options such as disabling retrying on error.

I also learned how to use Context and the window.matchMedia API to create a very simple theme switcher.