Dictionary web app 📚

This is a solution to the Dictionary web 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
  • Continued development
  • Useful resources
• Author
• Acknowledgments

Overview

The challenge

Users should be able to:

• Search for words using the input field
• See the Free Dictionary API's response for the searched word
• See a form validation message when trying to submit a blank form
• Play the audio file for a word when it's available
• Switch between serif, sans serif, and monospace fonts
• Switch between light and dark themes
• View the optimal layout for the interface depending on their device's screen size
• See hover and focus states for all interactive elements on the page
• Bonus: Have the correct color scheme chosen for them based on their computer preferences. Hint: Research prefers-color-scheme in CSS.

Screenshot

Light Theme Dark Theme

Links

• Live Site URL: Here

My process

Built with

• Semantic HTML5 markup
• Mobile-first workflow
• React - JS library
• Dictionary API - For the definition data
• CSS Modules - For styles

What I learned

I learned a few new things during this project

• Custom dropdown box and toggle switch
• Working with audio object for definition pronunciation

Some of the words from the api did not include an audio source, so I learned that the play() method returns a promise so it made catching errors simpler

audioSrc.play().catch(error => console.log('No audio source'));

Continued development

I want to look into react context, because I noticed I was passing down the same state through multiple components and in my opinion it started to get a bit messy.

Useful resources

• Article by Thi Tran - This article gave me some inspiration on how to go about creating a custom dropdown menu for the font selector. It also helped with the logic for closing the dropdown when the area outside of it was clicked.

Author

• Frontend Mentor - @adkenney
• LinkedIn - @arkellkenney

Acknowledgments