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Version 2.6.1 brings the biggest content update since 2019

Two years ago, in November 2019, I released the current redesign of my website. Since then, I have been continuously improving the website with major updates, released once every few months.

In February this year, I released version 2.5 (read more: The first website update for 2021 brings major improvements). It added information about the modules I took during the Autumn semester of my final year at university. Internally, Rails and Ruby were upgraded to the latest versions, which led to better performance.

During the summer, I was working on the latest update — 2.6 — which was released on October 22. Today, November 05, just two weeks after the major release, version 2.6.1 was released as a supplemental update. These two updates combined represent the most significant changes to the website, since its redesign in November 2019.

CONTENT UPDATES

  • The release marks an important milestone. A huge part of the website is related to my university years. Now, as I have graduated, I could not only complete and rework the pages that cover the modules I took during each year, but I also made a brand-new page that shares my university experience in general. It is less technical and is meant to be more like a retrospective. The page also contains an overview of my achievements. In the last update, the Third Year page was expanded and now includes the modules I have taken during the spring semester.
  • On the First Year page, a new Mini Labs section was added under the Machines and Intelligence module.
  • Among the notable content updates is the completely reworked Software Engineering Experience section on the CV page. Before, the description of some of the projects was very short, while others used to be very long. Obviously, this did not look well. Now, each project has a description of about the same length. It also follows the same structure — an overview of the system, followed by some technical specifications.
  • On the Hobbies page, the sections Singles and Playlists are now merged again into Music. It used to be like this prior to the November 2019 update, however, then I decided to separate them. Unfortunately, sometimes it is not clear which is the best way to design or implement a specific thing. In such cases, the arguments whether to go for option A or B can frequently change. Regardless, I now decided that Playlists should not carry the same weight as the other sections, so combining it with Singles makes sense.
  • Updated Travelling section on the Hobbies page with additional text and images
  • The Others section on the Hobbies page has been vastly improved. It is now in chronological order and includes everything I have done while at university. The introduction to the section was also modified, as before it was based on a text which I wrote in 2017.
  • In general, the content on every single page has been improved, expanded or rewritten. This includes fixing wording and sentence structure issues, as well as typos. Information about some of the assignments, for example, the Tweet A Pie one on the First Year page, was expanded and modified, so as to give a better idea of what the project was actually about. Some of the other assignments that received substantial improvements are the University Management System on the Second Year page and Annotate.ME on the Third Year one. 

safari 15 support

The latest release has full Safari 15 support.
  • When using Safari's Compact Tab layout, the correct colour is displayed on the Tab Bar when using Dark Appearance.
  • Page titles now used a reversed pattern. For example, "Norton Andreev — Gallery", is now "Gallery — Norton Andreev". This ensures that users can see the page title even when using the Compact Tab layout, where the space is limited and the page title is truncated.

other changes

Version 2.6 and 2.6.1 bring tons of changes. Many of them are under-the-hood, while others are related to the Blog functionality and only seen by me. Regardless, some of the front-facing changes that are included in these releases are:
  • Added shadow to the navigation bar on the home page. The shadow appears when scrolling so as to not interfere with the gallery.
  • Hobbies card icon changed to star on the Home page. This is so to recognise that all Hobbies are equally important. Furthermore, the music icon used before is now exclusively used for the Apple Music link in the footer.
  • "Warrior's Problem" image on the First Year page flipped horizontally so that it faces the content when on Desktop.
  • Removed section icons on the Hobbies page, in order to achieve better consistency with the other pages.
  • The University pages paths have been updated (example: /university/second-year, instead of /University/SecondYear).
  • The icon for external links has been changed to better indicate a redirection to another website.
  • The line height when reading articles has been increased for a better reading experience.
  • The article images now use a public link which solves issues when sharing on Facebook or keeping a page open for a long time.
  • Added pagination to the Tags pages.
  • The Solitaire table on the Second Year page has been updated so that the presentation of the data is more clear.
  • Hyphens replaced by EM dashes where needed.
  • Fixed a bug where the background of the description for an assignment might not expand to the same height as the accompanying image.
  • Fixed a bug where the filter on the Archive page might not open correctly on a specific screen size.
and more...

PS: July brought the highest increase in users who have visited the website for this year. Thank you very much all! Feel free to contact me with any feedback about the website and its content.

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