One of my projects for summer vacation was to completely overhaul the theme of this blog. The last time I changed the theme was in 2023, when I removed all third party CSS frameworks from the codebase, but I was never satisfied with the result. I learned a lot in the process, but my relative lack of experience with modern CSS forced me to use a very simple design.

While the body of the articles was great (and it still is, as it is almost untouched), the home was just a thin, long list of articles in order. However, this website is my home, my Internet-facing business card. A list of articles in chronological order was not the best way to showcase all I do and all I like.

That’s why I dreamed of something richer.

Now that I am better at CSS and we have better tools that help me debug, for instance, why the damn z-index property doesn’t do what it is supposed to do, I felt more confident in my ability to create something more complex. And so this is how I spent my first week of summer vacation.

After sketching different designs, I opted for a magazine-like layout. The last blog article still stands out as a prominent element, but now I have space for more. First, I added a section showing the last articles by topic (I picked four main topics among everything I talk about). Then, there is a more compact section showing the last articles in chronological order.

Most importantly, I added a sidebar for all the rest: a “widget” showing a summary of my /now page, a list of these small bytes/notes articles, a way to subscribe to The ChangeLog, and a list of projects.

Moreover, there are more silly features, such as a way to change color scheme (as I could not decide on one no matter how much I tried) and, finally, a way to search for articles (it is a bit of a hack, given the lack of a backend, but it works).

Everything is still in flux. I will probably shift many things in the coming weeks/months but, overall, I am quite satisfied with the result. Let me know what you think!

In the coming months I plan some more features, more polishing and, why not, Standard Site integration. Stay tuned!