posts: Add a new post: "A New Look, Some Updates"

3 files changed, 122 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/posts/a-new-look.md b/posts/a-new-look.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2d6c4d3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/posts/a-new-look.md
@@ -0,0 +1,122 @@
+title: A New Look, Some Updates
+date: 2020-06-13
+author: Wynn Wolf Arbor
+
+It has now been approximately [one year](beton-brut.html) since the
+initial publication of this site and its new design. Looking through the
+[commits](https://git.oriole.systems/site/log/?qt=grep&q=css%3A) that
+changed the CSS I can't see any big changes; overall the core design
+remained very stable. That is (or, rather, was) especially true for the
+design of the [landing page](/). Why _was_? Well, as you might have
+noticed, it now has a whole new look.
+
+Gone is the previous brutalist, blocky, beautifully Oriole-yellow page,
+replaced by a simple minimalist top-to-bottom list of articles. I even
+decided to throw in a quick introduction as well. Whilst I still love
+the old design very dearly (it was based on countless design iterations,
+ideas, and experiments spanning about 6 months in total), it always
+clashed with all other content on this site. That was, of course, in a
+way intentional - the idea was to be as uncompromising as possible.  For
+the time, it was the right thing to do. I was going through an extreme
+amount of turmoil (both externally and internally), and finally had
+something completely for myself with that design. It became a sort of
+safe haven, a space where I did not have to care much about the needs of
+others; a space in which I expressed myself without worry.
+
+<figure>
+	<img class="round" src="img/old-landing-page.png" alt="The old landing page"/>
+	<figcaption>oriole.system's old landing page</figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+Over the last 5 months I have had lots of time to think and reflect, and
+learned a lot about myself. The current design therefore reflects a
+new-found confidence, and is more an example of easiness than of
+uncompromising and extremely idiosyncratic design. Maybe some time in
+the future I'll be lucky enough to re-use parts of the old art style and
+keep it around for something that is more in tune with its complicated
+and personal history.
+
+## git-http-backend(1)
+
+As [mentioned](the-long-journey-to-cgit.html#Future%20work) in the
+previous post, an outstanding item for
+[git.oriole.systems](https://git.oriole.systems) was support for the
+"smart"[^1] HTTP protocol as supplied by
+[git-http-backend(1)](https://git-scm.com/docs/git-http-backend). This
+is now implemented via a small
+[patch](https://git.oriole.systems/pramantha/tree/www-apps/cgit/files/cgit-1.2.3-git-http-backend.patch?id=3e255c257f3a07f1515e20a4f45a6505eec49d40)
+for cgit: Whenever cgit is asked to handle a "cloneable" item, instead
+of caching and serving it itself, it executes `git-http-backend(1)` and
+lets that handle the rest. The advantage of this approach is that
+there's no additional configuration needed on the side of the web
+server, barring the addition of the environment variables
+`GIT_PROJECT_ROOT` and `GIT_HTTP_EXPORT_ALL` required for
+`git-http-backend(1)` itself.
+
+To my knowledge, it is not easily possible with Caddy 1 to set up the
+complex[^2] structure needed to run cgit and `git-http-backend(1)` at
+the same URL. Caddy 2 brings much improved [path matching
+support](https://caddyserver.com/docs/caddyfile/matchers#path), so I may
+change this again once I have migrated everything. For now, this simple
+setup suffices.
+
+## Testing The Waters
+
+I've also been working on getting things ready for the inevitable
+migration to Caddy 2. There's still much to be done, and I don't think
+I'll be ready for at least another month. Firstly I want to give Caddy 2
+some more time before I use it as a stable service (2.1 is already in
+[beta](https://github.com/caddyserver/caddy/releases/tag/v2.1.0-beta.1)
+and contains a lot of fixes). Secondly I have to make sure that every
+single part of my infrastructure will continue to work with Caddy 2, and
+that means a lot of testing.
+
+Since I had been working on setting up cgit anyway, I decided to draft a
+new Caddyfile that is compatible with Caddy 2. For the most part, it
+went surprisingly well. I generally prefer the new syntax, and pretty
+much all new features are integrated very cleanly. The documentation
+could be improved in a few places, however. Most of the time there is a
+clear lack of cross-references, and if you don't know how a certain part
+of the configuration is called, it is very hard to search for it.
+
+There was one minor hitch to this effort. It seemed that no matter what
+I did, I couldn't get the `fastcgi` transport to work with slowcgi: the
+`PATH_INFO` variable would just remain empty. After a few hours of
+testing and digging, I could finally identify the root cause. Turns out
+there was an ever-so-subtle bug in Caddy's handling of the `split`
+directive. I
+[reported](https://github.com/caddyserver/caddy/issues/3490) the issue
+upstream and sent along a small [pull
+request](https://github.com/caddyserver/caddy/pull/3491) that was
+promptly merged.
+
+## Dark mode and `prefers-color-scheme`
+
+Finally, just yesterday I updated the whole site to respect the
+[`prefers-color-scheme`](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/@media/prefers-color-scheme)
+CSS media feature. Whoever prefers dark websites and has told their
+operating system or browser[^3] to use dark mode when available will
+hopefully rejoice in not having their eyes burnt out when visiting my
+site. This is arguably a small change, and inconsequential in the grand
+scheme of things, but it was lots of fun to work on after the rather
+more stressful crunch of getting cgit to work nicely.
+
+<figure>
+	<img class="round" src="img/landing-page-dark.png" alt="The landing page in dark mode"/>
+	<figcaption>The landing page in dark mode</figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+I'm still playing around with the overall colour choice and composition,
+so you may see more or less significant changes down the road. The main
+focus will still be the default light design (as that is the one I
+prefer), but dark mode will not just be an afterthought. Feedback on
+this is very much welcome.
+
+And by the way, if you are interested in how this site is put together,
+check out its [Git repository](https://git.oriole.systems/site/).
+
+[^1]: I really wish it had a better name...
+[^2]: Read: it needs regular expressions, which means that now I have
+  one more problem.
+[^3]: For Firefox, try setting `ui:systemUsesDarkTheme` to `1` in
+  `about:config`.
diff --git a/posts/img/landing-page-dark.png b/posts/img/landing-page-dark.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..29c4436
--- /dev/null
+++ b/posts/img/landing-page-dark.png
diff --git a/posts/img/old-landing-page.png b/posts/img/old-landing-page.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0fac61f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/posts/img/old-landing-page.png