Release v1.6.0

Mission Control Homepage, Color Refresh & Polish

Features

• Homepage bento grid Why Aspire section with colored top borders and curriculum links
• Homepage horizontal world cards with per-world accent colors
• Inline How It Works steps with colored badges and arrow separators
• Theme toggle button on homepage navbar
• GitHub icon in homepage navbar and footer

Improvements

• Vibrant jewel-tone color accents (teal, amber, rose, emerald) across gallery, leaderboard, sidebar, and world cards
• Light theme: proper contrast, mode-aware sidebar and TopBar, semantic color tokens
• WCAG AA color contrast fixes across 33 files
• Sidebar colored dots on all Explore section links for visual consistency
• Gallery progressive disclosure: Architecture Overview expanded by default, readable toggle buttons
• Achievements show real names when locked instead of "???"
• Dashboard hides activity heatmap for anonymous users
• Leaderboard filters out E2E test users
• Page titles set on all 19 pages for browser tab clarity
• New slogan: "Learn Aspire · Build real apps · Level up your stack"

Fixes

• Fixed code blocks rendering as single lines across the entire app (MarkdownContent PreTag, global CSS display:inline-flex override)
• Fixed curriculum: AddCSharpApp marked as experimental, deploy command flags corrected, parameter resolution chain documented
• Removed fake "learners completed" count from lesson pages
• Fixed E2E test failures: persona selectors, playground validation, weekly challenge, admin auth

Content

• Curriculum audited against Aspire source code — corrected AddCSharpApp, deploy commands, and parameter documentation
• Updated SETUP.md, CONTRIBUTING.md, and frontend README with accurate paths and versions
  Deployed to https://api.gentlemushroom-bfd2dce7.canadacentral.azurecontainerapps.io at 2026-04-05T04:11:07Z

Release v1.5.0

Deploy Pipeline, Interactive Features & Quality Sweep

Features

• Automated Azure deployment pipeline via GitHub Actions with Aspire deploy to Azure Container Apps
• Gallery deep-linkable projects — share direct URLs to any architecture example
• Gallery search bar — filter projects by title, description, category, or concepts
• Gallery interactive diagrams — click services to highlight connections and view details
• Gallery to Playground bridge — open any gallery architecture directly in the Playground
• Gallery "Related Lessons" links — concept tags now link to matching curriculum lessons
• Playground undo/redo with 50-entry history, Ctrl+Z / Ctrl+Shift+Z keyboard shortcuts
• Playground shareable state — encode your architecture in a URL and share it with anyone
• Playground visual connection lines — SVG bezier curves show references and waitFor dependencies
• Playground live validation — warnings for empty names, duplicates, orphaned resources, missing images
• Concept Map "Suggested Next" section — highlights concepts ready to learn based on your progress
• Concept Map empty search state with clear button
• Homepage quick links bar — fast access to Playground, Gallery, Concept Map, and Curriculum
• Homepage Why Aspire cards now link to relevant app sections (Playground, Gallery, lessons, Concept Map)

Improvements

• Gallery detail progressive disclosure — Architecture Overview and Why Aspire sections collapse for less overwhelm
• Homepage visual refresh — gradient borders, animated stats, staggered world card entrances, timeline for How It Works
• Keyboard navigation and ARIA labels added to all interactive elements across 5+ pages
• Error states with retry buttons added to Dashboard, Gallery, Leaderboard, Achievements, Friends, and more
• Consistent font sizing — normalized small text from raw px values to Chakra size tokens
• Theme token consistency — replaced hardcoded hex colors with dark.bg and dark.surface tokens

Fixes

• Fixed playground redo not working due to React strict-mode double-fire clearing history state
• Fixed terminal interactive blocks showing "undefined" when content used command/output format
• Fixed homepage canvas scaling compounding on window resize
• Fixed 7 incorrect concept-to-lesson mappings in Concept Map (SQL Server, MongoDB, RabbitMQ, and more)
• Fixed false content claims about secret parameters never being shown in the Aspire Dashboard
• Fixed single-line code blocks that should be multiline (class/interface definitions)
• Fixed timer memory leaks in LessonPage and SettingsPage (cleanup on unmount)
• Backend: hardened admin auth, fixed registration race condition, added unlock checks on quiz/challenge/skip endpoints
• Backend: fixed rate limiter memory leak, added GitHub username validation, removed incorrect LastLoginAt update
  Deployed to https://api.gentlemushroom-bfd2dce7.canadacentral.azurecontainerapps.io at 2026-04-04T07:19:52Z

Release v1.4.0

Gallery Overhaul, Guided Tour & Style Fixes

Features

• Gallery expanded from 6 to 12 architecture examples organized into 5 categories (Web, AI, Data, Event-Driven, Enterprise)
• Category filter bar with count badges and difficulty levels on all gallery cards
• Rich explanation tab with architecture overview, Why Aspire section, key patterns, and scaling notes
• Guided tour for first-time users: 5-step walkthrough with spotlight overlay, keyboard navigation, and progress dots
• Restart Tour button in Settings page

Improvements

• Standardized all sidebar section headers to use pixelFontProps theme helper
• Dashboard heading now uses pixel font to match other page headings
• Form elements now inherit body font via CSS

Fixes

• Fixed font system: added body/heading fonts to Chakra theme to prevent Times New Roman fallback
• Removed conflicting #root and h1/h2 CSS styles from index.css
• Fixed sidebar external links using pixel font at unreadable sizes
• Fixed 6px pixel font in WorldCompletionBadges

Release v1.3.5

Deployment Resource Group Default

Improvements

• Deploy command no longer runs with an empty resource group parameter by default

Fixes

• Release workflow now defaults AZURE_RESOURCE_GROUP to aspire-academy when repo variable is unset

Release v1.3.4

Deployment Subscription Fallback

Improvements

• Prevents deploy failures when AZURE_SUBSCRIPTION_ID secret is not configured

Fixes

• Release workflow now resolves Azure subscription from secret, variable, or logged-in context

Release v1.3.3

Release Pipeline Export Fix

Improvements

• Release notes extraction can now read the target version reliably in CI

Fixes

• Exported VERSION before invoking Python in GitHub release workflow