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On the 1st Anniversary of the Learn Palestinian Arabic site, announcements for the future!

THE ANNIVERSARY BUILD (v0.5.0)

If you're reading this: thank you.

I officially launched the Learn Palestinian Arabic site on 1 May 2023 — & a lot has happened since then. But throughout it all, people like you have continued to engage & support the project, giving me the motivation & means to continue this work. We couldn't have gotten here without you. But there's a lot still left to go!

Over the past year, the LPA site has been improved significantly over four major post-launch updates. As new features have been added, my vision of the project has evolved as well. In July, I will be re-launching the site with a new identity that reflects its broadened scope: PalWeb. If you're really tuned into the project, you may have noticed that I've retconned the version numbering, so that this build of the site — the Anniversary Build — is v1.4.0 of LPA, but is v0.5.0 of PalWeb. The Anniversary Build inaugurates the end of an era: it's the final major update before the site evolves into something bigger & better.

Before we get into PalWeb, here are the release notes for the Anniversary Build:

Search

  • Some optimizations were made to significantly improve search results.
  • Live Search is here! While typing in the Search Bar in the Dictionary index page or in the navigation bar, you will now see a real-time list of results.
    • e.g. type "orange" to see بردقان (burdʔān) & بردقانيّ (burdʔāni)
    • e.g. type "burd ..." to see برداية (burdāye), بردقان (burdʔān), بردقانيّ (burdʔāni)
    • e.g. type "برد ..." to see برد (bard), برد (barad), بردان (bardān), برداية (burdāye), بردقان (burdʔān), بردقانيّ (burdʔāni)

Badges

  • Badges are here! You now earn achievements for doing various things on the site. Check them out in your Dashboard. As the site continues to grow in complexity, more of these will be added.

Decks

  • By leveraging the power of Live Search, you can now find terms in the Deck Builder simply by typing something in Arabic or English & choosing the term you want to add from a list of choices.
  • In the Deck Builder, you can now reorder the terms in a deck by drag & drop.
  • Featured Deck is now selected automatically every week.

Discord

  • PalWeb is now integrated with Discord through OAuth! You can now sign in using your Discord account. Make sure to get the badge for joining the PalWeb server on Discord!

Dialects

  • When showing the pronunciations of a term in the Dictionary, the pronunciations relevant to the user are now found by matching them "upwards" & "downwards" based on the selected dialect, rather than only by exact matches, as was previously the case; e.g. if the user's dialect is Urban Palestinian, this will now match General Palestinian & Central Urban Palestinian as well.
  • In all areas of the site, the transliteration shown for a term (e.g. in tooltips) is the one most relevant to the user based on their selected dialect.

UI / UX

  • New footer design.
  • Jargon: Documentation is now Wiki. Bookmarks are now Pins. You now Build a Deck using the Deck Builder. You now Sign In, Sign Out & Sign Up.
  • Deck Flashcard now includes Context Actions menu & shows privacy status.
  • Fixed responsiveness of Deck-related assets & views on mobile.
  • Can now pin terms without a page refresh.

Up Next: PalWeb (v1.0.0)

Watch this space.

Version History

  • 01/07/2024 — PalWeb v1.0.0
  • 01/05/2024 — PalWeb v0.5.0 (the Anniversary Build) (Current)
  • 15/03/2024 — PalWeb v0.4.0 (the Land Day Build)
  • 15/01/2024 — PalWeb v0.3.0 (the 1998 Build)
  • 01/07/2023 — PalWeb v0.2.0 (the 1997 Build)
  • 01/05/2023 — PalWeb v0.1.0 (the May Day Build)