v1.4.2 — sticky bar now blends into the page

🔍 Fix: the search/filter bar looked disconnected from the page

The sticky controls bar was a near-opaque slab that blocked the ambient background (aurora blobs, grid, noise) — a visible band cutting across the page at rest.

Now it matches how Linear/Raycast handle sticky chrome:

• At rest: fully transparent, no border — the bar floats on the same ambient background as everything around it
• Once it sticks (scrolls under the topbar): a frosted-glass treatment fades in — tinted translucent background, 16px backdrop blur, hairline border — keeping text readable as content scrolls beneath
• Detection uses a passive scroll listener on a 1px sentinel (IntersectionObserver proved unreliable under frame-starved contexts; caught by our headless E2E)

Verified: rest → rgba(0,0,0,0) no class; scrolled → .stuck; computed stuck style → rgba(7,7,15,.72) + blur(16px) + border. CI/Pages green.

v1.4.1 — mobile-friendly + tag duplication fix

📱 Mobile UX pass (audited at 390px)

• Sticky bar no longer eats half the screen: category chips and filter toggles scroll as horizontal pill rails with edge fade instead of wrapping into three rows
• Table now fits phone widths — no more horizontal scrolling: status columns switch to icon-only cells (💚 ⚠️ ❓ 🚫 / ✅ ➖) with full labels preserved in title attributes
• iOS zoom-on-focus killed (16px search input); touch targets enlarged to ~36–40px
• Phones default to the grid view (cards are thumb-friendlier); your explicit choice still persists; desktop stays table-first
• ⌘K button hidden on touch; GitHub/README links collapse below 560px; bento wall goes 2-up and compact

🏷️ Tag duplication fix — the bento category wall and the sticky chips row showed the same 10 categories simultaneously. They now hand off on scroll: chips collapse while the wall is visible and take over navigation once it scrolls under the bar. (Also fixed a TDZ bug the E2E caught: the handoff function was referenced before its const definition, which silently killed the whole script.)

Verified headless E2E at 390×844 and 1440×900: mobile grid default → 157/157 cards; mobile #view=table → 157 rows with 108💚/21✅/94➖ icon cells + a11y titles; desktop regression clean; both themes pixel-checked.

v1.4.0 — logos, bento wall, spotlight: the cool-factor release

🌐 Directory redesign (https://skyzhao1223.github.io/free-for-creators/)

Design language borrowed from the best in class — Best of JS (logo walls, data feel), Raycast/Linear (cursor spotlight, neon-on-dark), cmdk (palette craft):

Visual leap

• Real logos for all 157 resources — favicon service with a graceful monogram fallback (category-colored letter tiles); the directory finally looks like a product catalog, not a link dump
• Bento category wall — 10 glowing tiles with big mono counts, live filtered n/total, click-to-filter, cursor-tracked spotlight
• Linear-style spotlight borders — radial glow follows your cursor across cards and tiles
• Live monetization data bar — stacked segments (allowed / conditional / varies / blocked) recomputed from the current filter, animated on load, exact counts on hover
• Ambience — SVG noise texture, slow-drifting aurora blobs, scroll-reveal on first paint; all of it honors prefers-reduced-motion

Polish

• cmdk-style ⌘K palette: group headers, per-item logos, ↵ hint on the selected row
• Table rows get a left accent sweep on hover
• Dark is now the signature default (matches the banner and social card); the toggle still remembers your choice

Nothing lost: table/grid views, 5-dimension filters, favorites, credit-line copy, shareable hash URLs, sort, search highlighting, EN/中文, all.json single-fetch boot.

Verified headless E2E: 157/157 table rows, 157/157 grid cards, 10/10 bento tiles, #cc0=1 → 34, #cat=fonts → 12 + active tile, 156/157 favicons loading with 1 designed fallback, light/dark pixel checks pass.

v1.3.0 — data-terminal redesign: 4× density, ⌘K palette

🌐 Directory redesign (https://skyzhao1223.github.io/free-for-creators/)

Rebuilt around information density and a sharper identity — the list now looks like what it is: a license-verified data terminal.

Density (≈4× more per screen)

• The 300px hero is now a 56px dashboard topbar: gradient wordmark + inline mono stats (157 resources · 10 categories · CI-verified weekly)
• Default view is a dense table (~25 rows/screen vs ~6 cards): category color chips, mono license column, short colored status labels (credit req / commercial ok / no commercial), row hover glow, per-row ★ favorite and 📋 credit-copy actions
• Grid view kept as a toggle (☰/▦) with compacted cards (2-line clamped descriptions, mono micro-badges); choice persists via localStorage + #view= hash

⌘K command palette

• Fuzzy find across all resources and categories, ↑↓ / ↵ / esc keyboard navigation, jump-to-category or open-resource, fully bilingual

Unchanged under the hood: 5-dimension filters, filtered chip counts, search highlighting, shareable hash URLs, favorites, credit-line copy, EN/中文, dark/light, single-fetch all.json boot, CC0 data.

Verified headless E2E: 157/157 table rows + 10 group headers; grid 157/157; #cc0=1 → exactly 34; #q=pixabay&sort=name → 4 cards + 7 highlights; both themes pixel-checked.

v1.2.0 — smarter filtering, faster directory

🌐 Directory upgrades (https://skyzhao1223.github.io/free-for-creators/)

• 🆓 CC0 / Public-domain filter — the fourth toggle isolates the 34 zero-paperwork resources; #cc0=1 makes the view shareable. "Most permissive" sort now weights CC0/PD licenses highest.
• Search highlighting — matches are wrapped in <mark>; category names are searchable too (typing 字体 or "fonts" surfaces the whole category); 150ms input debounce.
• Filtered chip counts — while any filter is active, every category chip shows matched/total so you can see where results live without clicking.
• 🔗 Share view — one click copies the current filtered URL (search + category + toggles + sort all persist in the hash).
• Faster boot — the site now loads a single merged data/all.json (1 request instead of 11), keeping the old manifest path as fallback.
• SEO/meta polish — canonical link, light/dark theme-color.

Verified headless E2E: 157/157 cards; #cc0=1 → exactly the 34 entries computed independently from data; #q=pixabay → 4 cards with 7 highlights; both themes pixel-checked.

v1.1.0 — PR link-check bot, smarter directory, 157 resources

🎁 Free for Creators v1.1.0

🤖 PR new-link check bot

• PRs that add or change URLs get an automatic check of only the new links, with a bot comment on the PR (✅ ok / ⚠️ bot-blocked / ❌ broken)
• ❌ broken links block the merge; ⚠️ blocked (403/429 bot walls) pass with a manual-verify note
• Safe by design: runs on pull_request_target with base-branch code only — PR content is read via git objects, never executed
• Battle-tested on PR #6, which added this release's new entry

🌐 Directory upgrades (https://skyzhao1223.github.io/free-for-creators/)

• Sort control: Curated / A–Z / Most permissive (openness score from monetization + attribution + signup)
• One-click credit line copy on all 21 attribution-required sources — generates an editable attribution template (asset/author placeholders + source + URL + license), EN/中文
• Sort state persists in the shareable URL hash (#sort=name)

🔍 SEO & polish

• sitemap.xml, robots.txt, themed bilingual 404 page

📦 Content: 157 resources

• New: Envato Free Files (rotating monthly free assets, video-production) — added through the new PR-bot pipeline

All checks green: CI schema+sync, weekly link check (0 broken), Pages deploy.

v1.0.0 — 156 license-verified free resources for creators

🎁 Free for Creators v1.0.0 — first stable release.

Content

• 156 resources across 10 categories: music, sound effects, stock footage, photos, fonts, graphics & icons, video production (LUTs/templates), mockups & templates, 3D/game assets, meta-search engines
• Every entry carries license / attribution / monetization / signup metadata, with Chinese translations
• 0 broken links at release (full CI link-check: 156 URLs)

Reading

• Bilingual generated READMEs: English + 简体中文, with an auto-computed "At a glance" line (107 monetization-safe · 93 no-attribution · 119 no-signup · 34 CC0/public domain)
• Interactive directory: https://skyzhao1223.github.io/free-for-creators/ — search, category chips, license filters, favorites ⭐, shareable filter URLs, dark/light themes

Engineering

• Data-as-JSON (data/*.json, CC0) → READMEs + website generated/deployed by GitHub Actions
• Weekly link-check with automatic link-check-labeled tracking issue on failure
• Dependabot for Actions; Contributor Covenant 2.1
• Merged data export: https://skyzhao1223.github.io/free-for-creators/data/all.json