Junio C Hamano [off-list ref] writes:

Updates since v1.7.9
--------------------

UI, Workflows & Features

[...]

 * "gitweb" allows intermediate entries in the directory hierarchy
   that leads to a projects to be clicked, which in turn shows the
   list of projects inside that directory.

 * "gitweb" learned to read various pieces of information for the
   repositories lazily, instead of reading everything that could be
   needed (including the ones that are not necessary for a specific
   task).

 * Project search in "gitweb" shows the substring that matched in the
   project name and description highlighted.

[...]

Fixes since v1.7.9
------------------

Unless otherwise noted, all the fixes since v1.7.9 in the maintenance
releases are contained in this release (see release notes to them for
details).

[...]

 * "gitweb" used to drop warnings in the log file when "heads" view is
   accessed in a repository whose HEAD does not point at a valid
   branch.

It looks like fix for fixed-string project search is missing.

Nb. I don't know if it is worth mentioning, and if it should be in
"Fixes" or "Updates", but gitweb now supports utf-8 search, anc checks
regular expression for validity before using it in search.

-- 
Jakub Narebski