deviantArt Version 7

Alright, so yesterday, I made my usual stop at deviantArt yesterday and had a mild panic attack. Things had changed. Now, I'm not adverse to change. Sure, I may resist it tooth and nail because I'm a stubborn creature of habit, but I can adapt and even grow to like the new changes. . . which is why I didn't instantly flee to my dA journal to declare Version 7 as some sort of demonic entity sorely in need of an exorcism during my "buh... wha?" phase yesterday.

Today, I've had some time to adjust and find where they put things, and... well, it's growing on me. Parts of it, anyway. And there are some nice features. For example:

• The ability to navigate through galleries and my devWatch with my keyboard's arrow keys.
• Having the comment bubble directly under the artist's comments.
• The artist's comments auto-expand when you scroll down.

Alas, there are also some problems. Most of them just strike me as annoyances that were likely incorporated to make the site more iPhone and iPad-friendly. For instance:

• The giant arrows to either side of a deviation. They just clutter up the page.
• The pop-up thumbnail navigation bar at the bottom of a browsing page. Irritating at best.
• The way full-size deviations load now, what with the pixels and the zoom and the augh.

However, there is one thing that irritates me above all else about Version 7: the small views of deviations. Thumbnails? Look great. Full versions? Pretty much look fine. But the small view? Tiny, jagged, pixelated pieces of crap.

Maybe it's meant to strongly encourage full view. I don't know, but I actually liked having a nice small view. Imagine you have an epic illustration of a sweeping landscape. In full view, perhaps you can scroll around this epic and marvel at all the tiny details and subtle nuances, but if it doesn't fit entirely on the screen, you can't get the full impact of that pic. In a decent-sized small view, like the ones dA used to have, you could see enough of the detail and the whole piece and fully appreciate it for the masterpiece it is.

Now? Not an option.

*sigh*

There seem to be a lot of people up in arms about Version 7. If they choose one thing to fix, though, I just hope it's that.