Dear deviantART,

I'm actually impressed with the new version of the site. It's relatively fast and streamlined, and is overall an improvement in my opinion. However, I think there are a few oversights when it comes to viewing deviations. Let me elaborate.

Recently, there was a big uproar about image resizing. I'm glad you guys addressed it, and this new 'on the fly' resizing is actually pretty intuitive, but not without a couple problems. Not so much with the quality, because it's not resaving our images, but with the way one views the art.

Full View

Many people upload relatively high resolution images with the intention of people viewing it only at that size. While it's nice that it can resize for some people's resolutions, not all of us need or want that.

In your defense, you have the Download link, which is larger and more prevalent, so thank you. But some people do not allow for downloading of their image. This means that sometimes we're forced to right click and save to see the image at its intended resolution, because the site no longer allows for scrolling across an image, it just resizes it for the width of the browser. It's not the end of the world, but it's annoying extra step for some of us to have to right click and save.

Automatic Full View

The other issue I have is that we no longer have the option for an automatic full view of images. Every time we click a new one, we have to click the large thumbnail again to blow it up, and sometimes we have to click AGAIN to get the actual full view. As you can see, not only are many of us presented with an extra step to view art, many of us have 2 extra steps, which is counterintuitive to the streamlining and ease of use of the site.

Proposal

I'm proposing some relatively simple changes that addresses both of these issues, and really shouldn't be much of a headache.

One, give us an option for automatic full view of an image. That way, we're not always forced to click every image we wish to view. It's a small thing, but it really does get tedious and annoying, especially when coming from a version where we didn't have to.

Two, in addition to the download link, perhaps present us with one more option, such as "true full view" or something along those lines. Maybe lump this with our option to have an automatic full view, or even something as simple as a second click of the image giving us the 'true full view', and not the auto-resized version. Something like this would allow us to get the intended view of the image without too much fuss, and without the auto-resize getting in the way.

If there's one thing that's important these days, it's having customization and options. I just think it's a good idea to give us a few options for browsing, because everyone goes about it a little differently, and it would be beneficial for all to be able to tailor their browsing experience to their specific needs.

Also, and this is minor, in Firefox there is a magnifying glass when hovering over the image, so it's clear you can enlarge it, however in Chrome there is not. I think it would be beneficial to make it more clear that clicking the large thumb enlarges it, either by fixing this in Chrome (and potentially other browsers), or a small line of text that says "click to enlarge."

Anyway, great job with the new version, it's much less of a system shock this time around, and I think things have generally improved for the better.

- Reid Southen

_{P.S. I'm sure you've been hearing about it non-stop, but maybe toss a search bar back in at the top. I don't use it enough to care, but I don't think you'll hear the end of it until you re-implement it. Ease of use, right?}