Introducing deviantART v6

This is the first ever published glimpse at v6, but this post is entirely technical in nature. For those in the community interested in the design process, this is for you. For those who want the whiz bang of getting going using the interface; wait a week.

To start, please take a close look at where we started with this concept: [link]

The Footer

Now, take a look at [link] and you'll see (and I'm really proud to say) that this is one I nailed almost perfectly with my first sketch for it. Which is quite a feat! It goes from my sketches, through to the devious technology creative crew, bounced off the UI folks in devious technology, back and forth a bunch, until we all buy in to the concept and its implementation. It's quite flattering to have your original mocks for something remain mostly untouched. Makes me really happy

Andrew and I internally discuss often the need for a bit of mess to make community feel just right. It's the human touch that this brings that's important. I like to know symbolically that there's all kinds of stuff going on within a community, so putting this kind of information in the footer and making it seem complex to outside visitors just adds an extra bit of what can only be described as goodness.

Now if you don't like it you can click the HIDE arrows and it compresses once or twice. Either rid yourself of the channel switcher, keep the switcher and kill the widgets, or kill both and have a bar that looks close to the one we've got in v5!

There are some pages where this footer is inappropriate, like on deviation pages where we just didn't want this sort of thing interfering with other peoples art work. Also on user pages! But on search pages and in various places this is right there with you... sort of like the original left and right hand bars on deviantART v1, v2 and v3!

Next up you should expect these footer "widgets" to be expanded, giving you the ability to swap them out for ones you like better

Crazy, Crazy to the brilliance of the people within Devious Technology and Devious Technology Creative - Please do not attribute this work exclusively to me or even mostly. Full credits to be posted at the time of release.