(Only been) A Month since I last-- oh wait. That's April (Apr), not August (Aug). And here I was thinking "that feels Far Too recent than I remember" (and well I was right).

I haven't touched Photoshop in forever, don't even have it installed in my laptop now -- nor GIMP, or that... that other thing I seem to be vaguely remember hearing mention of somewhere (yes, yes, very vague); I don't think I ever gave GIMP enough of a shot to get used to it and I haven't even looked to download the vague unnamed thing that someone once suggested. I haven't scanned anything in a long while and have no black ink in my printer so my printer/scanner has not been switched on in some time. And I have albums and albums of photos that I haven't gone through and looked at (lets not even mention deviations).

But... I have been back to deviantART... well... off and on. Mostly just going to the deviantART.com main page and using that as a start jumping point.

The reason I opened a new journal entry though... was not entirely to write another "gah, I've been inactive/away" / "I am inactive/away... still" journal, that's really rehashing old news for me / for this account.


No, the reason is that I've been semi-browsing Feature deviantART News articles; you know, the kind that are usually chock full of thumbnails for your browsing pleasure? Now these are kind of nice, and some are carefully put together, with different degrees of time and effort put into them, and thumbnails are nice... but unless there's a new setting or something that I'm missing (maybe it's been added as a premium one or something), I don't quite understand the point of putting together a feature article full of Nude or Matured Content Thumbnails.

Now, I don't know about you, and I have little against nude art or matured content (some are quite tastefully done and/or used to good effect, others... maybe less so), but the thumbnails for deviations with this setting show Nothing and make it very hard for me to navigate sometimes. Could you at least... I don't know, add/include the title (possibly as a text link or below the thumbnail) or something? If not a bit of a description or maybe even copypaste the Artist's comment (if there is one). I don't always remember to pay attention to or look at the url of the thumbnail (in the bottom of the browser) when browsing before clicking and even if I did it'd be easier to see something of that without having to mouseover.

I... don't actually see much point in putting together a feature containing nothing but white boxes with no entry sign symbols actually (vs. one with text links or [link]s, though if there are a lot of them then separating into segments and/or numbering them might be a good idea), sure you can click them to go to the deviation itself which is sort of the point but with so many of them it kind of feels like a really blind game of the card game match or mystery box (aka choose One for your Prize or chance at a price) which after a while with so many can become tiring. I guess maybe part of why people do it might be half out of habit (like thumbnails for deviations without the curtain) and half because the thumbnail tag is shorter than the link.