As it is now, the new galleries are no improvement over the old ones. Here's a short list (probably incomplete) of functionality that has been lost: while uploading:

• formatting the text to upload. Any HTML gets stripped off, so even the rudimentary formatting that was possible in the previous galleries is gone.
  Why not use FCK Editor for the Notes upload section? That way a poem comes across as intended, a story can have proper captions, italics and so on.
• crediting merchants. The previous way, a set of dropdowns, had the definite advantage of being able to use keyboard shortcuts. Now I have to scroll up and down the list for every merchant I want to credit. Anyone remember carpal tunnel syndrome?
• still missing: a decent way to credit freebie providers. I know, I know, you can't make bucks off freebies, but I'd really love to see the 'merchants' * "Freestuff"  and "Other"* in the list of merchants.
• still missing: a decent way to indicate what apps have been used to create the image. Like most artists I use more than one application to get the final result, so like most artists I always wonder what gallery to post to.
• still missing: indicating more than one genre. Case in point: most of my work involves a continuing fantasy story. What genre? Fantasy or Story/Sequential?

The new keywords may help to indicate the applications and genres, but a couple of checklists would have been much more user friendly.

As for the galleries themselves:

• I sorely miss the Next/Previous links. Browsing through an artists gallery, or through a search result, using Next/Previous was easy, fast, and it saved quite a few mouse clicks. Please reinstate that functionality.
• I definitely DO NOT like the resizing of the images. Too much quality loss, and the fixed format does not take into account that higher resolution screens like 1280x1024, 1600x900 or even more are getting more common everyday. User options to select whether you want to see large images resized to a predefined screen size, or to view them as uploaded would be so much better. Take a look at how the Renderotica gallery software works if you want to know how it should be done.
• The inability to enter single line breaks in comments is more than a little frustrating. Constructive criticism is rendered unreadable since it cannot be separated into logical paragraphs. I do not ask for a full fledged colorful editor, the HTML possibilities of the comment box have been abused in the past, I just want simple line breaks.
• Multiple page comments - what's the use? Only more clicks. Keep them on a single page, please. Even better, make single page/multiple page a user option.
• E-bots. They have been mentioned before, but I really miss the ebots when one of my favorite artists uploads a new image, and I also miss the ebot when someone comments on one of my images. As far as I'm concerned, this bug is priority #1 on the fix list.

There are two positive things to report:

• Voting is gone. I consider this a good thing. Voting has been controversial for I don't know how long, removing the voting option is probably the cleanest solution
• And the changeover was pretty fast. I expected a downtime of at least the announced 12 to 14 hours, and it has been much, much quicker.

Fix these teething problems, and the new galleries will indeed be an improvement. As they are now, they're worse than before.

The pen is mightier than the sword. But if you literally want to have some impact, use a typewriter

My gallery   My freestuff