No, your browser has not taken an odd turn and decided to display deviantART in a wacked out manner. Welcome to DAv3!

Our resident programming expert $chris and CSS god +pachunka, along with a number of other folks, have created the future of deviantART. DAv3, while online, is still a work in progress but we wanted to launch it for everyone. There are outstanding issues so do not be surprised if something does not work, or does not work as planned. Hang in there as we are continuing to fix all these "problems."

So, what is new? Here is a list of what is new with DAv3. It does not contain the countless DAv2 bugs that have been fixed but, rather, just the major points of DAv3 and Napalm.

• SPEEEEEEEEEEED
• Completely skinnable interface with skins for past designs
  • Version 3 and Version 2 available to everyone
  • Version 1 (Classic) and others available to subscribers
• Deviations
  • Submission
    
    • Multiple step process
    • Automatically shows writing submission form for poetry/prose
    • EXIF data is extracted from images taken with digital cameras and displayed (info such as camera model, shutter speed, date taken)
  • Editing
    • Rewritten from scratch
    • Really works now
  • Multiple levels of categories
• Browsing
  • Browse views, consistent across deviantART: Browsing, Galleries, Searching, etc
  • Larger 150x150 pixel thumbnails for subscribers
  • Mature content filter
  • Separate category and subcategory select boxes, filled by javascript
• Comments
  • Comment views
    
    • Nested, shows replies indented below the parent
    • Threaded, shows one level of replies
    • Flat, same as version 2
    • None, for dialup users or users who don't want to see comments
  • Comment ordering
  • Per-page limits
  • Comment rating system
  • Minimum comment rating, so low rated comments are hidden
  • Ability to hide signatures, avatars, and the comment rating select box
• User pages
  
  • Added Yahoo! Messenger ID
• Messages
  • Each section is limited to 25, with a more link for people with many messages
  • Checkboxes beside each message allow you to mark individual messages as read
  • Added journal watch to show new journals by your friends
  • Added forum and comment watch to show replies to your comments and forum threads
• Redone journal editor allows you to edit previous journals
• Notes
  • Can create your own fully nestable notes folders
  • Limited to 50 per page with links to each page
  • Your friends list is shown below the recipient field when sending a new note, allowing you to quickly send a note to a friend
  • Sent Items can be deleted, without deleting the note from the recipient's Inbox
  • You can see the entire recipient list of a note addressed to multiple users
• Friends
  • Single list of friends with checkboxes beside each user to add or remove that friend from your deviantList, deviation watch or journal watch
  • Ability to create friend groups which allow you to group your friends so you can address notes to the group, as well as show groups in a tree in the deviantList
• Forum
  • Nested, so replies show below parent
  • Comment rating system
• Random deviant and random deviation features
• Email address confirmation
  • Email addresses must be confirmed before they can be used, reducing abuse
  • Each email address is limited to 3 accounts
• Settings
  • Geographic coordinates, automatically puts the appropriate tags on your user page and pings GeoURL
  • User configurable time zones which show dates and times on the site in your time
• Far more backend changes than we can list here, resulting in a faster and less buggy site all around.

Features that are still to come:

• Deviation and Writing browse views
• Notification
  • Via notes, email or your cellphone
  • A wide variety of events can be configured to send notifications
• Collections (previously devpacks)
• The ability to edit your signature
• ...and more!

The final free stuff giveaway will be postponed until tomorrow. However, if you have visited deviantART today then you will be eligible to win any of the prizes so do not fret! Thanks for a highly eventful and extremely fun birthday bash.