Special delivery: Q&A with deviantART on the new mobile site for iPhone

I’ve been a silent fan of deviantART ever since I first visited the web site not so long ago, it has amazing collections of cool and great state of the art pictures. I mostly visited deviantART web site last, because I usually end up spending too much time browsing the eye-candy arts in there. ;-p

But deviantART’s new mobile web site is speaking out loud of its art collections in iPhone style: sleek, minimalist & easy to use. How easy, you ask? When you point your iPhone’s Safari to deviantART web site, it’ll automatically direct you to the optimized web page for iPhone. Even at the first page, you can quickly jump to its entire collections & categories.

You can click on each art pieces easily, where it’ll open it right away without taking you to a new page. Also, you can enjoy deviantART’s entire films collection in full screen; all can be done with just few finger smudges on your iPhone’s glossy screen. The simple menu lets you go back and forth between what’s popular and new in every category available. deviantART knows that browsing its humongous contents could take awhile, so there’s a bookmark feature to mark every content you desire to see later.

An important comment is made by Josh Lowensohn (Webware), when he tried it himself: “While simple and fairly fast to navigate (even over EDGE), once you get about four levels deep it gets a little cumbersome. Luckily, you're able to get to drill down to a specific category in about three menus.” The lack of faster and larger data transfer is what we all feel in the current iPhone, but perhaps when the iPhone 2.0 is out in June; things will get better with 3G’s speedy connection.

If you’re interested to know more about deviantART, then don’t be shy to jump to its About Us page. At there you’ll find some interesting comments from the people behind deviantART, these charming people are the ones that responsible for making deviantART so big and popular like now.

And now, I'm just going to lay down and bare them all for you the Q&A between me and Angelo Sotiro (deviantART's CEO):

1. What was the inspiration or idea for you to make this new mobile web site that’s specially optimized for iPhone? --- As pretty serious Apple junkies here at deviantART we believe in the future of both the iPhone and iPod Touch products. But that's not the real reason, the truth is the technology we have built here is easily extended to work with many platforms including the Nintendo Wii, Xbox, Palm and other devices that require a simplified but powerful deviantART interface beyond the super-powered version available at deviantART.com
2. Why iPhone? Why now? --- Ultimately the iPhone and iTouch products are one heck of a way to display and share art with your friends when you're on the go.
3. The iPhone 2.0 is just around the corner, and maybe the firmware & Safari web browser will also updated too. Don’t you think it’s a safer bet (for deviantART) to wait till Steve Jobs announced the new 3G iPhone at WWDC ’08 on June? Or perhaps you have your own considerations? --- A newer version of Safari and a faster connection to the phone will only serve to make deviantART's lite interface better. If we have to make some adjustments after their new launch we'll be able to do so very quickly. Again, most of our development team have iPhones... most of our development team will likely sell their old iPhones and buy 3G iPhones when the new ones come out. I'll say again we're *hardcore* Apple Junkies! This interface will be very well protected and upgraded. :P
4. Any future plans to support other web browser such as Opera Mobile/Mini, Windows Mobile’s Pocket IE, Symbian’s or Palm’s Blazer? --- We're considering this, but we did build the iPhone/iPod Touch interface with flexibility in mind for other browsers.
5. Still about your support for iPhone and about iPhone 2.0, do you plan to make a special application for it? And maybe put it into Apple’s future App Store, that’s set to launch along the iPhone 2.0? --- We're finding that for deviantART's purposes WebApps are more than adequate. The only real temptation would be if we couldn't figure out via the web how to do that neat sliding effect from photo to photo. That in itself might be enough motivation to put out an app because it would be *so* awesome to flip through deviations like you do Photos on the device. RIGHT?! mhmm.
6. Okey, maybe I’m jumping ahead on your future game plan. How about this new mobile site of yours, any new features or updates that are coming later? --- Message center support, more commenting options and the ability to set wallpaper for art works artists have approved this behavior for are all next steps. And of course, whatever seems cool while we're working on it will also be added. :-) Any suggestions? We're always open to them. Post on my deviantART Ideas Collection! (http://spyed.deviantart.com/favourites/#deviantART-Ideas)
7. One last and most important inquiry, since all of us here (and also me) are “Palm” addict; any chance to know if you guys there are too? We’re dying to know what are the mobile phones do you guys use there? ;-) --- I'll check in on the responses to this article and I'll visit your forums; if folks really want us to, we'll consider it a lot more seriously. So lets hear it! Would you guys use it? If so say it loud!!

PS: if iPhone is your answer, then I guess I know the answer for question #2 up there… ;-p

Thanks guys, appreciate your honesty! --- Thanks you for your interest, and we're thrilled you dig our work and the work of our members!

[blogged with my Treo 750v]