This site request is not about changing the contest layout, but rather offering an alternative way to view the current contest entries.
One feature that I used to love about the first version of PSC was the scrolling contest page. Under one page, you would scroll down a long page of contest entries.
One page with all the entries sometimes took a while to load, but they loaded as you were scrolling, so while you are looking at one contest entry, the other images would load down below. There was no clicking links, thumbnails, or hitting the back button on your browser to go from one entry to another.
Here is a link from the Internet Archives of what the contest page used to look like.
Not all the images from back then got cached, but the page will give you an idea of how it used to look:
http://web.archive.org/web/20030521180834/photoshopcontest.com/posts.php?forum=525
Another nice thing about it was that you were forced to see full size images of every entry. I'm sure some people's contest entries never get looked at, because members see the thumbnail and opt not to click it to look at it closer.
Would it be possible to code an alternative link to a scrolling contest page that has all the contest entries at 550px width size like they are after you click on the thumbnail to view the image? Not the max resolution of the entry, but the 550px width.