New Steam UI Hitting Gamers on Monday, April 26
Steam to show off its new look next week.
Steam will have a brand new look come Monday, April 26. The new Steam UI has been in beta since late February, but it'll be launched next week because: a) it's time for a new design, and b) the new rendering engine works for non-Windows platforms.
"We made hundreds of changes to the Steam client as a result of customer feedback on the interface, performance, and functionality," said John Cook, Director of Steam Development at Valve.
"We swapped out the Internet Explorer rendering engine with WebKit, which gives us a bunch of size, stability and performance benefits," explained Cook. "This release of Steam leaves us well prepared for another year of strong growth."
Major features:
- Complete overhaul of Steam client UI design to improve discoverability of features and to better expose all the information related to games in your library
- Complete overhaul of in-game overlay UI design to create a richer in-game experience exposing context sensitive information related to the game you are currently playing
- New game details view, presenting a detailed view of all the information for a single game in your library
- New grid view, presenting a graphical view of your game library
- New news page in the store/client/overlay which aggregates from Valve related news sites, official community groups, and third-party gaming news feeds
- New downloads view in the client, making it easier to track your progress downloading new games or game updates
- New Steam store design, including more integrated community features, improved recommendations, and improved video and screenshots viewing (and much more!)
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I've been using the beta for a while. No doubt it is easier on the eyes than regular steam. To be honest, my favorite update about it is the addition of a clock for the in game overlay.
Finally, the last reason to have IE is gone! I can finally uninstall IE without conflicting with any programs that need it.
woah. i like it. batman AA. steam really does love batman
i hate how steam displays how long you've spent playing games in total and in the past 2 weeks. Some of us like to keep the nerd in us private. Hope they gives us the option to make it private info
I've been using the beta for a few weeks. The improved in-game web browser is the best part.
To be honest, my favorite update about it is the addition of a clock for the in game overlay.
Wow, that's really nice. (y)
I've been using the Beta, but it's still got a ridiculous amount of issues, I'm surprised it's being released...
And yes, the clock is awesome. Even if I ignore it and keep gaming anyway.
i hate how steam displays how long you've spent playing games in total and in the past 2 weeks. Some of us like to keep the nerd in us private. Hope they gives us the option to make it private info
haha my girlfriend came over the other night and was shocked that I had spent a total of 50+/- hours on Bad Company 2 over the entire time it's been out haha and I was like that's like an hour a night! it's not even bad!
haha my girlfriend came over the other night and was shocked that I had spent a total of 50+/- hours on Bad Company 2 over the entire time it's been out haha and I was like that's like an hour a night! it's not even bad!
haha EXACTLY! and 50 hours shows extreme self control for BFBC2 which is an epic of a game.
i hate how steam displays how long you've spent playing games in total and in the past 2 weeks. Some of us like to keep the nerd in us private. Hope they gives us the option to make it private info
If you're ashamed of it, then you should probably stop playing as much man.
Been using the beta. It's awesome!
I've been using it as well and I must admit that it is a heck of allot better then Microsoft's crappy overlay. I wish Microsoft's crap would die away already.
is it me or am i the only one with the horrible font in the new beta? its really hard to read
well ceep in mind you cant play rom total war gold/barbarien, its a real bummer ;(. i got 340H on team fotress2 and a friend got ower 400 on his empire total war.
So Steam keeps track of gaming time. Is anyone else wondering if Steam will start charging by the hour for games? Imagine a pricing model with $1/hr of gaming locked to a specific game, or $5.00/hr where you can play as many games as you want in that hour -- the virtual arcade right in the comfort of your home.
haha my girlfriend came over the other night and was shocked that I had spent a total of 50+/- hours on Bad Company 2 over the entire time it's been out haha and I was like that's like an hour a night! it's not even bad!
Im at 92 hours, it aint that bad either.
BTE Im running this UI since the beta is out and its awesome.
@MrKKBB I think you'd be hard pressed to find gamers willing to rent games by the hour. Personally, I would only want to own. And plus, TommySch would have already shelled out at least $92 for a $50 game, with more to come I'm sure
@MrKKBB I think you'd be hard pressed to find gamers willing to rent games by the hour. Personally, I would only want to own. And plus, TommySch would have already shelled out at least $92 for a $50 game, with more to come I'm sure
My CSS team just got a shiny new BFBC2 server so I would be bankrupted by the end of the year...
On a separate note, does the release of the new UI mean that they'll be releasing the Mac version on the 26th too? If yes, my productivity at work is going to plummet.
Well, I have over 900 hours of TF2.
my amount played is bigger than your amount played
my amount played can beat up your amount played
==]:^{)>
I don't even want to look at the number of hours I've spent playing COD4.
i hate how steam displays how long you've spent playing games in total and in the past 2 weeks. Some of us like to keep the nerd in us private. Hope they gives us the option to make it private info
You always have been able to make your profile private via the community portal.
As for the nerd part, there should be no shame. My Stem only shows 137 hours on TF2 ut I willproudly say I have 800 hours of that awesome game.
And I love the new UI. Multiple ways to actually view games and items so everyone has something.
I hope the new UI performance lives up to the claims in the press release.
They should let you browse your game library with actual box shots. Something like Configurable USB loader does for your WII game collection.
video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBbFuzuavUE
so its the 26th, anybody know why its not released yet?
so its the 26th, anybody know why its not released yet?
Ask this again on the 27th, they still have many hours left in the day (assuming US time zone).