bit-gamer.net

New Steam UI goes into open beta

Published on 24th February 2010 by Joe Martin

Steam's new UI is streamlined to allow quicker access to community features and game downloads.

Valve has rolled out a new beta version of Steam today which completely overhauls the look of the digital distribution service and gives the store and community features an entirely new interface.

The beta is currently opt-in only, which you can do by launching Steam and downloading the '2010 UI Update'. More information on how to do that is available on the official update page.

The new UI seems to have focused on providing more community information and features to players, such as letting you know who on your friends list owns a game via the Store page - so you can judge it before you buy it.

Other new features include a refined news feed, which keeps users clued in on recent releases, updates and sales without all the pop-ups. There's also increased support for achievements and the ability to organise your games library into lists, such as 'Games They Play on the Bit-tech.net Server'.

There's a bunch of new tweaks too, such as more easily read fonts and info about download rates when you install a game. You can check the full feature list on the official site.

How long the update will remain in beta is currently unclear, but in the mean time you can drop into the forums and let us know what you think of the new look.

41 Comments

Discuss in the forums Reply

human_error 24th February 2010, 12:26

Looks good but it's really buggey atm - keeps trying to re-download MW2 multiplayer for example.

Will be great when it's finished and out of beta but until then i'll have to stick to the non-beta client as i dont like re-downloading games for no reason.

flibblesan 24th February 2010, 12:37

Don't install this. It deletes a lot of game data for some games. Currently affected are:
Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2
Company of Heroes
Race 07
Source SDK
HL2
Borderlands
Left 4 Dead 1
Mare Nostrum

Dangerous!

Omnituens 24th February 2010, 12:38

"streamlined"? Don't make me laugh.

The new UI is awful - Ugly, poorly designed and clunky.

Went back to current UI after 30 minutes because the "library" wouldn't behave itself. The UI change is not needed, and at least for me, wanted.

V3ctor 24th February 2010, 12:43

My menus, don't have a thing... they open but there aren't any words... Can't roll back to the "normal" UI

bogie170 24th February 2010, 12:43

Steam = Fail!

yakyb 24th February 2010, 12:53

Looks Like XBMC i Like it was just wondering when an update was coming through

smc8788 24th February 2010, 12:56

Quote:

Originally Posted by flibblesan
Dangerous!

Annoying, yes. Dangerous? Not so much. Once they re-downloaded they worked fine.

There's a hell of a lot of other bugs showing up as well, but guess what - it's a beta! And from Valve of all people. You didn't expect it to be all plain sailing, did you? ;)

Personally, I love the look of the new UI, but cosmetic changes aside the biggest and most important change is the switch from IE to a Webkit-based browser. For this reason alone it's 1000 times better than the old UI.

MitchBomcanhao 24th February 2010, 13:01

Quote:

Originally Posted by V3ctor
My menus, don't have a thing... they open but there aren't any words... Can't roll back to the "normal" UI

Just go to the news section and click the link to the beta settings in the right hand side. it'll open the settings menu and you can select the opt-out option. i had the same problem and that's how i reverted to the old steam.

flibblesan 24th February 2010, 13:08

Quote:

Originally Posted by smc8788
Quote:
Originally Posted by flibblesan
Dangerous!

Annoying, yes. Dangerous? Not so much. Once they re-downloaded they worked fine.

There's a hell of a lot of other bugs showing up as well, but guess what - it's a beta! And from Valve of all people. You didn't expect it to be all plain sailing, did you? ;)

Personally, I love the look of the new UI, but cosmetic changes aside the biggest and most important change is the switch from IE to a Webkit-based browser. For this reason alone it's 1000 times better than the old UI.

Yeh, I guess it's not that bad. Glad I had a steam backup :D

V3ctor 24th February 2010, 13:12

Here's a fix to the menu's problems

http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1159344

It's post #10

Spiny 24th February 2010, 13:22

Yeah, turned it on this morning & it started re-downloading MW2

popcornuk1983 24th February 2010, 13:46

Having the same issue with MW2 multiplayer. I tried to switch back to old style but said files were corrupted. Downloaded from scratch and working fine now.

If anyone is having an Issue with the in client browser not displaying pages or your getting a "testshell-error", here is a something that may solve it:

" To fix you need to open IE8 then go Internet Options->Connections->LAN Settings and UNcheck the automatically detect settings button. This worked for me using Win 7 Ultimate x64."

UncertainGod 24th February 2010, 14:00

Absolutely loving it, they have corrected all the problems that made me hate Steam, no IE dependence any more (<3 WebKit), much faster response time and generally less cluttered and easier to get to things, plus the different views for the library are a huge improvement.

cyrilthefish 24th February 2010, 14:17

Loving the new UI.

Much faster and much better laid out than the old one.
I'm especially liking the new library and download monitor, though they still have the issue where some games will randomly set themselves into 'update - paused' mode

still very much in beta though, most of the web-browser bits are broken for me (get a blank page with 'testshell-error:' in the URL bar for the store and community pages at the moment)
Edit: from the steam forums it's broken if automatically detect settings is left enabled in IE

Quote:

Fix
I had this problem for a while and it seems to be a conflict with Internet Explorer 8. To fix you need to open IE8 then go Internet Options->Connections->LAN Settings and UNcheck the automatically detect settings button. This worked for me using Win 7 Ultimate x64.

*sigh* IE still breaks things even when you're not using it

chimaera 24th February 2010, 14:24

I'm definitely glad to see the back of IE for it and hope the new system works out. I have run into one problem though - I have a remote session set up to one of my machines at home, and a fairly frequent use of that is to buy and download Steam games that I then back up, and reinstal onto my games machine when I get home from work.

Only problem is the new interface is ungodly slow on it :(

However, thats a fairly specialist use so I can't really hold against it too much.

GFC 24th February 2010, 14:43

New ui looks worse then the old one. This is pretty rare, especially for Valve. Oh well. I at least hope they will either leave an option to use old ui (which looks good. no need to change it), or just improve this one.

neillyb 24th February 2010, 14:54

I absolutely love it. Had no problems with needing to redownload anything. It's a keeper!

TWeaK 24th February 2010, 15:09

Quote:

Originally Posted by smc8788
Personally, I love the look of the new UI, but cosmetic changes aside the biggest and most important change is the switch from IE to a Webkit-based browser. For this reason alone it's 1000 times better than the old UI.

^^ This. I sent an email to Valve a couple months ago since I've uninstalled IE - whenever I get a link I couldn't load it, not even the damn screenshots of games. This sound much better, and I'll put up with other changes.

I would however like the games list to have an option to go back to the old style, or at least something smaller. The smallest style now takes up as much screen space for one game as 2 or 3 games would have in the old UI.

Centy-face 24th February 2010, 15:44

I really like the new Steam much better functionality for me in terms of displaying games, I have over 160 so it was actualy becoming an issue.

Streamlined and shiny there are a few things I don't like such as the new list system being pretty much pointless without a quicker way of adding games to it.

Unlike a fair few of my friends I never lost my friend list or had many games deleted though Company of Heroes Opposing Fronts felt the need to redownload more than 1gb when the switch happened. I suspect it was because I wasn't online at the time.

I do find it uses over 128mb of ram when launching a game and can use even more when I quit but that may just be a bug. Overall I'm happy with it and it certainly needed an overhaul of some kind I have no problems with substance over style (Mumble>Teamspeak/Vent) but a bit of flash and dazzle never hurt anyone.

ssj12 24th February 2010, 16:38

I like the new UI

bodkin 24th February 2010, 17:36

Does it work with proxie servers yet?

pendragon 24th February 2010, 17:52

I haven't looked, but I expect the final product will recieve the high polish that all Valve products currently exhibit.. My only concern is that they don't end up like Facebook.com with a new UI every other month :P that gets damn annoying

mi1ez 24th February 2010, 19:01

Backing up now ready to give it a go...

HourBeforeDawn 24th February 2010, 19:47

huh when I get off work, Im going to have to give this a shot.

Dreaming 24th February 2010, 20:08

Reminds me of iTunes.

But I like it.

Hg 24th February 2010, 20:14

the new UI has its good points and its bad points, the worst point being the super large 48p text icons,makes it look very zune like....

enciem 24th February 2010, 21:41

I really like the overall look of it but I went straight back tot he old one when I saw I couldn't have the little list view of games.

Would be nice if it had some sort of auto-hide for the left side of my screen with those new game icons (as long is as it wasn't too jerky or slow to load).

DeathAwaitsU 24th February 2010, 22:15

Dont like the colour, looks ok besides that. tbh im not all that bothered about a ui update, not when its just theold one with bells on (anyone who says im wrong please explain the old skool update window pops up if ure not connected to the net :/).

smc8788 24th February 2010, 23:30

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hg
the new UI has its good points and its bad points, the worst point being the super large 48p text icons,makes it look very zune like....

Quote:

Originally Posted by enciem
I really like the overall look of it but I went straight back tot he old one when I saw I couldn't have the little list view of games.

Would be nice if it had some sort of auto-hide for the left side of my screen with those new game icons (as long is as it wasn't too jerky or slow to load).

Are you using the detailed view? That just gives you a basic list on the left pretty much like the old UI did.

Quote:

Originally Posted by DeathAwaitsU
Dont like the colour

You can't really get any more neutral than black, I'd imagine they thought it would be a safe bet. I liked the colour of the old UI much less.

Quote:

Originally Posted by DeathAwaitsU
tbh im not all that bothered about a ui update, not when its just theold one with bells on

But it's not the same as the old one; as I and other have said, the update has changed a lot of the backend and completely removes the dependency on IE of the old client.

wuyanxu 24th February 2010, 23:42

hum... removed dependency on IE....... Steam for Linux or Mac soon?

smc8788 24th February 2010, 23:47

Quote:

Originally Posted by wuyanxu
hum... removed dependency on IE....... Steam for Linux or Mac soon?

I don't see the point TBH, since very few games would be able to run on them anyway.

UncertainGod 25th February 2010, 00:15

When you dig through the client there are hooks for a Mac version.

sheninat0r 25th February 2010, 00:29

I like the new Steam.

You can very nearly replicate the old games list if you do not want the icons next to the game name - in the top right of the library view, click the middle icon to turn on list view then right click the column headers and remove the "Image" column. Personally, I like the list view with images on, even though more space is used.

I've noticed that in the default library view (the search icon) the special backgrounds do not load when you switch your selected game. The old image disappears, but the background is grey until I close and re-open the main Steam window.

HourBeforeDawn 25th February 2010, 02:01

okay this feels more like an Alpha release then it does a Beta release but just the same not to bad I suppose but I still have a lot more playing around before I come to any real conclusion.

UncertainGod 25th February 2010, 02:21

Nothing like an Alpha release at all, it's feature complete and relatively stable, yes there are migration bugs and a few misplaced UI elements but they are small fry issues.

Draksis 25th February 2010, 06:42

General question for all you steam users: How is steam to use these days? particularly with a slow connection (256k line - ya, i know - ass end of the world here ).

Thing is, last time I used steam was back with HL2, and it was quite horrid.

still the same? or can't do without?

perplekks45 25th February 2010, 08:29

Quote:

Originally Posted by bogie170
Steam = Fail!

You're so 2004! :p

sakzzz 25th February 2010, 15:29

The best part i liked about it: If u go under add friends it shows u the ppl u played with recently and u can add them as frnds with one click.
.
No problems here: TF2 runs fine

Saivert 25th February 2010, 22:20

also new in-game overlay makes more sense. it's not just a bunch of windows. which is annoying.
there are fixed location boxes with the information you want the most. everything else is popup browser windows.

Bottom-line: I like it

enciem 25th February 2010, 22:28

Quote:

Originally Posted by smc8788
Quote:
Originally Posted by Hg
the new UI has its good points and its bad points, the worst point being the super large 48p text icons,makes it look very zune like....
Quote:
Originally Posted by enciem
I really like the overall look of it but I went straight back tot he old one when I saw I couldn't have the little list view of games.

Would be nice if it had some sort of auto-hide for the left side of my screen with those new game icons (as long is as it wasn't too jerky or slow to load).

Are you using the detailed view? That just gives you a basic list on the left pretty much like the old UI did.

Quote:
Originally Posted by DeathAwaitsU
Dont like the colour

You can't really get any more neutral than black, I'd imagine they thought it would be a safe bet. I liked the colour of the old UI much less.

Quote:
Originally Posted by DeathAwaitsU
tbh im not all that bothered about a ui update, not when its just theold one with bells on

But it's not the same as the old one; as I and other have said, the update has changed a lot of the backend and completely removes the dependency on IE of the old client.

Can't say I can get the little view at all, detailed or not. I like it when it's as thin as most of the titles. Can't get it to do that myself.

DeathAwaitsU 26th February 2010, 12:42

Whoever said its black, its not, its grey, obdisan was black, and thats the scheme i like :) Fits with my desktop, this ones just fugly, give me obdisan and ill use the new ui :)