Topic: Steam's UI has been revamped - NEW Public Beta released

[MysterD]

Steam has undergone some major changes in its UI.
And it's gone into Public Beta, too - if you want to test it out and all.

I got it running right now.
Looks mad slick and runs better than the old version of Steam for me.
At least for now...

It uses now WebKit instead of IE for its rendering engine now.

More details here.

[idolminds]

Do I bother reinstalling Steam to see if it doesnt suck for me anymore? Tough call.

[W7RE]

I was reding a thread on NeoGAF where a bunch of people said they lost their entire friends list. I wonder if this is part of the reason.

[MysterD]

I was reding a thread on NeoGAF where a bunch of people said they lost their entire friends list. I wonder if this is part of the reason.

I didn't have much of a friends list, to start w/ - but I've lost nothing so far.
I guess my transition was one of the smoother ones around, if that's the case...

[W7RE]

I tried to install it and all it did was run Steam. Looks exactly the same to me.

EDIT: Nevermind, I'm dumb.

[MysterD]

I tried to install it and all it did was run Steam. Looks exactly the same to me.

EDIT: Nevermind, I'm dumb.

Yeah, you got to restart Steam for the new changes to take effect.

[gpw11]

VERY tempted to try it, but I really don't want to lose my friends list.  Like, it's not a huge deal and it's not a large list or anything (obviously finding you guys and people I actually know wouldn't be a problem), but there are some people on there that are really fun to play DoD and especially L4D on there.  Considering how dead L4D is these days, it'd be a shame to lose the ability to see when other players are on and joining good games directly.

[idolminds]

People were losing their friends list before the beta launched. It had something to do with people that registered on Steam real early, when they first released it. So while probably related to this beta release, if you were going to lose people then its already happened. Hopefully temporary, anyway.

[W7RE]

Yeah, you got to restart Steam for the new changes to take effect.

No I didn't read the part where it said I was supposed to click on beta settings and select the Ui update.

Also it seems to run like balls compared to the old UI. Maybe it's because I'm running WoW at the momeny, but that never affected the old UI. In fact, I like to boot up quake from it while waiting for my raid to start. (it's funny when I boot up quake during a raid because it's so slow, and people in the raid see it because they're on my Steam friends list)

[idolminds]

Hopefully they changed Steam client updates to only download the changed files, because things just got worse if it still redownloads everything for every update. The new UI has caused it to double in size (from ~12MB to ~25MB). Still hasn't finished logging in so I cant comment on the UI update itself.

[idolminds]

One step forward, two steps back.

First, in a reply to the post above me...no, they didn't fix the updating so you end up downloading all 20MB+ every time. Hooray!

I got it updated finally. For some reason it insisted on downloading some file but didn't ever tell me what it was and it never seemed to finish. I got Steam running under Wine on my netbook and updated it that way and just copied it back to the desktop and the problem went away. Never did figure out what it was trying to get.

I do like the new Downloads page. Tells you how big the update is, how much of it you've already downloaded, and an ETA on completion. However...there are still some problems:

1) The ETA calculation is completely broken. No, Steam, I can not download 200MB in under 15 minutes on my connection. How do they get it THIS wrong?

2) Pausing updates is still wonky, where it will continue downloading the last file it was working on until it is done. Probably not a big deal for most, but its really shitty for me. But I know why they do it...

3) No mid-file resuming. Yeah, now that it shows how much has been downloaded I've basically confirmed this.

So theres a 215MB update for Red Orchestra that I want to download. This is spread over 3 files according to the "Verify cache" thing, so there must be some substantial files to grab. I let it run to about 25MB, then "paused" it. When it didnt actually stop eating up my bandwidth, I closed Steam (and then killed the process because Steam will still run and try to get that file!). Next time I started it up it said I had 44MB downloaded, which just shows that yes, it kept downloading.

Now heres the fun bit. When I clicked "Resume", it dropped back to 15MB downloaded. Why? Well, the only reason I can come up with is it started over on the unfinished file. Steam does not support arbitrary pausing of file downloads and won't resume half-finished files. This is SUPER annoying. Just about every server on the internet supports this, why can't Steam?

So yeah, its nicer and it has improved, but underlying problems still remain. You'd think with a large UI update and now making a Mac client (and now rumors of Linux) that this would be the time to fix and improve this background shit.

[Ghandi]

Kind of off topic but I just bought Red Orchestra (Thanks for mentioning it Idol you bastard) and I have two guest passes for 10 free days. Let me know if you are interested.

[idolminds]

I got Red Orchestra updated. I forgot how awesome that game is.

[idolminds]

Warning, Im bitching again.

Article

Since we launched Steam for the Mac a little over a week ago, one of the biggest complaints we have gotten is that we put game content into a "Steam Content" subfolder in the Documents folder. This interferes with how many of our users backup their files, who want to be able to back up their entire Documents folder with Time Machine, Dropbox, or some other software, but who do not want to back up all of their game content. Additionally, many users simply don't like seeing files they don't directly interact with in such a visible location.

So we thought we'd take a moment to tell you why we decided on the Documents folder in the first place, and what we plan to do about it.

Blahbitty blah, you can read the article for the actual reasoning. It doesn't explain why its all in one directory, they just explain why they chose that particular directory on Mac. But this has been an ongoing issue on Windows as well. Steam creates one folder and ALL your Steam games are installed there. Wouldn't it be easier if Steam just kept track of where you wanted stuff installed and let you choose where to put the files?

In an ideal world we would let you choose where the game content files are located, and in the long term that is a goal of ours, but due to architectural issues with our engine this is not as trivial as it may sound.

What engine? Source? Is every game on Steam hamstrung by this issue because of how you botched your own engine? Please don't tell me they hard coded that shit in the engine, but it wouldn't surprise me.

You can almost look past this, but come on now. These are PC developers that have been working mainly on PC for years. Every other game in existence lets you choose the directory you want it installed in. And with people buying their entire game libraries via Steam they expect you to have a HDD big enough to hold all of it in a single directory? Really?

What prompted this? The responses people have to that article.

See, we told you they were great

gotta love Valve..

I like that valve has consistently shown that not only does it provide on going support of a product once shipped, but they listen to user feedback and respond to it.

They haven't really listened to shit, this has been a problem for 6 years on PC. Don't pat them on the back, the underlying issue still exists! Let people choose where to install things!


EDIT

Oh yeah, and I love Red Orchestra. Yesterday I played some, had a good time. Stopped playing for a while and then went to launch the game. The "preparing to launch" window came up. It too 17 minute before the game actually started. Steam was downloading something the entire time...don't know what since there was no updates to Steam or RO made since my last time playing. And people wonder why it drives me up the fucking wall.

[Pugnate]

It doesn't bother me because I always dedicate a single partition to games.

I can see how it would be extremely annoying otherwise.

[Xessive]

I don't really understand why Valve are having such a hard time with it when Stardock make it a viable option in Impulse. Impulse gives you the option to manually choose where to install things or to let it automatically manage everything.

I suppose what makes Steam so intricate is that it needs to be interwoven into each game, as opposed to Impulse which doesn't need to be running at all when you want to play any of the games you acquire through it. If you ask me that's a big plus to Impulse!

[MysterD]

I don't really understand why Valve are having such a hard time with it when Stardock make it a viable option in Impulse. Impulse gives you the option to manually choose where to install things or to let it automatically manage everything.

I suppose what makes Steam so intricate is that it needs to be interwoven into each game, as opposed to Impulse which doesn't need to be running at all when you want to play any of the games you acquire through it. If you ask me that's a big plus to Impulse!

Bingo. I don't run Impulse normally when I run THEIR games. I just boot the game up from its Shortcut and go. If I don't need Impulse to play it, why run it? My PC's getting old - and I don't need more programs running in the background if it is NOT necessary. I might check Impulse for updates now and then, but as soon as that's done - closed it goes.

Usually, I let Impulse install things itself. And for where it goes, I usually stick w/ the default - which often is somewhere in C:\Program Files\[whatever they have it already set for].

Examples for Defaults:
--> Some Stardock-published games (Gal Civ, Gal Civ 2, Demigod) went into C:\Program Files\Stardock\[Game Name].
--> Some 3rd party Impulse-sold games (STALKER: Call of Pripyat, Divine Divinity: Remastered) gone right into C:\Program Files\Indie Games\[Game Name].
--> Shadowgrounds Series Pack went into C:\Program Files\Meridian 9\[Game Name].

EDIT:
But why would Valve make Steam always look for a game within its Steam folder? Why would they lazily do that? Wouldn't you just need to wrap a game's EXE and the game folder somehow w/ Steamworks DRM and it could say force a boot-up of Steam program if you wanted to run a game you bought through Steam?

Well, I guess one would think that would be the logical way to do things, at least...But, no, not Valve...

[Pugnate]

The difference is that steam is DRM. False sense of security or not, it is why publishers put their games on steam.

[Pugnate]

BTW, it has to be said, that while I do agree with all the comments of Idol regarding the technical issues, I think the new steam UI is pretty fantastic. It looks cool, yet isn't overly done with the flashyness. The games library page is just really sweet now.

[Xessive]

The new Steam UI is more effective but I still felt it was a little wonky here and there, and some buttons are just unnecessarily repeated throughout the interface. Anyway, I resorted to using a custom skin for it which I love! It's a minimal skin. That skin alone adjusts a lot of the minor annoyances I had with the default look, plu it has a much crisper look.

Here's a shot:

The auto-resizing may not do it justice, try right-click and "View Image" to see the full size preview.

You can also visit the Steam Skins thread to see some other skins you might like to use.

[idolminds]

I agree that the new UI is an improvement over the old. The downloads page actually telling me how large whatever it is I'm downloading and how much I've already downloaded is a HUGE improvement over the old.

It's too bad. I mean, I see why people like it. When it works and does what its supposed to its almost...nice. Its just these remaining underlying problems that seem to affect only me that make it a horrible experience I avoid at all costs.

[idolminds]

Not my image, but something someone else got. So you must upgrade your OS to keep playing the games that apparently ran fine on your current OS?

[Cobra951]

Seems like ground we have covered repeatedly.  Nothing is really yours if you don't control it.

So how long until WinXP goes the same route?

[MysterD]

Seems like ground we have covered repeatedly.  Nothing is really yours if you don't control it.

So how long until WinXP goes the same route?

Probably not soon.
From the last Steam survey, it was pretty split b/t Win XP and Win 7 users.

EDIT:

Not my image, but something someone else got. So you must upgrade your OS to keep playing the games that apparently ran fine on your current OS?

Another reason to add to my list of reasons to like Impulse over Steam.