Steam Library Beta Coming Sept 17th

This is more or less a 'meh' update to the UI. New color scheme is nice if you like gray / metallic tones, and easy on my 52 year old eyeballs.
 
What's freaking amazing is that they managed to make it even worse than the beta version was.

What's the age old rule? If it ain't broke don't try to fix it.
 
termite said:
I don't hate it. But I also still dump a games shortcut to desktop, and really go into Steam for installing/Uninstalling and buying games.
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I'm pretty sure that even if I used every single grid space on all 3 of my monitors, I wouldn't be able to have enough space for the amount of icons necessary for how many things I launch through steam. I'm at nearly 800 installed games.
(There's some math I can do to double check... )
Looks like I can have about 350 icons per screen if I fill up every single tile of my desktop at the default icon size, so, fine, I *could* actually have icons for every single game installed, but damn it would be inconvenient and hella ugly, likewise i'd have to remove my rainmeter monitoring skins....
 
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Auer said:
Also I like how the individual pages for the games you own are laid out. Much clearer.
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They are completely useless now. All I see on individual games pages are "Activity" and "community content" in center stage neither of which contains useful information for me. What used to be there is achievements news and workshop content, all of which were useful.

I also dislike the icons in the games list, it's completely unnecessary and makes it look cluttered. It was clean and neat before. Plus despite the actual font being smaller, somehow they manage to list less games in the same amount of space.

The update also went and erased my categories for games. Instead they introduced "collections" which is the same freaking thing, just with a different name, you can't even imagine a more unnecessary change than that.

There is also no longer a separate category for apps and no separate category for VR games either. Both applications you purchased on steam and VR games are just displayed between the normal games without any distinction.

The What's new page is also so useless, taking up half the window even when there is no news, same goes for the activity and community content tabs on the individual games pages.

All in all: Worst update ever.

There is a workaround to go back to the old UI for now, but I doubt it will last long, valve will probably start banning old client versions after a while.
 
polonyc2 said:
seems like a lot of people around here hate change...old Steam looked dated and had a 90's UI...it now looks modern and clean...sure there are issues but overall it's a big improvement
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If you think this is bad, you should see the Windows threads. :D ;) I am cool with the change but then again, I did not waste money on 100's of games, only about 85. :)
 
polonyc2 said:
seems like a lot of people around here hate change...old Steam looked dated and had a 90's UI...it now looks modern and clean...sure there are issues but overall it's a big improvement
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It might look more modern, but that's no excuse for being worse in every other way. If It can't serve its purpose as well, I don't care how it looks.
Everyone seems to forget not to hurt usability when they are updating an UI or website nowadays.

It's not the look that's the problem, it's the functionality.
 
New interface is totally web based. Consumes too many resources, spawns http clients and network connections. I launch with —no- browser and use a game shortcut for launch. Otherwise steam web helper procs spawn.

just found this and going to try for old interface. Confirmed below args eliminate steamwebhelper.

Launch Steam with parameters: "-no-browser +open steam://open/minigameslist"
 
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I like it because it's clean.

steam1.png
 
TheSlySyl said:
I'm pretty sure that even if I used every single grid space on all 3 of my monitors, I wouldn't be able to have enough space for the amount of icons necessary for how many things I launch through steam. I'm at nearly 800 installed games.
(There's some math I can do to double check... )
Looks like I can have about 350 icons per screen if I fill up every single tile of my desktop at the default icon size, so, fine, I *could* actually have icons for every single game installed, but damn it would be inconvenient and hella ugly, likewise i'd have to remove my rainmeter monitoring skins....
Click to expand...

Yeah, I remember those days. I stopped trying to keep all my games installed years ago. Initially just to keep to games I am actually playing, later on I moved all games to SSD so kept numbers down for a while. If I have more than a few games installed I end up jumping around too much.
 
anyone else having issues where leaving steam open now just makes windows randomly act like it's loading something in the background?
 
termite said:
Yeah, I remember those days. I stopped trying to keep all my games installed years ago. Initially just to keep to games I am actually playing, later on I moved all games to SSD so kept numbers down for a while. If I have more than a few games installed I end up jumping around too much.
Click to expand...

Well, I only have 85 games so, for the most part, I can keep them all installed. However, if I had 800 games then yes, I would not be able to install everything at once. That said, I like the interface, which operates fast in Ubuntu 19.10 but, it has issues restoring my cloud saves, for some reason. (Might be an issue on my install, however.)
 
Let's see the old steam library:

old.png


Search and category switching takes minimal space, isn't obtrusive

Installed games list is neat, no cavalcade of flashy icons messing up the look, VR games and Applications listed separately not mixed with games. Font is easy to read, spacing is ideal to list lots of games.

Wasted space

Things that actually matters and interest me.

And the new?

new.png


Search and category switching takes more than 3 times the space, is unnecessarily complicated and less functional

Games list mixes apps vr games, and regular games, no separation unless you do it manually. Icons clutter the list, that don't blend in with the background, making it look messy. Font is less easy on the eyes, spacing is bigger, so less items fit in the same screen area.

Half the window is wasted for no reason

Totally useless garbage that has zero interest to me, which is shown even when empty, have to scroll down for anything useful, and even there it is cramped to the right into small boxes next to the "community content" which goes on forever.
 
Mega6 said:
New interface is totally web based. Consumes too many resources, spawns http clients and network connections. I launch with —no- browser and use a game shortcut for launch. Otherwise steam web helper procs spawn.

just found this and going to try for old interface.

Launch Steam with parameters: "-no-browser +open steam://open/minigameslist"
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Steam interface has always been web-based. It's just that now it's modern. Not sure how much more resources it takes. As for requests, that is how the modern web works. Just loading gmail spawns at least 150 requests for data alone. That excludes images, styles, scripts and whatnot. Used to be all that was hidden because the server was doing a lot of it behind the scenes.
 
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People are acting like steam is supposed to cater to 40-60 year olds or richer people with families like a large number of people on these forums are. Steam has to compete with Origin and Epic so it has to cater to kids also. Don't like it? Don't use it. Need to deal with change, that's just how life works.
 
Falkentyne said:
People are acting like steam is supposed to cater to 40-60 year olds or richer people with families like a large number of people on these forums are. Steam has to compete with Origin and Epic so it has to cater to kids also. Don't like it? Don't use it. Need to deal with change, that's just how life works.
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Well, maybe they can ditch their steam library and switch to another service, you know, in protest and "morality"? :D It is a place to launch your games, not a freaking car that you just bought. (Not you personally, of course.)
 
Falkentyne said:
People are acting like steam is supposed to cater to 40-60 year olds or richer people with families like a large number of people on these forums are. Steam has to compete with Origin and Epic so it has to cater to kids also. Don't like it? Don't use it. Need to deal with change, that's just how life works.
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No, you're right, there is absolutely no reason to cater to people who have money to buy lots of games, what a dumb idea!

Now: Don't like it don't buy it!
2 months later: Disappointing sales, but WHY?
 
dgz said:
Steam interface has always been web-based. It's just that now it's modern. Not sure how much more resources it takes. As for requests, that is how the modern web works. Just loading gmail spawns at least 150 requests for data alone. That excludes images, styles, scripts and whatnot. Used to be all that was hidden because the server was doing a lot of it behind the scenes.
Click to expand...
Launching no browser nothing not even the game list is there now so obviously it’s more web based. And if you don’t think steamwebhelper procs aren’t slowing your FPS down, think again. Don’t bring up gmail. It’s not relevant.
 
Mega6 said:
Launching no browser nothing not even the game list is there now so obviously it’s more web based. And if you don’t think steamwebhelper procs aren’t slowing your FPS down, think again. Don’t bring up gmail. It’s not relevant.
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You appear to be right. There are a few more steam associated processes. That's without a game running

249360_steam_web_helper.png
 

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termite said:
Yeah, I remember those days. I stopped trying to keep all my games installed years ago. Initially just to keep to games I am actually playing, later on I moved all games to SSD so kept numbers down for a while. If I have more than a few games installed I end up jumping around too much.
Click to expand...
This isn't all my games. This is roughly 1/3rd of my games.
It's also a collection of games from 4 different launchers, all set to launch through steam because it previously was the only launcher that was small enough to make sense on my desktop. I keep the rest minimized because they were too fucking big and unweildy.

Also yes, jumping around is the point. I don't want to wait to download a game if I want to play it, and I also don't want to delete and redownload games as that's unnecessary.

These all fit on a single, SSD cached hard drive and I still have room to spare
Everyone plays things differently.
 
TheSlySyl said:
This isn't all my games. This is roughly 1/3rd of my games.
It's also a collection of games from 4 different launchers, all set to launch through steam because it previously was the only launcher that was small enough to make sense on my desktop. I keep the rest minimized because they were too fucking big and unweildy.

Also yes, jumping around is the point. I don't want to wait to download a game if I want to play it, and I also don't want to delete and redownload games as that's unnecessary.

These all fit on a single, SSD cached hard drive and I still have room to spare
Everyone plays things differently.
Click to expand...

I dig.

I only keep a few games around at a time. Just my personality.
 
Falkentyne said:
People are acting like steam is supposed to cater to 40-60 year olds or richer people with families like a large number of people on these forums are. Steam has to compete with Origin and Epic so it has to cater to kids also. Don't like it? Don't use it. Need to deal with change, that's just how life works.
Click to expand...

I'm not sure how wanting to see useful information is catering to 40-60 year olds. Steam workshop, update history, a quick link to the store page, a quick list showing which DLC you own and don't own, a tab to open your screen shots, achievements (for those that care). Why I am seeing fan art for people not even on my Steam friends list before all of that makes no sense. There are youtube videos for entirely different games embedded there or real world aircraft videos with no context for planes that aren't even in the game. I am using Ace Combat 7 as an example, because that is at the top of my list.

While some of it can be interesting, it shouldn't be in your game library. It should be in the community content area.
 
One weird thing I've noticed is that some games have recent news and displayed on their page and others don't, it's not a issue of whether there's recent news because one game that doesn't show any had 2 or 3 news items from the last week listed before the update.

polonyc2 said:
seems like a lot of people around here hate change...old Steam looked dated and had a 90's UI...it now looks modern and clean...sure there are issues but overall it's a big improvement
Click to expand...

I can't speak for everyone but I think a lot of people are annoyed that UI/UX seems to take a backseat these days to whatever look the designers are going for. Graphic designers make horrible and sometimes even unusable interfaces if you let them just like UI designers make butt ugly interfaces if you let them, the only thing worse is to leave it to the back end programmers that will often somehow make one that's both ugly and unusable(but easy to tie into, lol).

For years there was a push towards minimalist interfaces(partially because of mobile interface design influences) that often buried or even removed useful features, this is part of a newer push to the other extreme with lot's of clutter and shinies. It's not all bad but I think there's more bad than good as well as some truly baffling decisions like using a font that makes the game list harder to read or replacing several useful interface formats with the new one instead of just adding it as a option. Heck make it the default option for all I care as long as they leave the others.

sirmonkey1985 said:
anyone else having issues where leaving steam open now just makes windows randomly act like it's loading something in the background?
Click to expand...

I haven't had that issue but if I scroll through a list of about 20 games in the new tiled window it nearly pegs a fully boosted core on my 2700x and when I scrolled through it before removing all the shelves it was lagging my PC enough to make the cursor skip. I suspect it's downloading large images for the tiles and then resizing them on the fly as it loads them but almost has to be more than that for how resource intensive it is. The other thought I had is that might be screwing with DPC latency since my PC doesn't usually lag like that even for heavy spiked loads.
 
Ebernanut said:
One weird thing I've noticed is that some games have recent news and displayed on their page and others don't, it's not a issue of whether there's recent news because one game that doesn't show any had 2 or 3 news items from the last week listed before the update.



I can't speak for everyone but I think a lot of people are annoyed that UI/UX seems to take a backseat these days to whatever look the designers are going for. Graphic designers make horrible and sometimes even unusable interfaces if you let them just like UI designers make butt ugly interfaces if you let them, the only thing worse is to leave it to the back end programmers that will often somehow make one that's both ugly and unusable(but easy to tie into, lol).

For years there was a push towards minimalist interfaces(partially because of mobile interface design influences) that often buried or even removed useful features, this is part of a newer push to the other extreme with lot's of clutter and shinies. It's not all bad but I think there's more bad than good as well as some truly baffling decisions like using a font that makes the game list harder to read or replacing several useful interface formats with the new one instead of just adding it as a option. Heck make it the default option for all I care as long as they leave the others.



I haven't had that issue but if I scroll through a list of about 20 games in the new tiled window it nearly pegs a fully boosted core on my 2700x and when I scrolled through it before removing all the shelves it was lagging my PC enough to make the cursor skip. I suspect it's downloading large images for the tiles and then resizing them on the fly as it loads them but almost has to be more than that for how resource intensive it is. The other thought I had is that might be screwing with DPC latency since my PC doesn't usually lag like that even for heavy spiked loads.
Click to expand...

I get no lag at all browsing in tile mode..maybe because I dont have more than maybe 50+ games?

For me the whole experience is smooth, and I'm on a much lesser CPU than you are (Xeon 1620)
 
Auer said:
I get no lag at all browsing in tile mode..maybe because I dont have more than maybe 50+ games?

For me the whole experience is smooth, and I'm on a much lesser CPU than you are (Xeon 1620)
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I have over 100 and I think some of them were displayed in multiple categories but many people have more than that.

It might just be an issue with certain configurations but I've seen more than a few complaining about it, it also hasn't been a noticeable issue since I decluttered things a bit.
 
cybereality said:
I like it. Looks more modern and was due for an upgrade.
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I just opened Steam for the first time in a few weeks, and actually like this layout. And people are complaining that its no longer just a single spaced text list of games? Christ, people will bitch about everything - and I want to slap them all, either one at a time, single file; or just all together, like in one shot.

tenor.gif
 

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As a former UI designer if you're trying to make the interface the point of the design you've already failed.
 
odditory said:
I just opened Steam for the first time in a few weeks, and actually like this layout. And people are complaining that its no longer just a single spaced text list of games? Christ, people will bitch about everything - and I want to slap them all, either one at a time, single file; or just all together, like in one shot.
Click to expand...


agree, there's some things i like but the game pages just feel super cluttered/busy now with the new layout even though it's pretty much the same information the old layout had. i think that's peoples primary gripe with it. i'll get use to it eventually though.
 
odditory said:
I just opened Steam for the first time in a few weeks, and actually like this layout. And people are complaining that its no longer just a single spaced text list of games? Christ, people will bitch about everything - and I want to slap them all, either one at a time, single file; or just all together, like in one shot.

View attachment 196812
Click to expand...

Oh, a wise guy. Well tell me wise man... could they make it so it doesn't take 10-30s to draw/redraw the library screen every time I refresh/click/maximize window (from taskbar)? Its not just those with lots of games installed and not based on system specs.

Perhaps I'd also like to be able to go back to my list view instead of being forced to see the damn grid view. WIth its pointless little icons on the left with cruddy font for game titles or the new grid panel that is worse than the old one for giving you decent info. The new "home screen" with its new "shelves" would be tolerable if I could turn them all off. Even with small icons, the non gpu accelerated UI option and low bandwidth mode they still can't draw the screen fast and even when I move the mouse around to force the refresh faster it will usually leave one corner not drawn for another 10-30 seconds. I can't click on the new home button or its search bar when the damn program can't draw them properly.


TLDR: How hard is it to keep in a minimalist/small option available like before and even more so, how hard is it to code a UI that isn't slow as molasses. At least for me it doesn't seem to be using more cpu cycles, maybe 250mb more ram that usual with more steamwebhelper.exe's active.

https://preview.redd.it/njmd5n413yv...bp&s=8b3329ccc8f29894ae85173714dcd7ad5a9dcab5

Video explaining the problem on refresh/draw:

 
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Ranulfo said:
Oh, a wise guy. Well tell me wise man... could they make it so it doesn't take 10-30s to draw/redraw the library screen every time I refresh/click/maximize window (from taskbar)? Its not just those with lots of games installed and not based on system specs.

Perhaps I'd also like to be able to go back to my list view instead of being forced to see the damn grid view. WIth its pointless little icons on the left with cruddy font for game titles or the new grid panel that is worse than the old one for giving you decent info. The new "home screen" with its new "shelves" would be tolerable if I could turn them all off. Even with small icons, the non gpu accelerated UI option and low bandwidth mode they still can't draw the screen fast and even when I move the mouse around to force the refresh faster it will usually leave one corner not drawn for another 10-30 seconds. I can't click on the new home button or its search bar when the damn program can't draw them properly.


TLDR: How hard is it to keep in a minimalist/small option available like before and even more so, how hard is it to code a UI that isn't slow as molasses. At least for me it doesn't seem to be using more cpu cycles, maybe 250mb more ram that usual with more steamwebhelper.exe's active.

https://preview.redd.it/njmd5n413yv...bp&s=8b3329ccc8f29894ae85173714dcd7ad5a9dcab5

Video explaining the problem on refresh/draw:

Click to expand...


All I can think is, suck it up, buttercup. :D You have two choices, deal with it or ditch your games and use someone else's launcher instead. Seriously, do you think Gabe worries about the gamers, when his company has not made a new game in at least a decade? Oh well, I am fine with the new interface and it works very smoothly, not sure what the problem is for other.
 
Yeah, I mean, there are things that can be improved. I'll give you guys that. It's not perfect, but at least it's some progress.

I mean, it has been like 10 years of Steam 125MB updates every week and this is the FIRST TIME anything significant has changed.
 
I noticed on Wi-Fi, game library takes FOREVER to load up completely.

Direct connection it's not a problem.

Not a fan, but I don't really hate it either.
 
cybereality said:
Yeah, I mean, there are things that can be improved. I'll give you guys that. It's not perfect, but at least it's some progress.

I mean, it has been like 10 years of Steam 125MB updates every week and this is the FIRST TIME anything significant has changed.
Click to expand...

Yep it has never changed:
F3JUQ.jpg
/s

They've updated it several times throughout the years though the last few years they've focused more on big picture mode.
 
Knew someone was going to post that shot. I meant recently, certainly it has been a long time since a major revamp.
 
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