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Steam UI Update Beta Drops IE Rendering For WebKit
Citing massive growth in their user base ("25 million users, 1000+ games, 12 billion player minutes per month, and 75 billion Steam client minutes per month"), Valve unveiled a revamped UI for Steam on Tuesday, opening the beta test to anyone who wants to try it out. There are many changes, and an increased focus on social features: "Right from within your own game Library, you can now track which of your friends plays each game or invite them to play one with you. Before you've even bought a game, knowing whether your friends play it is one of the most useful pieces of information to have. So on the store homepage, there's a new listing of what your friends have bought or played lately." Tracking games and achievements have both gotten simpler, and Valve has dropped the Internet Explorer rendering engine in favor of WebKit. An enterprising user also found files that may indicate the existence of an OS X Steam client.
You do know you can add shortcuts to non-steam games in Steam too? That way you also get the in-game browser and community features in it. You're the first person I've actually heard of using the Vista/Win7 game explorer though, if not using Steam it's much faster to write part of the game's name to start menu search box and launch it.
How does Steam let the whole world know if you're playing or not? Even if you use your usual nickname with Steam, set your profile status to private (it's friends only by default if I remember correctly) and don't add friends on it. No one knows you're playing then.
99% of games you can also buy on other media or download services than Steam (MW2 and a few other games being exceptions, since they use Steam).
Complaining about Steam's community and friends features is stupid because you don't need to use them if you don't want to.
With this beta release of Steam, they fix an interesting issue that cropped up with the release of Windows 7.
For users of that particular OS who have either removed Internet Explorer, or did not have it installed at all when the OS was installed (see: Europe, and the rest of the world that couldn't even stand the browser), Steam was half-broken. One could not see any screenshots for a game before purchasing. Anything that needed a popup window in Steam would NOT default to the main browser installed on the system.
People complained about this, asking Steam to start looking for the default browser on the system so they could at least go back to browsing for games and possibly buying them.
It's good to see them actually address that issue.
Maybe I'll buy Space Giraffe to celebrate.
One of these days, I am going to flip out. When I flip out, I'll be back in five minutes.
I add steam as a scheduled task to start up in the off peak times. Before I go to bed, unpause the download, and close steam. Wait for the scheduled task to start it back up for me.
Automation - The Car Company Tycoon Game
I just finished my taxes last week, and in one of the last steps after e-filing TurboTax offered to post a "I just finished my taxes with TurboTax and I'm getting a $XXX refund!" message to my Facebook profile.
Sorry, apparently they only changed Steam itself, as the interface used in the games to access a browser is built in with the engine, so it'd require an update and more testing for each game that still uses IE individually. However, apparently you can turn off HTML MOTDs. (Google it)