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Steam UI Update Beta Drops IE Rendering For WebKit

Posted by Soulskill on from the what-a-coincidence-with-battle.net-in-beta-too dept.

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.

4 of 244 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Why OSX? by oiron · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Maybe they're trying to create the market?

  2. Re:Why OSX? by Trepidity · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I'm not sure what portion of Steam's sales they account for, but Steam does distribute a decent number of indie games, and Mac sales often account for a disproportionate share of indie-game sales, possibly due to Mac users being culturally more into "pay $10 for an app" mindset, and less competition from AAA titles.

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    10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
  3. Re:I don't want to be tracked by Culture20 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    girls? it's the men who won't leave me alone that bother me! *shudder*

    Stop playing a female night elf then. Sheesh.

  4. Fixes an interesting issue. by Orbijx · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.