We need a lightweight bare bones platform

[Defiant Squirrel]

Generally speaking all I want to do is this.

Start steam
View games list
Play game

Occasionally I may want to browse the store, visit the forums or post a screenshot, but that really is about it. And before the update I could do all of those things with ease and in a perfectly non irritating way.

Since the update I hate having Steam even running on my system, I no longer enjoy starting it up, there is a feeling of resentment that manifests itself as soon as I see the Steam icon. This new UI is an over-designed mess. I'm no coder but it's obvious to everyone that this is a terrible piece of design, it lags, it crashes, it's increased the number of clicks required to do anything, it's ugly, it's more cluttered, less functional and it's way too resource hungry... everything about it is bad.

Please consider making an ultra lightweight minimalist UI for those of us that want it, literally a list of games and links to community hubs and the store, that's all we need. Give us a bare bones option with basic features and pure functionality that uses virtually zero system resources, if you don't make it someone else will.

[Quint the Alligator Snapper]

Originally posted by KillahInstinct:

OP, people have been asking for a lightweight Steam since forever, even before the old UI. I don't know their reasons for not making one, but one could argue that Steam is pretty lightweight for all that it aims to do (current performance issues notwithstanding).

If you don't want to use Steam, might I recommend simply making shortcuts for Steam or closing it whenever you don't use it?

You can also for example right click Steam and play your recent games, and so on.

And if we had DRM-free games we wouldn't even need to start this damn client in the first place!

This is why DRM-free is better than Steam.

[Quint the Alligator Snapper]

Originally posted by Red Squirrel:

Generally speaking all I want to do is this.

Start steam
View games list
Play game

This.

This.

This.

So much this.

Just give me a list in text form, with clickable game names, keyboard navigability, and preferably some sorting options, maybe arranged in a table hopefully.



Oh, Valve, if you want a better list view, I can suggest features to add to that too, as column options. https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/10/1644304412665238658/#c1644304412667871751

[KillahInstinct]

Originally posted by ling.speed:

[Still it's good to know that i didn't miss something obvious like a dev blog/board/forum. Thanks again! [/quote]
There is the Steam blog, and they do communicate - but you need to scroll down since (apparently) they also started using it for 'top releases of games', but there is some good stuff in there.

https://store.steampowered.com/news/?feed=steam_blog

[ダニエル]

So if the earlier posts in this thread are to be believed, then valve butchered the UI and removed the different view options because an overwhelming amount of people asked them to do it.

This isn't to incite some sort of flame war, I'm honestly curious and would like to request comment from those who apparently asked for all of it; why did the ability to choose from 3 different layouts need removing?

[Quint the Alligator Snapper]

Originally posted by ダニエル:

So if the earlier posts in this thread are to be believed, then valve butchered the UI and removed the different view options because an overwhelming amount of people asked them to do it.

This isn't to incite some sort of flame war, I'm honestly curious and would like to request comment from those who apparently asked for all of it; why did the ability to choose from 3 different layouts need removing?

I think they've been wanting to move their stuff to a new web-browser-based rendering engine.

They did this for Friends list (which not only looks similar but also lags similarly).

Since the old code was built outside of it, they didn't really have much of a choice but to scrap it entirely and build anew for the browser rendering engine. That's my guess.

Unfortunately, stuff that uses browser rendering tends to be resource-intensive and laggy. If you're an aspiring designer, let me advise you: keep web pages simple and functional as much as you can, and don't try to throw webpage-style UIs on everything. Please.

[Aldernut]

Good news, OP. You can have a lightweight Steam UI !

Here's how:

1) Create a new shortcut to your Steam.exe
2) Add " -no-browser +open steam://open/minigameslist " to the target field, without the quotation marks
3) Start Steam from the new shortcut

You won't have the store in this way. However, the list will be MUCH cleaner, you'll have about 400MB of more memory, and far less CPU usage.

[honx]

and how long will it work until these bastards patch it out?

[jfoytek]

Originally posted by $ini$ter-NL:

I 100% agree with the OP.

I too agree with the OP

[Quint the Alligator Snapper]

Originally posted by nakoda:

♥♥♥♥ the new ui and ♥♥♥♥ the mods that ban people for complaining about.

Have some understanding for the mods; there's basically nothing they can do at this point that'll make themselves look good. Either they don't do anything and a million threads about the UI crap up the forum, or they merge the threads (which is what they're doing) and the Steam forum's idiotic UI says "merged or deleted" making a bunch of idiots think their threads are deleted and feel censored.

But, yeah, the hell with the new UI. When even Big Picture Mode is better than it, something's wrong.

[Lystent]

I'd like something that I could start up instead of the main client. It could be a separate download, and would just have a list of games with just a play button and maybe even a way to mange screenshots tied to each title. The rest could be managed from a separate web browser logged into the steam website.

[Quint the Alligator Snapper]

Originally posted by Lystent:

I'd like something that I could start up instead of the main client. It could be a separate download, and would just have a list of games with just a play button and maybe even a way to mange screenshots tied to each title. The rest could be managed from a separate web browser logged into the steam website.

Honestly at this point they might as well as make a program that ONLY does the authentication part and otherwise lets use simply use whatever to start the game, like start menu shortcuts or somesuch.

[Lystent]

Originally posted by Quint the Alligator Snapper:

Originally posted by Lystent:

I'd like something that I could start up instead of the main client. It could be a separate download, and would just have a list of games with just a play button and maybe even a way to mange screenshots tied to each title. The rest could be managed from a separate web browser logged into the steam website.

Honestly at this point they might as well as make a program that ONLY does the authentication part and otherwise lets use simply use whatever to start the game, like start menu shortcuts or somesuch.

I'd be fine with that too.

Edit: less is better when it comes to things running in the background of a gaming computer, if you ask me.

[WolfEisberg]

a thin client would be awesome. It would be void of every single Steam feature that is not needed, the only thing it would have is to download game, update games, and be able to play games. No friends list, no chat, not achievements, no cloud saving, absolutely nothing but download game, update game, and play game, and that is it.

[Red Star, Blood Moon]

Originally posted by Nooblander:

Originally posted by KillahInstinct:

Please don't spread misinformation. If you've nothing constructive to add, please don't post.

How is my opinion as a 10 year customer not valid?

Why did this guy get banned for complaining about it?

[WolfEisberg]

Originally posted by BlackSun:

Originally posted by Nooblander:

How is my opinion as a 10 year customer not valid?

Why did this guy get banned for complaining about it?

Because in a different post, now deleted, he broke the rules. When someone gets banned, the post that got them banned is also deleted.