The New UI Change highlights the NEED for Legacy Themes and/or expanded customization options

[TM]

Valve, please give us what we already had, the older themes. You certainly can afford to maintain support for Legacy Themes; or, expand the customization of the Client to make it easier for us to do it. Forcefully replacing things that your customers have been used to for YEARS, ostracizes users and disrupts usage and satisfaction. This is a legitimately disappointing update. I'll use this new interface because I'll have to, but it's a severe downgrade. Screen space is being wasted for "aesthetics" not functionality. You're taking what wasn't broken, worked great, and making it worse.

As a Desktop user that likes having elements compact, and as much information on screen as possible; this update is a step in the wrong direction. The Interface changes in 2019 were unpleasant and I've hoped ever since then that Valve would either revert those changes, or give us the choice of doing it ourselves. Again, this update is a step even farther away from what I loved and now miss about the old Steam Interface. I'm using a Computer Monitor, not a Steam Deck, not a touch screen, and not in Big Picture Mode. I don't want my Elements to take up massive sections of the screen.

There was no reason to update the interface in terms of functionality. Did these changes allow anything useful to be added? Even if so, was it not possible to perform infrastructure upgrades on the older interfaces? And what has been taken away as a result?... functionality, the entire purpose of a client and interface.

My Main Issues

• The lack of choice. Choice is best for everyone, everyone wins. Some people will like this Interface, some of us don't. Forcefully replacing things that your customers have been used to for YEARS, ostracizes users and disrupts usage and satisfaction. This is a legitimately disappointing update. I'll use it because I'll have to, but it's a severe downgrade.
  
• The Taskbar Menu is obscenely large now. The forced introduction of Game Icons as well as excessive padding around the game titles has increased the overall size of this previously compact, useful menu, by at least ~200-300%. It used to take up ~210x230 pixels? Maybe? Now it's about 305x450, with so much wasted space between text/elements due to padding.
  
• All of the menus and elements are just too big and excessively padded. Screen space is being wasted for "aesthetic" not functionality.
  
• Most Menus are expanded with excessive padding between elements, larger text, game icons. MOST of this is not able to be customized.
  
• The in-game overlay doesn't retain the location or size of adjusted elements even if you haven't minimized the overlay. Simply minimizing the element and then opening it again returns it to a default? position.

[ruggit_]

First its CS2's coat of dollar store paint, now the entire steam UI. if you use UI for years and years, its barbaric and frankly ridiculous for you to take the perfectly good thing and ruin it for the sake of some designers paycheck who has nothing better to do. Give the old UI back.

[tigerkeeg]

Originally posted by Ruggit_:

First its CS2's coat of dollar store paint, now the entire steam UI. if you use UI for years and years, its barbaric and frankly ridiculous for you to take the perfectly good thing and ruin it for the sake of some designers paycheck who has nothing better to do. Give the old UI back.

Agreed it can tbe that hard to give us a choice at least. if valve wants to waste money designing this crap let em but give us the choice not to use it

[Kurotaku]

Sadly Valve doesn't care at all in my experience.
Best example is the library update...
This is the worst of all, due to the amount of games I have this library is total garbage.
Each letter I type in needs like 3 seconds to appear.
Also the low bandwidth and low performance mode doesn't change anything, it still downloads hundret thousands of images for the library.

The licenses list loads ages as well and let even freeze my browser and crash steam (even the search doesn't work due to the size).
Before this year, when strangers went to my gamelist on my profile their steam and browser crashed, but at least this is fixed.
But its like valve literally want to punish game collectors.

It wasn't like that in the old UI.

Friendlist is the same, since it got changed many of my friends who are in games appear as offline even tho they aren't for themself, also it shows all the time that the list is outdated ...

[Mental]

Agreed agreed. Aside from the performance issues, it is visually unappealing.

[TM]

Originally posted by Kurotaku:

Sadly Valve doesn't care at all in my experience.
Best example is the library update...
This is the worst of all, due to the amount of games I have this library is total garbage.
Each letter I type in needs like 3 seconds to appear.
Also the low bandwidth and low performance mode doesn't change anything, it still downloads hundret thousands of images for the library.

The licenses list loads ages as well and let even freeze my browser and crash steam (even the search doesn't work due to the size).
Before this year, when strangers went to my gamelist on my profile their steam and browser crashed, but at least this is fixed.
But its like valve literally want to punish game collectors.

It wasn't like that in the old UI.

Friendlist is the same, since it got changed many of my friends who are in games appear as offline even tho they aren't for themself, also it shows all the time that the list is outdated ...

I agree. I hope that they give us more choice and allow us to utilize older themes, or MUCH more customization and control.

[Start_Running]

Meh. Maybe the new implementation of skins will be better.
I can understand why they'd drop it though. Hardly anyone used skins before.

[Start_Running]

Funny story. it seems the new UI still makes heavy usage of CSS. They've just changed the file names. So ity is technically still possible to edit the CSS...

The problem is...editing the CSS and restarting causes steam to reverfiy and replace all the files and thusly overwriting your modified css.


I'm still experimenting.. but this makes it all the more baffling....they could easily re-enable skins if they chose.

[Fred]

Everything is absurdly big, bulky, overly simplified and angular, where are the roundings? There are no stylization at all, everything looks like it was designed by engineer not a UI designer.

[Garou]

Any time something changes we get walls of text and a hundred different threads.

[Richard Dastardly]

There's more space than text in the menus now. I saw a "big change" update listed yesterday & looked at the compact & easy to read settings page, and thought "hey, this is usable, I bet they change it!" - of course, now it's a prime example of unreadability.

Valve, your last major UI overhaul made it hard to parse, and look - my game aquisition rate went off a cliff! it's literally costing you money. Let people set their UI up so it's good for them, and maybe you'll make some more. These changes are going to mean I hardly touch the client, big spaces in menus & so on makes them atrocious to use.

[g6qwerty]

Yeah the UI is now a large amount of waste of space its so annoying it don't look modern even it looks like old and decrpid.

[Tamagosci]

The first thing I did after seeing the new UI was look for an update to the Metro Skin.
The second thing I did was look up where to ask to add skins back.
It's a browser, please maintain skin support.

[Start_Running]

Originally posted by Tamagosci:

The first thing I did after seeing the new UI was look for an update to the Metro Skin.
The second thing I did was look up where to ask to add skins back.
It's a browser, please maintain skin support.

It'll probably be back. I suspect they just don't see the point of it since thinsg will be influx for the next month or so.

[loko loko]

The new UI is the dog crap. I want my old Steam Skins, the Metro Skin is legendary. I'm uninstalling steam.

[Anxiety]

CSS customisation works flawlessly on Steamdeck (through plugins). It's a pity there is no easy and official way to customize desktop client. Skin support has always been so-so even on old UI.