Give more Shelf Customisation Options - Let us remove and resize all shelves, not just some

[Tindri]

While I like the new collection and shelf system for displaying your library - we should be allowed to fully customise ALL of our shelves, in more ways than just "add another". I'll start by addressing "What's new", and then general customisation options

What's New

Personally, while I think the "what's new" feed could be useful, there are no filtering options that allow us to tailor it to focus on certain games, or the types of news available from any given game. Instead, we are fed random news from games we may, or may not, have played for years. (for instance, I kept getting news from PoE - but I have not played that game for 2 years)

Why not allow us to customise the panels in such a way where we can choose:
-Which games we want news from (perhaps expressed as a hierarchy from most to least wanted news, with all games not on that list being excluded)
-What type of news we want - e.g. only patch notes/update history information/announcements/interesting forum posts/special events etc.
-The time range of news we are interested in (daily/weekly/monthly)
-How many panels are displayed at any time (and thus, their size too)

Finally, there are likely many people who wish not to have this shelf at all - and as such it is unreasonable that we are not allowed to remove it from our own library page. The very same goes for "Recent Games". The problem is mainly that "What's New" and "Recent Games" cannot be placed elsewhere, and in the case of "Recent Games", we could easily replace it with an "All Games" shelf sorted by "last played" for the exact same function (making it redundant if we want to sort our library in that way)

Missing Shelf Customisation Options

Panel Size
The "automatic" default size of each game panel is unfathomably massive. I have a 1080p display, and I can only fully see 2 rows of six games each per full page in my collections. This layout is incredibly "claustrophobic", and only makes browsing your games using the collections an outright hassle... Unless you know about the extra options available in your steam settings that allow you to alter your panel size from the awful "automatic" to anything else. The options to scale the game panels should be visible/accessible from somewhere ON the library page. Something that would be nice is if we could get both global and shelf specific options to customise "game panels per row". E.g. where our "Recently Played" has larger panels than our library.

Sorting by Alphabetical Order
I know we already have "sort by alphabetical order" but this list doesn't make it clear where letter B starts, or where it ends. If you're scrolling through hundreds of games, it becomes very difficult to discern where in the alphabetical order your are at a glance. To fix this, you could either have have clearly marked letter separators in a continuous list, or have line breaks to separate alphabetical categories.
I made some MS-Paint mockups to show you what I mean: https://imgur.com/a/GZosRbu


I can see this new library growing on me, but right now it's incredibly bulky and unwieldy. Please just give us some more customisation options so we can change our libraries to our own liking!

[Mizufluffy]

Originally posted by Tindri:

Panel Size
Right now, the size of each game panel is unfathomably massive. I have a 1080p display, and I can only fully see 2 rows of six games each per full page in my collections.

You had a lot of valid points there but I'd like to correct you on one thing. You can change the size of the game tile size but it is hidden in the settings. There are 3 sizes available but as some other users have pointed out, a slider somewhere visible would be an better option than the option hidden in the settings.
I took screenshots of each size on 1080p display and here is how it looks in comparison:
https://imgur.com/b4zJpYh

[Bun-Bun]

I think in the shelf customization options the collections could be integrated and the separate area could be done away with entirely. That would eliminate completely the need for the home/collections buttons.

[Tindri]

Originally posted by Mizufluffy:

Originally posted by Tindri:

Panel Size
Right now, the size of each game panel is unfathomably massive. I have a 1080p display, and I can only fully see 2 rows of six games each per full page in my collections.

You had a lot of valid points there but I'd like to correct you on one thing. You can change the size of the game tile size but it is hidden in the settings. There are 3 sizes available but as some other users have pointed out, a slider somewhere visible would be an better option than the option hidden in the settings.
I took screenshots of each size on 1080p display and here is how it looks in comparison:
https://imgur.com/b4zJpYh

Thank you for the correction, that's very useful to know. I'll go ahead and edit my post to reflect that these options should be made available in some "customise the appearance of my library" kind of button, something visible in your actual library, instead of hidden away in your steam settings.

[Mizufluffy]

Originally posted by Tindri:

Sorting by Alphabetical Order
I know we already have "sort by alphabetical order" but this list doesn't make it clear where letter B starts, or where it ends. If you're scrolling through hundreds of games, it becomes very difficult to discern where in the alphabetical order your are at a glance. To fix this, you could either have have clearly marked letter separators in a continuous list, or have line breaks to separate alphabetical categories.
I made some MS-Paint mockups to show you what I mean: https://imgur.com/a/GZosRbu

I took a look at the image and something like that would make it easier to know where next letter starts. I'd be fine with it as long as letter label wouldn't be intrusive looking and if there were options to choose between continuous and line break styles per a collection / shelf / etc. because one style might fit better for some but not others. Let's say you have 1-4 titles per a letter. In that case line break style would make it needlessly long compared to the continuous style. If you have dozens of games per each letter then line break style might look better and make it easier to see where it changes to the next letter. I'm not sure if I'd like the letter label to be completely opaque because some games have really beautiful cover artwork that I like to look at. It'd be cool if it was possible to have an option (slider preferably) to change the label's transparency.

[The Macchio]

I would like a quick way to hit specific letters in the name. A vertical alphabet bar like what Plex does would work nicely


Like this [imgur.com]

[Mizufluffy]

Originally posted by The Macchio:

I would like a quick way to hit specific letters in the name. A vertical alphabet bar like what Plex does would work nicely


Like this [imgur.com]

That would be a great addition when alphabetical sorting is being used! It'd make it not only easier to know which letter you are at but also faster to navigate if you already know which game title you are trying to find.