This was unexpected. It was something that Steam users have been crying out for for a while, and last night the opt-in beta for this redesigned UI popped onto our Steam accounts. Taking part in the beta and trying out the new UI is simple, just go to your settings and in the beta dropdown select ‘UI Update’ (if for some reason Steam now doesn’t load for you, add ‘-clearbeta’ to your Steam shortcut).

Almost every feature of the client has been changed for the better. The store now runs on a WebKit based rendering system which replaces the slow cumbersome IE integration of the previous version. The library now shows a lot more information on your games, for example who on your friends list have the game and who are playing it, as well as your achievements. Strangely, the community tab remains unchanged, which to me was one of the clunkier parts of the old client so it seems strange Valve have decided not to update it.

Not everything is hunky-dory though. It seems the new UI suffers from a bad strain of consolitis. Icons are bigger, fonts are bigger, and in general it feels like a lot of space has been wasted. Take the store for example, I keep my Steam window quite small and with the previous UI the store page generally took up twice the vertical space available in my window (e.g. not much scrolling). The new store however is at least five times as big as the window, causing a lot more scrolling. This isn’t the only case, two of the three new library views consist of huge icons which make it a nightmare for users with many games (admittedly, you can now organize your games into categories, but the interface for doing so is less than optimal at the moment).

Watch this space because no doubt Valve will be improving the UI based on user feedback.