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by the_af 3847 days ago
Same here. I like and use Steam, but its UI for casually browsing games (aka "casual shopping") isn't very good. For example, when you are browsing a list of games, if you click on one to see additional details and then try going back, you lose your place in the list. This is infuriating for long lists. It kills the browse & shop experience.

The web interface for Steam is better than the app's. Then again, this is what web browsers are there for...

4 comments

Yea that's the exact reason that I end up using the web interface for browsing games. The fact I can browse and open up 30 tabs of games and then look at them one by one without losing my place anywhere is so much nicer.
Middle clicking works in the Steam desktop app, at least on Windows. It opens the clicked link in a new window in the foreground.
Yes! Forgot to mention that, but it drives me nuts too.
Funny enough, when looking at Steam processes tree (and if I recall correctly, also licenses), client is done with Chromium Embedded Framework.
Which is probably why it still looks like shit on Retina screens. Oh, how I love HTML apps...
What does that have to do with HTML5 apps? In the browser, when HD-DPI support was added every page started using HD-DPI font rendering, HD-DPI CSS, HD-DPI SVG, only image were still lo-res

Conversely I still have native apps that are low-res only because updating them to HD-DPI meant shipping a new app.

> when HD-DPI support was added

Indeed. Except that, to get it, you-developer actually had to ship an updated browser with your "app" -- basically the same as any native app, except that instead of being "just turn on this setting in a plist and recompile", it means refreshing your little in-house fork of a massive browser project that barely anyone understands. Clearly Valve cannot be arsed to do that, so Steam keeps looking like shit more than 3 years after these screens appeared.

The universal toolkit is not so universal if every app ships its own custom version.