Steam's getting a new chat system: embeds, uploads, better voice chat, and more
229 replies, posted
I think I've had steam's volume muted for years so I don't really care if they change the sounds.
Though, the original steam notification sound was honestly god-tier.
jumpin' on that discord train
My Firefox can't play them but Chrome can
If I can drag-and-drop images directly into Steam Friends, that would be a fucking godsend when I am working on things and looking for feedback.
These days, I've been finding an excuse to drag-and-drop them into Discord, and then copy-paste the embed link over to my Steam Friends.
I dunno how you could think Steam feels clunky. It's missing some customizability options, sure, but in my experience modern apps have an infuriating habit of removing customizability altogether other than maybe a handful of settings and theme settings at best.
All Steam really needs is the option to prevent it treating you like you're retarded. I don't want all their anti-phishing bullshit. If I click something suspicious and my computer gets infected it's my own fault. On the flip side I'm cautious with what I click and have my browser quite secure so even if I did do that it's not too big a concern whereas their infuriating link removal bullshit is a reasonably frequent problem.
Also it should quit replacing my freaking message beep. The new one sounds like shit, I much prefer the old one. But every single time Steam fails to close properly or even if I click "cancel" when it's trying to sign in then it replaces my message beep. This is despite making it read only then removing ALL write permissions for the file altogether.
Unsure if a steam skins also work in replacing sound files like they do tga and other files
They a few months ago """had""" to make it so you could not replace webkit.css with a skin folder
maybe because they read about the age old keylogger that may or may not even affect steam
Do Steam skins even support css files that aren't local in the first place? Cause if it's the keylogger I'm thinking of then I'm not sure how it could possibly be a concern under those limitations.
Nah, all local
but that's not saying someone throws in a sneaky import.
People do make applications to update skins (like metro), I still question why valve should of have to bothered
It's clunky because sometimes pages (like the store or community) just don't load and you have the mash refresh a bunch.
I usually fixed this by killing the webhelper process, of which steam generally restarts it
Thanks Chromium
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/De9nmCRWsAEoIgl.png
Can't say this is an issue I've ever encountered myself. (Although I have had one where Steam goes down for maintenance then I'm not logged in through Steam itself on any page unless I log out then back in which is just weird.) Though this does bring to mind that backspace isn't bound to the back button despite it being the expected behavior when your program is acting like a freaking web browser.
Got me to look over the account again
looks it valve requested a takedown perhaps
https://twitter.com/SAVEME1112/status/1004311740803403776
https://twitter.com/SAVEME1112/status/1004321265988104199
Servers
People actually believe this terminology to be sane
It makes no sense, and as far as I know, even discord don't use this term in house (see guilds)
https://twitter.com/SAVEME1112/status/1004361909704019968
This last one is juicy
https://twitter.com/SAVEME1112/status/1004376727387365376
This actually reminds me of something I picked out from discord datamining
They're adding the game feed and a game library/launcher, also a lobby system for whatever intention
So as it stands, you have two platforms competing.
Except steam has the store
and discord has it's userbase
And both are god awful
Problem with these noises is that they have way too high of frequencies in them to be "notifications" in my mind. Compare the ones Discord uses that maybe at most reach 4k in terms of what's being played, with reverb going to 44.1khz., These new Steam ones are around 6k on almost all of them with the echos and reverb going into 44.1khz.
If you just get rid of some of the pretty high noises like I've done here it's kinda ok, it's just a bunch of woodblock noises with reverb. Also the phone call noise is just total ass so I redid it.
Actually, the number one thing I really hate about these is that all communications are centralised to one window.
Coming from years of communication, having all the windows detached is what works so well.
Skype was the first notable platform to fuck this up, and pretty much everyone after this have done so.
Steam windows, friends list is it's own window, and every chat window can either be tabbed, or detached, allowing you to navigate between every conversation quickly and allowing multiple coversations to be open at a single time if a cross-reference is needed (etc.)
When you get these big interfaces, it makes juggling conversations cluttered, and you have to keep the UI consistent within it's contained form
We went from this
https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/1755/3f13b27b-1c06-4d6b-9e5b-3408620ae920/image.png
https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/1755/557d7dd4-5954-4bfb-90b0-a53462551c0e/image.png
To This
https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/1755/808384c7-201b-4685-be18-823a0784f283/image1-900x465.png
https://steemitimages.com/DQmezNzYnAnLZcGsQjGUwLx7zGCW1R2SGx6ZQDbCM2tUZYJ/discord%20app%20new.PNG
I feel like UI design has gone backwards in the 2010's
Personally, I want to go the grumpy old man route and blame tablets.
And mobile. Everyone and their mother browses in a mobile touchscreen fashion now for whatever reason despite that being the most physically painful and clunky method I've ever used to browse the internet and use programs. I really don't understand how people can tolerate it. But then you have corporations such as Google who are embracing that and designing all of their services around that garbage then enforcing it whether you're on mobile or not.
Open up windows 10 display settings
then try to open up network settings in another window
at this point in time, you can't. Maybe with sets that's fixed later, but it's also like
it sidelines the problem instead of fixing a otherwise flawed UI/UX
I basically only use Steam chat and the like, but that component is just the clunk (...in my opinion). When I'm in the friend list, why is the - arguably main feature - chatting option obscured behind a tiny drop-down menu? Why does Steam still insist on incessantly blinking the icon on the task bar when I get a message? And then when you click on the chat window, why isn't the new message the focus of the application? Why doesn't Steam preserve older messages? Why isn't there time codes? Why are the tabs for conversations so small? Why is the friends list still separate from the chat window (couldn't you just stick it on the side of the chat window and kill two birds with one stone)?
Before post edit: Okay just noticed you can actually double click someone's name/avatar to open a conversation. That's a lot more convenient than what I've been doing for the last ten years, but it's still sort of weird behaviour - clicking on someone's avatar goes to their profile, clicking on their name does nothing, double clicking on either starts a conversation.
Maybe I'm just a lone idiot who doesn't use Steam enough to love it, but it seems to me that chat functionality could be improved immensely.
There are also timestamps, you enable them from the friends part of Steam Settings.
Steam will also only retain messages for the past two weeks(?) on your account, but they only keep the last few in memory on the client, which really does keep it a legitimate issue. The mobile clients keep their own database of messages though, which is why you see a lot more on mobile than desktop.
My other flow for opening conversations is to just hit ctrl+f and search. Pressing enter will open+focus whoever's on top.
Ctrl+tab (and shift+ctrl+tab) for switching tabs
Since it's a chat application, keeping my keys on the keyboard means chatting is more efficient
I'm definitely not anticipating this hitting us soon by any means but I'm definitely excited for it. Out of all the people I interact with for gaming, only one prefers using Steam chat still. It's so dated and difficult to get anything done in. I've been spoiled by Discord because I never knew how great embedded images/videos/music, custom emoji, and various other things could be until I started using it. Steam is just insanely far behind when it comes to UX design. I mean at this point I just use it as a jump off point to play games, whereas the Steam community features have pretty much been left in the dust since they just suck now. If I could join people's games from Discord I probably wouldn't ever even use the friends list on Steam.
I really hope that if they do implement the new chat in 10 years I hope that they allow you to use custom emoji. The current method of having to obtain them from the market is just so fucking stupid.
In addition to the double click you can simply right click than trying to aim for that minuscule arrow for the menu.
https://i.imgur.com/BUhGLH5.png
You should at least check options before complaining about something like that. Though this is the sort of option that newer applications tend to be lacking in.
They preserve them better than they used to but I agree there. It's rather obnoxious to send someone a message before you log out of Steam, have a short conversation, and then you want to go check something regarding the message when you log back in and it's nowhere to be found because Steam has some arbitrary cutoff for keeping messages. What Scratch said about two weeks isn't entirely accurate either. If you haven't messaged them since your last message then it'll keep up to around two weeks or so. Otherwise it only keeps up to 3-5 messages and only when they're a short time apart from each other. For example if you send one message, wait a few hours, send another, then log out then back in it's only going to have the last message.
This one is pretty simple. If you have ten chats open in the same window and half of them have new messages, what would it focus on? It's easier to just let the user choose where to focus. It's even more annoying in cases where you're, say, playing a game so you had a notification of the message but you open the overlay to send a message to someone else. If it handled things your way it's suddenly on the wrong tab.
See the above screenshot and comment on checking options. It really should be enabled by default though.
I can only speak for myself but that'd just infuriate me. I keep my friends list vertically maximized while my chat window only takes up ~2/3rds of my available vertical space. Having chat bigger or my friends list smaller makes viewing them a pain in my opinion.
I don't totally disagree with you but a lot of your points are largely invalid to begin with for the reasons explained above.
web apps wouldn't be half as cancer if:
we weren't giving them dedicated browsers for desktop applications
and portable machines actually could run browsers without a detriment to power consumption.
That being said, the only two versions I know of a native client for discord are like, console homebrew (why would you want this? handhelds don't multitask)
It's live in the Steam beta or on the web at https://steamcommunity.com/chat/
The new UI is terrible, there is no sense of visual hierarchy at all.
https://i.imgur.com/Gf6rYX7.png
Valve need's a UI/UX team that knows what they're doing.
Outside of friends & chat, everything else look about the same
chat is nice tho
https://i.imgur.com/8EBrdem.png
It looks alright, there's definitely room for improvement.
i really dislike this
the UI is ugly and overly huge
Sorry, you need to Log In to post a reply to this thread.
