The UI overhaul is now stable.
Oh you are right, that makes totally sense. I was so focused on the performance side. In the past Steam allowed for custom skins, but they never looked great in my opinion or functioned well. If the UI is flexible enough, hopefully the custom skins will make a return. I would like to build my own custom client based on the official client.
JSYK for if you want extra performance: Steam also has a hidden “mini mode”, which you can run by adding this as a launchoption to a steam shortcut (or in a terminal) steam://open/minigameslist.
Additionally, you can add the -no-browser launch option to completely disable the built-in webbrowser.
I can’t find any official documentation about these options, but they are certainly there!
@Boabab Thanks for the suggestions! I am well aware of these options for years (but appreciate the suggestions nonetheless): https://gist.github.com/davispuh/6600880
The Mini mode is very limited and won’t stay mini and switches back to normal when doing anything else than starting a game. no browser mode will also break a lot of functionality of Steam. So these options aren’t what I am looking for (have tried them in the past). But overall I am fine with it at the moment. Just mentioned above suggestions to reduce some load for older systems, without losing functionality.
I wish the UI itself would be open source, that connects to the proprietary Steam service. That would be acceptable. It would allow us to write any user interface we need or want (like 100% CLI only ui, I don’t mean just starting a game with a shortcut, I would love that).