The era of wide Steam is well and truly upon us. Last year Valve made store pages on Steam wider, only making me slightly uncomfortable. Last week the Steam homepage entered into its own wide beta. And now, as part of another beta, Valve are testing this same widening in the Steam Workshop to “make the browsing experience quicker and easier to use.”
As usual, as detailed by this blog post, the new UI changes are an opt-in beta, with Valve looking out for feedback to eventually implement in a wider release. All you need to do to try it out yourself is by clicking the “Enter Workshop Beta” tab on any Workshop browse page. So, what’s actually new in this beta? Well, The Widening, of course, which is probably the most notable thing visually right out the gate, with bigger preview images of each available item.
Filtering should now be faster too, with Valve explaining that they’ve rewritten the page so that it updates quicker when applying filters or changing sort orders. If you’re a developer, you’ll be able to configure filters for certain types of items. “For Workshops that contain both Maps and Items, developers can define which types each filter should apply to,” Valve explain.
There’s a new quick view option, with items now featuring a magnifying glass icon that when clicked lets you quickly peruse screenshots, add an item to your favourites, subscribe to a user, or vote on an item, “all without leaving the browsing experience. And lastly, the beta makes the Workshop friendlier for mobile and Steam Deck users – “This new rewrite of the page allows us to better manage the responsiveness of the page for different contexts such as mobile, Steam Deck, and Big Picture mode.”
In a brief FAQ at the end of the blog post, Valve also explained that the beta could run anywhere from a few weeks to a few months as they figure out any bugs that crop up and respond to feedback. And they also note that there are plans to update other Workshop pages, but they “don’t have an exact timeline for when. Once we wrap up this beta of the browsing page, we’ll have a better idea of scope of work for subsequent pages.” I hope whatever they change, The Widening continues.
