Choose a default browser for Steam.

[00110100]

Hi, I would like to suggest that Steam have a setting to choose default browser that would be used with steam.
That way I don't have to use Internet Explorer. :)

[Rye_Griff]

should have used the search function. This has already been suggested many times and it boils down to this.

Steam uses IE because everyone has it and for compatability with the overlay. An awful lot of work and effort would be required to change from IE to something else, and its just not worth it when IE works fine.
(if it's not broken, then don't fix it)

[darthmilo77]

What about the recent IE security threats? I realize that normally you can't go to non-Steam pages with the browser, but isn't the in-game web browser IE?

[Rye_Griff]

iirc, it isn't Internet Explorer, but it is using the IE engine therefore security issues are probably still there.

I think valve are crediting us with some common sense, and therefore you'd have to be stupid to be online banking whilst in game.
I think the in game web browser is there to save us from having to alt-tab when we need a walkthru or IP addy from a forum etc..

If you are going to be doing more than 1 min of web browsing then they're probably assuming you'll quit your game to do it, and they're right to assume that.

[darthmilo77]

Well it's certainly helpful, but I'm just saying...

[Rye_Griff]

Valve is a commercial body, therefore it might cost them money to use someone elses engine. Firefox might be free to use, but terms and conditions can be very complex, it might require some/all of steams source code to be released.

Yes, in principle, it would be nice if steam could use different browser engines, but its a small bit of customisation that just isnt worth the hastle.

[Tannekr]

Taken from the thread: Ditch IE web engine (http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?p=8464748#post8464748).

This comes up frequently, so I'll address it again.

First, we use IE today because it's available by default on all Windows installs and it's relatively easy to embed. There are no major problems with it when used inside the Steam client, but there are some limitations it imposes on us when used inside our game engines or inside the in-game Steam overlay.

For the future we are certainly considering other options. While the IE control pretty much works fine in the Steam client itself, we would potentially be able to make the in-engine and in-game overlay versions of the HTML control work faster/better with a new control. The IE control pretty much assumes it's being embedded in a desktop window and gives developers no real control over rendering. As such we end up copying the entire window contents to a bitmap and rendering that to a texture in-game/overlay. If we had a control based on one of the open-source browser engines we'd most likely be able to hook in at a lower level and do finer grained rendering in-engine/overlay. However, switching to one of the open-source renders presents a variety of new problems as well, and it definitely means a considerable amount of new development work. As such it becomes a priorities exercise where we have to decide how important making improvements to the HTML control is vs other work we could be doing.

If we ever do switch away from IE it would mean bundling the code for the other rendering engine (Gecko/WebKit/whatever) with Steam itself. We wouldn't ever end up with a situation where we were dependent on Firefox or Safari or such being installed on a users computer, and we wouldn't end up with a situation where what you had installed determined what Steam used internally. That type of setup just involves too many different configurations and code paths to support. To make things reasonable for us to support everyone will most likely always have to use whatever browser is shipped with Steam, for now that's the embedded IE setup.

[L.o.D.]

Steam only uses the IE rendering engine. So in a way, it's not internet explorer that it uses.
Steam will also use your default browser with external links such as screenshots etc.

[JohnnyPneumatic]

"First, we use IE today because it's available by default on all Windows installs..."

That's no longer true thanks to antitrust rulings in the EU.

[Kailieann]

You may be able to uninstall IE more easily on newer versions of Windows, but the core Trident rendering engine is still there for compatibility purposes.

Microsoft would be ♥♥♥♥♥♥ed to remove it, because a whole freaking lot of 3rd-party programs need it in order to function. Such as Steam.