Steam Beta Client Available

[jasonr]

There's a new Steam Beta client available. To access the Beta, go to File -> Settings, and on the Account tab will be a drop down. Select Steam Client Candidate, and then allow Steam to restart itself. Here are the specific changes:

- Added the ability to Ignore Friends
- Added background detection of game updates while Steam is running
- Fixed Backup not working with certain games, and made other improvements to it
- Added the ability for Steam to check for new game updates automatically. The check happens about once an hour

4/22/2008

An update to the Beta is now available. The specific changes include:

- Fixed Metacritic links not being clickable
- Fixed News links showing up incorrectly
- Fixed Ignore causing UI lockup
- Fixed some cases where the games list would not populate


4/24/2008

An update to the Beta is now available. The specific changes include:

- Fixed Garry's Mod breakage
- Fixed preloaded games not showing up

4/28/2008

An update to the Beta is now available. The specific changes include:

- Fixed showing friends playing "Base GoldSrc Shared Binaries" instead of the correct game
- Fixed more cases with preloaded games not showing up

4/29/2008

An update to the Beta is now available. The specific changes include:

- New Friends setting to enable timestamps in chats
- New Friends setting to set when the taskbar window should flash on new messages

[dailybacon]

I see that you can also change your status by right-clicking your name in chat.

[fuolox]

That's a nice feature. Thank you!

[Zips]

Edit - Hmm, seems a few restarts later (after opting out and then back in , and again) fixed it.

[richard.eid]

I notice that the in-game server browser updates at a much, much slower rate since I opted-in.

Otherwise, the changes you are testing in preparation for this week's large TF2 update including Medic Unlockables and Achievements and the introduction of the Payload game-type with the release of Goldrush seem to be working OK so far.

[sciss0rz]

Is it just me or does the games list (my favourite window) take a long time to load?

[Kam1kaz3]

Originally Posted by jasonr

- Added the ability to Ignore Friends

Ah, ive been waiting for this one for a while, thanks!

[Eek!]

So far so good. No problems that I can see (with my system).

[Calimero13]

nice.
now we need a feature to catogorize the friends we got.
would be awesome to have a way to have my Clans grouped.

good work !

btw. the warning message is to long (.....) ONLY IF the friends name is to long << attention
Or maybe the field is 1 ruler to short.. Im talking about the helpbox you get the first time you want to block someone.

[win xp]

[cobracommander]

Where can I see the changes or how to apply them?

[sciss0rz]

Originally Posted by cobracommander

Where can I see the changes or how to apply them?

Steam > Settings

[Zips]

Actually, I think there's a slight bug. I couldn't get the block feature to work if I attempted to use it first in chat.

Alt+tab showed me that there was a window that Steam had popped up (what I believe to be the "confirm block" window that shows up when done from the friends list) but because it popped up behind the chat window, I could not access it. Alt+tabbing wouldn't let me access to it and would only result in a "ding" (as if a game cache was being verified and you cannot click off of that Steam window) when I tried to click on anything as it was waiting for my confirm/deny.

When testing it out from my friend's list no window obstructed the confirmation window, and I was able to check the box to never show it again. Since then, blocking people in the chat has worked as intended.

Also, it seems that the taskbar stopped blinking upon receiving a new message in chat now ever since this beta was applied.

Update: As for the task bar blinking - It blinks only when some users submit a line in the chat. Perhaps only for those on my friend's list or those participating in the beta as it did not blink when someone who was not in the beta would type to the chat. I cannot pinpoint it for sure if it was the result of him not being in the beta or him not being on my Friend's list, as he is neither on my friends list nor was he in the beta at the time.

[Flea]

Originally Posted by Zips

Actually, I think there's a slight bug. I couldn't get the block feature to work if I attempted to use it first in chat.

Alt+tab showed me that there was a window that Steam had popped up (what I believe to be the "confirm block" window that shows up when done from the friends list) but because it popped up behind the chat window, I could not access it. Alt+tabbing wouldn't let me access to it and would only result in a "ding" (as if a game cache was being verified and you cannot click off of that Steam window) when I tried to click on anything as it was waiting for my confirm/deny.

When testing it out from my friend's list no window obstructed the confirmation window, and I was able to check the box to never show it again. Since then, blocking people in the chat has worked as intended.

Also, it seems that the taskbar stopped blinking upon receiving a new message in chat now ever since this beta was applied.

I can confirm this, only in my case the window popped up in front, but didn't draw, so it just grabbed the image of a firefox window i had running, and shows that in the outline of the popup.

it's locked up completely now, just dings.
although, curiously, i can still see all the chat messages..

[PurSpyk!!]

Hi,

Some Metascores are missing and there is a News link in the update column for most games, clicking on the link usually made the News link dissappear, this no longer happens.

[PurSpyk!!]

Seems to break Garrys Mod, when using the beta, the game has losts of errors in the console, and many program functions do not work