This week, the popular PC digital distribution software, Steam, received a major user interface (UI) overhaul, now available in Beta form. It's clear that with this update, Valve, the managers of Steam, are trying to make Steam the best-looking digital distribution system out there. 

But do they succeed?

The UI update is massive. Valve has literally redesigned Steam from the ground up -- mostly for the better. 

When first opening Steam, you'll be greeted by the completely changed Storefront. The Store's design has been polished perfectly, giving it an overall more professional look. Individual game's pages are more clean and presentable, and with the ditching of Internet Explorer, the game's page's screenshots and videos load a thousand times faster and a thousand times easier. The front page of the Store also now displays an "Active Steam Users" graph and a short blurb on what game's your friends are buying. Nifty!

The "My Games" section has been renamed the "Library". Out of everything in the UI update, the update to your Library is the most significant. For each game you now have a completely new page, describing the friends you have that have played the games, the achievements that the game may have, and useful links relating to the games, such as the game's forum or website. 

The Library also now has three different ways in which you can view your games. You can either have the previously detailed "Details" view, the simple "List" view, or the flashy "Grid" view, which presents your games in large, click-able buttons.

The Library also now has a separate "Downloads" tab, displaying all your current and past downloads, include a neat consistent chart showing your download speed. Slammin'!

The next section is the "News" sections, which has been completely separated from the Store page. You now have full view of all the news on Steam, such as game updates or the release of third party games on Steam. This section also holds a useful "My Games" news section, in which it displays news only related to the games that you own. Groovy! 

And last, and least, is the Community section which has undergone no changes. A bit of a disappointment, but it's assumed that Valve will update the Community pages to match to new UI in time. 

Looking at the UI update as a whole, it's quite a feat. The many new designs and the complete revamp of game organization within the software is an incredible feat, and shows that Steam is headed in a bold direction.

However, as with anything, there are some negatives.

First and foremost, the UI has an abundance of wasted space. From the chat windows to the main layout, and so on, there are several places where there's just giant gray blanks. Perhaps Valve is going to put something in these blank spaces, but for right now they're completely pointless.

The "Grid" display is all fine and dandy, that is, until you place in a Shortcutted game or a game demo from the store. Games that you shortcut through Steam and certain demos display a bland gray button with a mini game icon in the center. Why not give us the option to upload custom images for these buttons?

Certain colors within the new UI are mismatched, such as the colors for the chat box and the text you are entering into it. These two colors are incredibly similar, and when viewing them on top of each other a real eyesore. The extended use of gradients all across the new UI have also been causing problems for certain monitors, and in general look rather tacky.

Despite the few negatives, the Steam UI update is in all cases a phenomenal success. Being in beta, there's still a chance to fix up some design choices and other bugs, but despite what Valve decides to go with, the new UI is a change for the better.