Steam is getting wider and more responsive store pages

Valve are continuing their work to modernise more of Steam, and now we're finally getting bigger and more responsive store pages. It's currently only available in the Steam Beta, which is opt-in. It's not on the web just yet - app only. Once it's ready though, it will roll out everywhere.

Store pages have changed from 940px to be 1200px wide, and it's responsive so it will shrink back down. Most of that extra space went to the videos and description side, which has expanded by default to 780px wide. Giving you bigger videos, screenshots and more space for the full description to pull you in a bit more.

That's still a lot of space they could fill up with things, but the key in design is not to overload with information. At least now on wider monitors it doesn't look so ridiculously small.

Plus developers can now put up small videos inside their game descriptions. For a long time developers have been adding in GIFs, but their quality and sizing is pretty poor, so to help devs can now use MP4 or WebM clips. As part of this, Valve went back through all the GIFs developers uploaded (292,000 of them!) to swap them over to video files. The videos will auto-play just like GIFs, but they also now have a play/pause button on them.

Hitting pause on one clip currently pauses them all.

And of course, Valve just had to get into the argument of how to pronounce GIF didn't they. From the announcement:

Q. How do you pronounce GIF, with a hard G or a soft J?

A. We on the Steam team are pretty split on how to pronounce it. Regardless of which way you are inclined, be prepared for some heated debates should you share your opinion on the internet.

The only correct way is with a hard G, as in Graphics, not Jraphics. Anything else just sounds wrong. It stands for Graphics Interchange Format after all doesn't it, and it's a hill I will plant my flag down and die on.