What GUI toolkit does Valve use for Steam? Is it Qt? I am interested in using the same toolkit for a project.
A:
Steam only runs on Windows and predates QT for Windows, so I'd have to guess something else.
Since Steam has had the same GUI since 2003, chances are it uses some variant of MFC. It also uses an embedded Internet Explorer web browser for its Store and Community sections.
However, I can't give any guarantees about what the version currently in Beta uses. It looks quite a bit different and includs the Webkit rendering engine instead of using IE. It may use Webkit for everything rather than drawing their own GUIs.
R. Bemrose
2010-03-05 20:35:23
I tried the beta, it is pretty sick, glad they are ditching IE (cause they are possibly adding Mac support)!
Dr Hydralisk
2010-03-05 20:59:31
This information is out of date now. Steam is now released on Mac, and coming very soon on Linux.
Warren P
2010-06-14 14:49:47
+2
A:
Having had experience with the Source engine I know that Valve have an library called VGUI which they use for all their games and many of their tools (when in game the library sits on top of the Source renderer, when in tools it sits on top of the Windows API I believe). Although I can’t answer the question with 100% certainty I suspect that this is what they use for Steam as well (I seem to recall some Steam updates that mentioned VGUI) – I would be surprised if the new beta uses a different library.
Even if it is not using VGUI, given what I know of Valve I would think they will have written something else entirely in-house.
So, it is (almost certainly) proprietary and highly unlikely to ever be available for third party use (unless you have the funds to buy a Source engine license).
Meeeeeesta D
2010-03-09 12:51:46
A:
Does this answer the question?
http://games.slashdot.org/story/10/02/25/0640233/Steam-UI-Update-Beta-Drops-IE-Rendering-For-WebKit
SF.
2010-03-09 12:57:33