

Microsoft Visual Studio 2012 Reviewed - AndreyKarpov
http://www.drdobbs.com/cpp/microsoft-visual-studio-2012-reviewed/240007128

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jimueller
Scott Hanselman has a post on how to make the appearance closer to VS2010.
Including a registry setting to change the menus to title case.

[http://www.hanselman.com/blog/YourColorfulVisualStudio2012Wi...](http://www.hanselman.com/blog/YourColorfulVisualStudio2012WithTheColorThemeEditorVS2010ColorsToo.aspx)

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Derbasti
It's not like VS2010 ever integrated nicely with the look of other
applications. I mean, blue...

That said, since they _are_ diverging from any kind of standard look, making
the colors customizable is certainly a good thing.

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funkiee
This quote rings very true to me: "Speaking off the record, a Microsoft
employee with the Windows 8 team confessed that the Metro team was "very
surprised" when they saw how the Visual Studio team had interpreted the Metro
guidelines. We share in his puzzlement."

Visual Studio stands out even from other Windows 8 system applications in its
usage of the "Metro" style.

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CurtHagenlocher
Idiots. It's not "Metro" that VS 2012 is trying to copy with this look; it's
Office 2013. See
[http://zapp5.staticworld.net/images/article/2012/07/3_word_r...](http://zapp5.staticworld.net/images/article/2012/07/3_word_ribbon2-11384988.jpg)
for an example.

VS is still ugly, of course, but it's because the designers copied the ugly
Office design -- not because they didn't understand Metro.

Disclaimer: I work at Microsoft, but no longer on the VS team. Also, I have a
cold and am in a bad mood.

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Smudge
I can see exactly what you mean, but the point you make is marred by your
usage of the word "Idiots." The concept of Office being a different kind of
"Metro" than normal Metro is not obvious to everyone.

Edit: I guess I'm just confused about who "Idiots" refers to. The quoted MS
employee? The people agreeing with the quote? Everyone in the comment thread?

Also, to be clear: I work at MS and on a couple small parts of VS. I wasn't
really part of any of the UI decisions.

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seanmcdirmid
Give the poster a break, idiots could refer to whoever at Microsoft said that
(as they were correctly not well informed nor had any special information).

Office and Visual Studio are of the new "metro-inspired" UIs that, for very
good reasons, cannot migrate away from desktop right now. I'm sure we'll
eventually see some of these apps move to more Metro UIs (Office?), but for
some they will always be desktop (Visual Studio).

Disclaimer: work for Microsoft, but nowhere near these teams.

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CurtHagenlocher
"Idiots" is mostly because I'm in a bad mood. But also, yeah, referring both
to the person being quoted and to the person doing the quoting.

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funkiee
Good to know that I'm an idiot for thinking that VS2012 is trying to follow
guidelines by a product in RTM instead of a product that is in beta and I have
no interaction with. Of course I'm also just in a bad mood because I have to
use the Pending Changes window in VS 2012 on a daily basis.

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tarice
I'm still disappointed that deploying to Windows XP isn't supported at launch.

I'll be waiting until the patch this fall[1] before even considering
upgrading.

[1][http://blogs.msdn.com/b/vcblog/archive/2012/06/15/10320645.a...](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/vcblog/archive/2012/06/15/10320645.aspx)

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Derbasti
Imagine how I must feel: They didn't support Windows ME, either!

~~~
roedog
Don't be cruel. I'm reading this on a machine running XP alongside my 100,000
co-workers running with the same. The company-wide upgrade to Win7 has been
running late for the last few years...

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yuhong
I hope this company don't end up have to pay for Custom Support for XP!

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NateDad
Whose brilliant idea was it to MAKE THE MENUS SHOUT AT YOU? Glad to see
there's a registry key to fix that... but still, when did Microsoft start
listening to my great aunt Gertrude about proper capitalization?

Also, I agree, the reviews aren't hitting the most important points about the
new VS. Does it fix all those annoying bugs we've all been struggling with for
10 years? My guess is no (since as I said, most of them have been there for
over a decade). Instead of putting time mucking with the look and feel on a
tool that is SOLELY used by developers... how about fixing the bugs that cause
us to lose hours of time every week? You know, like where VS crashes, or
decides it can't load dependencies in installer files, or the horribly slow
search, or the occasional complete hang of the UI for 20 seconds, or the fact
that a minor change to an installer project completely changes the whole
incomprehensible project file? How about those bugs?

But I guess most of this product was just supporting the new metro crap.
Shouldn't OS compatibility be the Windows SDK team's problem, and let the
Visual Studio guys... like, you know, work on Visual Studio?

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beanbeans
hey NateDad 2 things when VS is choking on some simply whatever launch tasks
manager , look at disk performance youll see its writing files in
user\appdata\roaming somthing like that erase all MS files in that dir. also
create your own build automation and dont count on anything but compling from
VS .MSFT is returning to its roots as a tech marketing but vs2010 should work
OK for another 2-3 years, by then you can migrate to somthing better.good
luck!!

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molmalo
What I don't like of this version, is having to install VS with support for
languages that I don't use. I use a 128GB SSD and I hate having those extra
GBs wasting space.

And then, those new glyphs in the Solution Explorer, that are making my work a
little bit slower. Maybe, that only means that I still need to get used to the
new UI. =(

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politician
I am still extremely annoyed that the Visual Studio team hasn't adopted
something like tmbundles for syntax highlighting. The Fonts and Colors dialog
is basically unusable, and the best way to do any sort of bulk change is to
export the settings and tweak the very limited set of properties.

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barista
This should have been titled as Microsoft Visual Studio 2012 "UI" Reviewed.
The post is mostly about VS 2012 as IDE and lacks review of any other new
features.

As a developer, the UI only matters to me for first few days or so and then it
all just fades away in the background as the focus shifts to the code and the
integrated tools. Sad that most of the reviews of VS 2012 that I have seen
focus on its UI and color scheme rather than functionality. I doubt the color
scheme matters to developers as much. May be to a fashion designer but not
developers ...

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vyrotek
If you've been using Visual Studio for years prior to 2012 then this new UI is
actually a pretty big deal. It's VERY different. I can get over the theme
itself, but they also moved some buttons around which really messes with your
motor memory for some things you've been doing for years. I'm looking at you
"Transform All Templates" button!

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seanmcdirmid
Its not really not that different. Its not the simplification that Cloud9 has
done, and its nothing wild like LightTable is attempting. Actually, 2012 is
very conservative, they polished the UI, but its still basically the same IDE
as it was in 2005.

I'm very excited to see new kinds of IDEs coming to market, Cloud9...and even
LightTable. I think we are almost at the end of the line for SmallTalk-ish
IDEs like Visual Studio or Eclipse.

