

Express for Desktop allows for non-metro development in Visual Studio 2012 - ryanmolden
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/06/no-cost-windows-8-desktop-development-returns-with-express-for-desktop/

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asadotzler
This is smart move by Microsoft. As much as they'd like the win32-land and the
now legacy Desktop to disappear, it will not happen in one release.

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drivebyacct2
Why, oh why, oh why do people think this when there is nothing to indicate
that whatsoever?

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nhebb
Because they keep acting like it. As say this as someone who develops Windows
desktop apps. You might have valid counterarguments to that, but that is the
perception I have and I don't think I'm alone.

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bztzt
I really think it's just that Metro/WinRT is the new thing, they're always
going to be trumpeting the new features of the new release as if they're the
only thing anyone should care about, that's unfortunately a Microsoft habit.
The desktop will quietly continue to persist and evolve.

I don't expect much success with Windows 8, due to a combination of there
being a lot of genuine rough edges and gaps in the new environment and in how
it relates to the desktop, most people not really feeling a need for a new
version of Windows right now anyway, and people's normal resistance to change.
However, they'll probably continue to improve the Metro stuff in future
Windows versions, and eventually it will just become another boring
established part of Windows that everyone takes for granted. At which point it
won't be the new shiny anymore and balance will be restored.

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MichaelGG
Well this restores my faith somewhat; glad to see the focus on Metro isn't
non-negotiable. VS 2005 had a similar problem, when it just dropped support
for the Web App (precompiled) style in favour of an ASP/PHP model. Right after
shipping they released an update to restore the removed feature.

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aninteger
So, is Express for Desktop the only wait to get a free C++ compiler from
Microsoft now? Last I read, they removed the C++ compiler and C runtime from
the Windows SDK.

[http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-
us/windows/hardware/hh852363.as...](http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-
us/windows/hardware/hh852363.aspx)

As long as they continue to ship a C++ compiler freely, I'll be happy.

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MatthewPhillips
GCC?

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jlgreco
I wonder if this "Desktop" version will have the ALL CAPS menu titles. Their
rational for that in the regular version iirc is that it fits with metro
better for some reason.

It would be strange to make a non-metro version of Visual Studio have those
menus with that rational, but it would also be weird to have two versions of
Visual Studio, one with capped menus and the other without.

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ryanmolden
As a member of the VS team (but not one who is in charge of making these
decisions) I can't comment in any official capacity. I can say I am not a fan
of the ALL CAPS menus, but, strangely enough, my personal opinion doesn't
drive decisions in a multi-million dollar product unit :).

I will however just leave this here:

[http://www.richard-banks.org/2012/06/how-to-prevent-
visual-s...](http://www.richard-banks.org/2012/06/how-to-prevent-visual-
studio-2012-all.html).

This is of course not officially supported and my being a VS team member does
not imply a contract for this registry key to exist for all time or on any
specific SKU.

~~~
tseabrooks
Wow, that all caps menu is ugly. I hadn't seen that before. As the only person
I can talk to working on VS team.. I hold you personally responsible. "Fix
It!"

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ryanmolden
Feedback was given in that general direction before the public release. I
guess it goes to show that while our feedback was viewed as...less than
representative, they (UX)got the general idea when the public feedback
was...mostly identical :) NOTE: The previous rambling statement was in regards
to general UX treatment in the Beta/RC timeframes, not on the ALL CAPS menus
in particular, but feedback has definetly been given (by myself and others,
internal and external) on that topic. They certainly are aware of the
feedback.

~~~
barrkel
I'm very surprised to learn that all caps menus were intentional. I thought it
was for some other reason - maybe something along the lines of what we at
Borland called "egging", i.e. using odd international characters to test for
internationalization errors; in other words, maybe it was testing for UI
spacing or something.

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madrona
What made them make that decision in the first place? Didn't they know it
would lead to significant blowback? I bet the VS devs weren't the ones that
made it.

~~~
WayneDB
Maybe it's a marketing thing. Controversy breeds attention.

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chrisdevereux
So have they restored the ability to use Win32 in VS Express? Or just the
ability to write .NET/WinRT apps that target the Windows 8 desktop
environment? It's not clear from the announcement.

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ryanmolden
>Visual Studio Express 2012 for Windows Desktop will provide a simple, end-to-
end development experience for developing Windows desktop applications
targeted to run on all versions of Windows supported by Visual Studio 2012.

From my reading of corporate speak this appears to say that you can use
Express Desktop 2012 (VNext Ultimate Web Cloud Edition :)) to write apps that
target Vista, Windows 7 or Windows 8. Since WinRT is Win8+ only that would
seem to imply 'down level' apps would need to be written in something else.
The primary candidates would seem to be WPF/Silverlight, MFC, Winforms or
Win32. Since Winforms/MFC are just thin wrappers over the Win32 APIs I think
it would be torturous to try and make an IDE that allowed writing WinForms/MFC
but somehow prevented direct Win32 access (especially given the ability to
simply use pInvoke from managed code).

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chrisdevereux
Ah, good spot!

