The first Beta of Visual Studio 2011 is now available... more details on the Visual Studio team blog.
I'm a little anxious to see whether I like the new User Interface compared to 2010 (which I really liked). Bring on the download!
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
Monday, February 27, 2012
Visual Studio 2011 UI Changes
I just saw a post about the changes to the User Interface of Visual Studio 2011 (http://blogs.msdn.com/b/visualstudio/archive/2012/02/23/introducing-the-new-developer-experience.aspx).
My first reaction is that it almost feels like Visual Studio .NET 2003! Everything has a very flat look and feel and most of the backgrounds/gradients have been removed as well. From the small screen shots in the post, it is hard to get a feel for what the actual experience will be. While I'm not against what has been done (I've configured a slate gray Theme for the VS Chrome), it is a bit of a change from the polished gradients that were a part of the 2010 release and definitely looks a bit retro.
I wonder if part of the reason for the 'simplifying' of the interface is performance. In VS 2010, a good portion of the UI was re-written to use WPF. During the course of dog-fooding their own technology, they made a ton of performance improvements in order to maintain the same level of performance as previous versions (a win for WPF developers everywhere). However, there were still instances when things just felt slow. Perhaps these changes will make things feel faster, even if they aren't.
Hopefully they will look at the scrolling performance of the Solution Navigator when there is a Database Project loaded. I have experienced this in multiple solutions, big and small, where the only commonality between them is the fact that they have a DB Pro project loaded. This happens regardless of the number of tables, etc.
My first reaction is that it almost feels like Visual Studio .NET 2003! Everything has a very flat look and feel and most of the backgrounds/gradients have been removed as well. From the small screen shots in the post, it is hard to get a feel for what the actual experience will be. While I'm not against what has been done (I've configured a slate gray Theme for the VS Chrome), it is a bit of a change from the polished gradients that were a part of the 2010 release and definitely looks a bit retro.
I wonder if part of the reason for the 'simplifying' of the interface is performance. In VS 2010, a good portion of the UI was re-written to use WPF. During the course of dog-fooding their own technology, they made a ton of performance improvements in order to maintain the same level of performance as previous versions (a win for WPF developers everywhere). However, there were still instances when things just felt slow. Perhaps these changes will make things feel faster, even if they aren't.
Hopefully they will look at the scrolling performance of the Solution Navigator when there is a Database Project loaded. I have experienced this in multiple solutions, big and small, where the only commonality between them is the fact that they have a DB Pro project loaded. This happens regardless of the number of tables, etc.
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