VS2010 to use toolbars?

There's been some speculation that VS2010 will use the ribbon (which I think would suit it very well) and/or a WPF interface to boot.

Well I submitted a bug relating to VS2008's toolbar system earlier last year. They just recently posted a comment that says they'll fix it in the next version, which implies VS2010 will use toolbars rather than a ribbon, possibly still using Office Command Bar-style toolbars rather than the Expression-style WPF toolbars, which hints it might not be WPF.

The main code editor does indeed use WPF, which will lead to some amazing extensibility opportunities, but the Ribbon will not be used. The VS team has said specifically that the Ribbon is not suitable for their product.

Rico Mariani answered this question here.

The ribbon was created to allow a user to have access to a lot of commands at any given moment. In Visual Studio the commands you use the most are F5 and the debugging options, so a ribbon is overkill and takes up too much space.

You also don't edit your code like a word document, as int for example is already formatted, and /// gives you your XML comments all nicely formatted in green.

I keep sounding like a broken record, but if you really want to know why the ribbon was procured, then watch The Story Of The Ribbon.

Ion Todirel said:

nope, no ribbon, fortunately!

Thank goodness! The ribbon is far less usable than nice static toolbars.

Ion Todirel said:

vesuvius said:

*snip*

I'm not so sure about it taking so much space, minimized it could take less than a row of toolbars + main menu, of the current implementation together

On a 19'' wide-screen monitor, with a Ribbon and Windows 7 Task bar, you have considerably less space. This for instance is why you don't have it in the front page of Outlook 2007, but is available in your Text editor for Email, Appointments, Tasks etc.

Ion Todirel said:

vesuvius said:

*snip*

What would be the point?

You cannot click on F5 or access any toolbar buttons win a collapsed ribbon (Step into, Step out etc) like you can in the Outlook image above.

In the Outlook tool bar above, you have something analogous functionally to Visual Studio i.e. a handful of frequently used commands i.e. debug, step into etc.

You would end up with the catastrophe that is the Windows 7 taskbar where you are adding more "mouse clicks" and "mouse hovers" rather than reducing them.

Ion Todirel said:

nope, no ribbon, fortunately!

thankyouthankyouthankyouthankyouthankyouthankyouthankyouthankyouthankyouthankyou

vesuvius said:

Ion Todirel said:

*snip*

On a 19'' wide-screen monitor, with a Ribbon and Windows 7 Task bar, you have considerably less space. This for instance is why you don't have it in the front page of Outlook 2007, but is available in your Text editor for Email, Appointments, Tasks etc.

I think the reason you don't have a ribbon on the main window of Outlook 2007 is because they just didn't get around to putting one there.

Look at the last of these leaked screenshots of Office 14:

http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2009/01/leaked-first-office-14-screenshots.ars

Looks like VS2010 is going to be all WPF...  screenshots available here:  http://blogs.msdn.com/jasonz/archive/2009/02/20/a-new-look-for-visual-studio-2010.aspx

DCMonkey said:

vesuvius said:

*snip*

I think the reason you don't have a ribbon on the main window of Outlook 2007 is because they just didn't get around to putting one there.

Look at the last of these leaked screenshots of Office 14:

http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2009/01/leaked-first-office-14-screenshots.ars

I anticipated that assertion, but am reliably informed that Microsoft change their UI dramatically and drastically when beta testing Office. Also, the image is not the from page in Office but the Calendar, but I agree with you it "looks" as if the ribbon has been used like Access, so Outlook is becoming a pure Single Document Interface (SDI), but this is all speculation!

CannotResolveSymbol said:

Looks like VS2010 is going to be all WPF...  screenshots available here:  http://blogs.msdn.com/jasonz/archive/2009/02/20/a-new-look-for-visual-studio-2010.aspx

Pretty...  but probably won't help performance or startup time one little bit.

Starting a WPF application isn't too painful now, but it is not going to be as quick a previous. The real pain in visual studio is large projects and Websites that take an age to load at start-up and as long to build when debugging.

I have been working with WPF quite a bit recently, and the data grid will never be as fast as the Windows Forms one - ever - but my is the WPF grid more customizable. The problem is that in your typical WPF application, if you look at all the namespaces needed just to get the thing to work compared with Windows Forms, the Libraries are dwarfed.

That VS 2010 will be slower is a given, but there will be recompense, and then some!

vesuvius said:

DCMonkey said:

*snip*

I anticipated that assertion, but am reliably informed that Microsoft change their UI dramatically and drastically when beta testing Office. Also, the image is not the from page in Office but the Calendar, but I agree with you it "looks" as if the ribbon has been used like Access, so Outlook is becoming a pure Single Document Interface (SDI), but this is all speculation!

That's the Outlook 14 main window. Note the Mail/Calendar/Contacts/Tasks buttons in the lower left. It just happens to be switched to Calendar view. I assume the set of tibbon tabs switch when you change views.

CannotResolveSymbol said:

Looks like VS2010 is going to be all WPF...  screenshots available here:  http://blogs.msdn.com/jasonz/archive/2009/02/20/a-new-look-for-visual-studio-2010.aspx

Pretty...  but probably won't help performance or startup time one little bit.

I just dropped Jason an email with my queries about the VS2010 UI and how it works w.r.t. how I think UIs should work. I'll let you know if he replies.

CannotResolveSymbol said:

Looks like VS2010 is going to be all WPF...  screenshots available here:  http://blogs.msdn.com/jasonz/archive/2009/02/20/a-new-look-for-visual-studio-2010.aspx

Pretty...  but probably won't help performance or startup time one little bit.

That does look pretty nice.

One thing I'd like to see re: VS toobars is for the default number of rows in the toolbar band to be the same in each "mode" (editing/design/debug). I'd like to not have to always rearrange my bars in each mode on a new install to keep all the content of the window from jumping up and down as I switch. It's especially irritating on lower end machines.

I would love to see MS yank the WPF-based text editor out of VS10 and include an extensible version in Windows.  That would silence those vi/emacs/TextMate elitists once and for all and maybe stop people from feature-creeping Notepad. *wink*