New Visual Studio UI

I thought this deserved a fork. I happen to like the dark theme of VS11. Take a look at a screen shot on Ars. At first, I thought it looked like the Expression suite. On second, I think it looks better.

-Josh

@JoshRoss: I like the lighter gray better than the darker. I think the big thing that I don't like about it is that the anchored windows have their titles in all caps. It makes it seem less professional.

@spivonious: The first version used Comic Sans.

1 hour ago, spivonious wrote

@JoshRoss: I like the lighter gray better than the darker. I think the big thing that I don't like about it is that the anchored windows have their titles in all caps. It makes it seem less professional.

Cargo Cult UI design at it's finest. Metro Style doesn't have bevels and gradients, so lets remove all the bevels and gradients! Metro Style has capitalized tab/category headers, so lets capitalize our headers! See boss, now we're Metro Style too! Lazy.

The only thing I -really- dislike about it are the black icons. They're just harder to read for no good reason. The all caps thing looks kind of dumb but eh, I'll get used to it.

@Bas: Oh, I didn't even notice the monochrome icons. That makes it look even more amateur.

50 minutes ago, Charles wrote

I'd say wait until you get your hands on the beta and play around with settings to meet your needs. Looking at pictures of something never does it justice....

C

that's fair....  i will wait a few days and see what it really looks lke....

It's too monochrome yes, but this, along with Office 15 screenshots, actually gives me hope that the desktop in Win8 will go through some more "Metro-ification" to not be so disparate visually from Metro stylings.

The argument against bring some Metro aesthetic sense to the desktop is that third-party apps would look out of place.  If MS keeps the desktop as it is Win8 preview however, then apps like Office 15 and VS will look equally out of place.

Don't like ALL CAPS headings though.

@spivonious:

It looks ok IMO, until I try to locate my Green Arrow using color cue, which is much harder when they are all just the same color.

I'm not even sure it's just the half-a$$ed attempt at Metroization that I find distasteful. The particular shade of gray used is quite dreary too. This mockup found in the Ars article thread of a more thoroughly Metro-themed VS uses a lighter gray and it looks miles better IMHO.

A thread where the maker of that mockup discusses his infulence and posts a version with some color added back in:

http://visualstudio.uservoice.com/forums/121579-visual-studio/suggestions/2623659-go-all-in-with-a-zune-style-metro-ui-see-my-makeo

imo if you're going to do dropdown menus, it's wrong to make them look like Zune/Metro section headers/pivots. They should either look like ordinary dropdown menus or else they shouldn't be dropdown menus.

funny to see Parkinson's Law of Triviality applies to IDEs just as much as, um, programming languages, though.

The thing that strikes me about this whole UI controversy is: What exactly is wrong with VS2010?

My impression is that the Visual Studio team has a designer on their staff and they like to feel like they contrubuted something even though it's not needed, and this is the result.

The new look(s) don't feel "Metro" to me, at all ... maybe I just don't understand what that means.

I do like the changes, except I don't like my toolboxes yelling at me ... everytime I look at solution explorer, I hear "SOLUTION EXPLORER!!!!!11!!!" in my head. 

That's what I was wondering too. VS2010 looks just fine, as did 2008. I'm not against big shakeups (Office needed it and the Ribbon took getting used to but solved the problems Office 2003 was having), but not without reason.

@Bas: From my understanding, the changes are all about eliminating distractions. And if there is one company in the world that knows about developer distractions, it's Microsoft.

-Josh

I finally got around to looking at this:

http://www.hanselman.com/blog/ChangeConsideredHarmfulTheNewVisualStudioLookAndFeel.aspx

I kind of like it, and it's hardly a coincidence that metro and retro share so many letters...

The one with added colour just looks fantastic:

That's the closest fit to true Metro styling I believe.  The few coloured icons may deviate from that a bit, but if Metro mandates that all icons are monochrome then that's a design flaw IMO (I don't believe it does).  This is especially true for tiny icons.

I'm less concerned with Metro as a principle design concept for the desktop the more I see modern examples, what I am concerned about is MS's past approach to the little details in its interfaces - history has shown that's lacking.  Metro *really* needs you to pay attention to these small details as it can have a massive impact on the final presentation as the above image shows.  Just a lighter shade of gray, better scroll bars and some slight font changes results in something that really looks professionally done.

It's almost there, but I hope MS considers these tweaks to the GUI for the final release.  The image above is to my eyes, about as close to perfect as you could expect for a Metro "inspired" GUI.