My reaction:

I really don't get why Microsoft feels the need to change to a monochromatic UI theme in a developer tool just because the next version of Windows has monochromatic tiles and icons. I also don't understand why Microsoft feels compelled to MAKE TEXT ALL CAPS IN AREAS just because the next version of Windows might do that in places.

Visual Studio 2010 or even 2005 icons were sufficient and I didn't hear anyone complain that the run triangle button was green or the terminate square was red. Note the "adjusted the grays within the icons to eliminate any fuzziness or halo effect". Ugh.

Newsflash to Microsoft, software developers don't care about an IDE which matches the newest Windows themes. We want the UI we use at all day to be as clear as possible, neat, organized, to the point, NOT OVERLY LARGE IN PLACES, something which fast feel snappy, is bug free (as possible), and importantly comes with great features.

Blech!

So CAPS are going to be more common with METRO?

What user experience drove this decision?? !None => speak!

It's weird that they made the menu titles all caps but removed the caps everywhere else. Although I have to say, I didn't even notice the caps in the beta anymore after about a day.

All in all, I have nothing to complain about, the CAPITALS ARE A DESIGN DECISION, SO WE WILL HAVE TO STICK WITH THEM, IF I AM HONEST, I QUITE LIKE THEM, AND THINK THEM VITAL TO THE METRO LOOK, AS IT ISN'T TOO MUCH

IF I WERE DISHONEST I'D SAY I LOOK FORWARD TO METRO-STYLING MY CODE TOO; TYPING IN MIXED-CASE IS SO OVERRATED AS PROVEN BY THIS SPECTACULAR POST. IT ALSO AVOIDS UNNECESSARY SPELL CHECKING. GREAT IDEA MICROSOFT!

*Although to be entirely honest, the VS UI is so far away from what Metro is all about that I can't see why pretending to embrace some aspects of it is necessarily a good thing at all.

It never fails to amaze me how much people hate change. Doesn't matter if the change is necessary, for the better, etc. It's change, and therefore EVIL!

The only change in the RC that I truly think is an improvement is the custom chrome. The rest is minor and subject to personal preference, not for any quantifiable usability reason. Adding colors back? I'm glad they've remained minimalistic. It's pleasing in the toolbar. I think it's distracting in Solution Explorer, to be quite honest. Change to the ALL CAPS headers? Meh. That's a preference thing. I could care less one way or the other. The all caps menu items? I don't prefer it and it seems like a strange decision in conjunction with removing all caps from titles, but it honestly doesn't make any real difference.

The really important stuff was done in the beta and remains and even was enhanced in the RC. Reduction in clutter and an emphasis on the code. A simplification of the interface, which is always a good thing.

2 minutes ago, wkempf wrote

Who moved the cheese? Part II.

It never fails to amaze me how much people hate change. Doesn't matter if the change is necessary, for the better, etc. It's change, and therefore EVIL!

THAT'S JUST AS BAD AS "PEOPLE THAT DON'T LIKE MY IDEA MUST BE RESISTANT TO CHANGE."

*Edit: BAS to BAD -- My apologies to Bas*

When arguments come down to the color of the bike shed, I'm sorry it is just "RESISTANT TO CHANGE." The closest anyone has come to a valid argument in any of these threads is that the monochrome icons make it harder to distinguish between them. Of course there's no data to back that claim up, but it at least sounds like a valid usability concern. Everything else said, over and over again, beating the dead horse into the ground, is nothing more than "I don't like change." It's boring enough to hear this the first time. Did we really need a new thread to say it all again?

C

32 minutes ago, Charles wrote

I LIKE IT!!

C

I AM SORRY.  WHAT DID YOU SAY? I COULDN'T HEAR OVER YOUR SCREAMING.

In all seriousness, I like the slight changes to the icon design and making it feel a bit lively.
However, what the hell is wrong with those CAPITALIZED menu items? It is very irritating.

DeathByVisualStudio explained it perfectly.

53 minutes ago, DeathByVisualStudio wrote

THAT'S JUST AS BAS AS "PEOPLE THAT DON'T LIKE MY IDEA MUST BE RESISTANT TO CHANGE."

Personally I thought the way caps were used in beta worked just fine, whereas I don't like them in the menu bar at all, go figure. Maybe they're trying to be semi-consistent with Office 15?

Where does Windows 8 use text in all caps? AFAICT Zune and Windows Phone may use all-lowercase and all-caps in places, but Windows 8 uses sentence case (normal first-letter capitalization) everywhere.

6 minutes ago, cbae wrote

The all-caps menus look a little strange, but I can see why they did it given that they made the color of the window title bar identical to the window frame. It would be difficult to tell what are menus otherwise. However, in making the title bar blend in with the window frame to give this pseduo-chromeless look, they actually REDUCED the surface area of the window's client area. WTF?

I'm not sure they have, although at first glance it does appear that the menu now takes more space. If you look at the actual space available for code in the 2010/Beta/RC side-by-side comparison image the RC definitely dedicates more vertical space to the code view than the others.

"File" has been capital first (originally with an underline), lower-case after ever since the dawn of time. Putting it all in caps just feels wrong.

Personal tastes aside (for the record, I think it looks good), I believe it's a terrible idea: localization can expand text significantly and all this capitalization on a very busy menu bar can constitute a serious problem.

2 hours ago, Charles wrote

NOT SURE WHAT THE ALL CAPS THING IS. I'LL ASK SOMEBODY IN VS TO GET SOME INSIGHTS NEXT TIME I SEE ONE OF THEM WALKING DOWN THE HALLWAY.
C

I RELABELLED MY CAPS LOCK KEY AS :::METRO:::

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa974176.aspx#capitalization

 http://download.microsoft.com/download/F/F/C/FFCF79B1-C2EB-42C2-8E2D-665705380DA0/Windows%20Phone%20Design%20System%20-%20Codename%20Metro.PDF

Taste aside, I'm not sure why people would get so irritated about this as a design choice. You know how many websites use uppercase for top-level menu titles? Just look at Channel 9.

BROWSE FORUMS CODING4FUN EVENTS

onoz Channel 9 is yelling at us

I'm also allergic to applications with custom window frames. I hate custom window frames. I rejoiced when Messenger and WMP finally started using normal window frames again. And now Visual Studio of al things is using a custom one? I AM UNHAPPY!

They should use all caps for error messages. My old Roland E-96 keyboard did that (mainly because its low resolution LCD display couldn't really do lower case). It was always funny that when you hit play without a disk in the drive it would yell at you "INSERT SONG DISK AND PRESS PLAY". Always felt like there was an implied "NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND, YOU BLITHERING IDIOT!" after it.

edit, MAYBE FEATURE CREEP IS UNAVOIDABLE, AND A MENU OPTION TO HAVE NORMAL CAPS IS THE WAY FORWARD FOR THE DISSENTERS

4 hours ago, vesuvius wrote

*snip*

 edit, MAYBE FEATURE CREEP IS UNAVOIDABLE, AND A MENU OPTION TO HAVE NORMAL CAPS IS THE WAY FORWARD FOR THE MAJORITY

Fixed that for ya.

9 hours ago, Sven Groot wrote

...

It was always funny that when you hit play without a disk in the drive it would yell at you "INSERT SONG DISK AND PRESS PLAY". Always felt like there was an implied "NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND, YOU BLITHERING IDIOT!" after it.

They probably observed that most people would be wearing headphones in that case; speaking up was the sensible thing to do.

20 minutes ago, Blue Ink wrote

*snip*

They probably observed that most people would be wearing headphones in that case; speaking up was the sensible thing to do.

I hope you realize it was all caps text; the thing didn't actually yell at you.

ALSO the ALL CAPS menus are very much harder to read. The blog posting made no attempt to justify the ALL CAPS menus. Please can someone on the VS design team tell us the reason - then perhaps we will understand.

Is this actually a regression, though? I still have no idea what most of the VS2008/2010 icons do or represent, and I've been using them every day for years.

IMO, the new icons are definitely an improvement, VS2010 icons are too busy to be useful or comprehensible.

24 minutes ago, ZippyV wrote

I'm watching C9 live right now and it looks like they fixed the UPPERCASE MENU ITEMS to lowercase.

Its an old version, look at the  Native Titlebar  and the UPPERCASE TITLES ON THE TOOL WINDOWS.