Summary: Product feedback about Visual Studio
SeeAlso: ProductFeedback, WhidbeyWiki, VisualStudio

The MSDN team have started a central product feedback site - you can submit bug reports straight into their database! We'll gradually start deprecating this wiki, and pointing people over there instead -- JonathanHardwick

This page is for feedback about the development environment itself - if you've got feedback on a language, maybe you want VisualCPlusPlusFeedBack or DotNetFeedback?

Public is the Default for Implementation of Interfaces

Why is "Public" the DefaultForVisualStudioImplementationOfInterfaces?

Multiline Search and Find/Replace

This has been a feature of other IDEs and web-developement IDEs for a while now, and for me, in Dreamweaver, its been a life-saver. In multi-Line Find/Replace, you're presented with two resizable multiline text-boxes, and makes searching for code that files more than two lines so much easier.

Granted, I know the VS IDE already supports it by including the CRLF character within the search or replace string, but it doesn't show it visually, which is a shame

Tag indictor

Well, FrontPage 2003 includes this and hopefully VS 2005 will also, just please DON'T drop this feature

More customisable code-colouring

I've noticed a few shortcomings with VS2003's code-coloring settings:

a) You can only give one set of custom keywords one color
b) All HTML tags are colored the same, there's no different coloring for different tags, such as <input> elements in yellow, <table>s in turquoise, <script> in red, etc... (Dreamweaver and Homesite have been doing this for YEARS!)
c) VS doesn't apply code-coloring to files outside of a project or inline ASP.Net code for a non-project ASPX file (when I'm editing a single file, I don't want to have to create a whole new project for it) The same applies to IntelliSense
d) Certain code-coloring elements are never defined, such as "Operators", I've set them to a ligher shade of blue, and VS still doesn't color them differently from normal keywords.

Make the 2003-style toolbars optional

No, seriously

I, and many others like me, do NOT like the "toyish" interface of Office 2003's toolbars.

Granted, they may look nice, but they seem unprofessional compared to the elegant 2002 style.

Well, okay... keep the high-color icons, but PLEASE remove the "bubble" backgrounds!!

Command-Line Build Bug

I have wasted hours trying to work around the bug that sometimes crashes devenv.exe after a command line build (we use devenv as a part of our nightly build process). Problems like this make developers (at least this developer) prefer other tools/platforms.
Lot of people have problems with VS.Net crashing%22vswexception+filter%22.
For your information: the hotfix described here does not work. (And why do I have to call support to get the hotfix? Another time-waster)
-- b_brenna, Thread

DDE is delayed while debugging a Smart Device project in VS03

While debugging a Smart Device project, DDE calls on the computer running VS.NET seem to be delayed until the debugging session is ended. For example, activating any item in Explorer where the associated program uses DDE to load into an existing process. This can include a number of Office applications and my favourite alternate editor, TextPad. The Explorer window stops responding, but starts responding again when the application opens. This only happens when debugging on an actual device, and only when synchronised using a standard partnership. If the device is connected as Guest, this does not occur.

Steps to reproduce:
*Create a new C# Smart Device Application
*Select Pocket PC, Windows Application
*Go to Debug > Start
*In the Deploy dialog, select Pocket PC Device
*Ensure a Pocket PC is connected, the program runs and the IDE switches to Debug mode.
*In an Explorer window, try to open a Word document
*Observe that Word does not start at this stage. If Word was already loaded, observe that the activated document does not open.
*Observe that the Explorer window has stopped responding
*In VS.NET, choose Debug > Stop Debugging
*Observe that Word now starts and opens the selected document, and the Explorer window now responds. If Word was already loaded, the activated document may open at some point during the debugging session.

Debugging the ""GUI-Designer"" of VS.Net

If the ""GUI-Designer"" refuses to display your Form you have to start an additional instance of ""VS.Net"" and debug the first instance.. It would be nicer if the ""GUI-Designer"" shows you all exceptions (maybe at the output-console).. -- Jtb

Delete the Definition when the Control is Deleted

It's very annoying when you delete a control in the designer and then try to recompile a project and you get an error like this - "C:\Form1.cs(398): 'myProject.Form1' does not contain a definition for 'btnTest_Click'"

You would think the IDE would be smart enough to know I nuked the control, now delete the definitions in the auto-generated code, automatically please...<~Knute/>

Fix the ASP.Net Calendar Control Formatting Issues

I used the ASP.Net Calendar control on my last project and I wanted to be able to control the formatting of the head portion of the control. I did not matter what I did I could never get these elements to inherit my CSS values. I tried using the properties to control these attributes and they still did not want to work.

Click here to see a working example of my frustration. All I want to do is to be able to control the Month Header Style. As you can see on this page it's left aligned and I want to make it centered. I would also like to control the previous/next controls alignment. I have tried everything to make this work.<~Knute/>

Front-end CSS Style Sheet Support and XHTML Code is Very Very Poor in Visual Studio

We cannot use Visual Studio as a viable front-end tool for web solutions as the code it spits out (especially drag and drop web forms) is so packed with IE 5.5 proprietary junk and JavaScript, that its all but impossible to hack and tweak for other browsers or scenarios (we all know IE 5.5 has a severe box-model CSS issue that distorts the page and font sizing problems!). I noticed you can change the "schemas" to use other browsers, but thats still just a band-aid for the problem. We have all been so spoiled by IE's now slipping marketing dominance that I think many developers blindly assume VS's front-end code is sufficient....truth is, its not! I feel like you guys just took the already poor Frontpage GUI solution and stuck it into VS and hoped developers would be lazy enough not to notice the level of problems that acrue when you drag and drop a simple web form onto a page and compile it then try and view it from alternative browsers or OS's like Netscape/Aol/Mozilla/Firebird/Opera/MAC OSX, Linus...... even IE3 and 4 browsers. All the great business logic and ADO.NET miracles cannot address or fix the problems when a user gets a poorly formatted "datagrid" table, or cookies are turned off and web forms and sessions break, or PC security has turned off Javascript in the browser and web form validations and DOM/DHTML menus collapse, or a Linux users (among the soon to be millions now in China) cannot see an Active X control. And then there is CSS and XHTML problems and the fact all the other browsers now support a standard that IE does not....what happened to that support in Visual Studio? What about CSS support to match that standard? In addition, VS front-end .aspx code breaks nearly every rule in xhtml standards by including all upper case elements, no or poorly issued doctypes, non-quoted attributes, absolute positioning which has issues, and general non-compliant w3c CSS that often only works in IE. I think its a tremendous business logic tool, but as with Frontpage, its pretty much a failure as a front-end, globally supporting web development tool. What we may do to take advanatge of its greatness in business logic, is reduce our dependency to it to just a business level tool, and completely separate out all proprietary stuff like datagrids and tables in Visual Studio, remove all use of the web forms design tool, and retool all use of CSS as much as we can when the server attempts to autogenerate that code. When it does and we as developers cannot change that configuration easily to meet web standards for our clients globally viewing a web app from various OS's and agents and devices, its a major problem and I cannot honestly see the value in tools like the datagrid, or how sessions or "state" are managed using hidden controls, or use of auto-genearted Javascript if all that stuff breaks at some point and we get a call from clients. Love it if you guys would think a little more deeply about the nature of the web today...its not just a Microsoft world, but is being quickly repurposed for all kinds of new standards, technologies, users, devices, and open-source xml-based things. Would like to see Microsoft move a little closer towards that vision in their tools and separate the client side stuff more from what you guys really do best...help us with the business logic and network pieces behind the scenes. Leave the front end for Dreamweaver and robust CSS tools that are reinventing how data is delivered online. And most importantly for Visual Studio, its not ALL about IE anymore! Please remove all that nastly code that the sofwtare auto-generates!

IE market share data is slipping_stats.asp

Memory Leaks

It seems to me that ""VS.Net"" has a few memoryleaks.. Starting with 60mb memory-usage you can get VS.Net to over 180mb (many debug-runs, leave ""VS.Net"" open for a long time - 2 days or longer).. -- Jtb

New Feature Suggestions

Declarative pre/post/invariant conditions implemented via standard attributes (like XC# , but for all .NET languages).

Also, go beyond XC# by using declarative pre/post/invariant condition attributes to automatically generate test cases for TDD like JUnitDoclet Integrate test run into configuration/build process (like NAnt )

It would probably be a good idea just to buy Resolve to get started with all of this.

While you're at it, you should just buy and integrate C# Refactory

Add an optional background continuous integration compile/test process.

Integrate the continuious intergration compile/test program with VSS.

Create a distributed compiler like distcc and integrate this with the continuious integration compile/test program which is integrated with VSS.

For ASP.NET modify the build process to support multiple deployment targets (local, development, staging, live, etc.)

An ability to load/save breakpoints into files.

---

Some things I (RWeigelt) would like to see in future versions of VisualStudio
(BTW URLs are fixed now; FlexWiki thought the closing ')' were part of the URL):
* Improved tooltips generated from XML documentation comments
* Improved editing of XML documentation comments
* Automatic insertion of XML documentation comments when implementing interfaces
* Filtering for intellisense
* Improved filtering for find/replace

Regular Regular Expressions

For "find in files" you need to have "normal" regular expressions option in addition to the funky VS style. The difference in productivity would be enourmous.

Resource-Editor

The resource-editor is really ugly. For example: try editing a long multiline resource-string. -- Jtb

Translation

""VS.Net"" should be better translated to other languages.. We tried the german translation at work and changed to the "original" ""VS.Net"" because the translation was really bad.. No developer would translate some words in such a cruel way. -- Jtb

VisualStudioSourceControlIntegration

Try creating a class library in one project, and a web app in another project, and get them working in a solution and getting it all checked into source safe (without it creating .root and _1 named VSS projects which you don't want or need) and then adding a new developer to your team.

Or try renaming a project in VSS and checking it back in (and spending hours trying to figure out the crypting binding error messages and warnings)

Or try connecting to work thru VPN and suffering the slowness of VSS over the net.
-- bshankle, Thread
-- <KorbyParnell> responses to most of the above questions are sprinkled throughout my blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/korbyp/ I think you'll like what you find. :-) </KorbyParnell>