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Feedback Request on Visual Studio 2005 Look & Feel

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Aaron is responsible for a lot about how Visual Studio looks, feels, and behaves as an application.  He's looking for some feedback about Visual Studio 2005 and has some specific questions.  Feel free to leave your comments/suggestions here:

https://blogs.msdn.com/aaronbrethorst/archive/2006/02/15/532814.aspx

I know my opinions count less since I work here, but my biggest complaints are mirrored by the community. 

  • New tabs should not open on the left.  It just puhes the files I care about in large projects off the screen. 
  • I still want to be able to tear off both windows and document objects onto my second or third monitor.  Influencers use multi-monitors and I'm sticking to it. :-)
  • VS 2005 looks WAY better than VS 2003. Sometimes lipstick on the pig can go a long way. 
  • I love the new tool window docking UI... a very slick solution to a common/hard problem.
  • I wonder when we'll have "ribbons" too. You think word has too many hidden commands... try digging through our menus in team suite.
  • Tools->Options is a mess.   "Show all Options" is a start, but really just hides the problem.  

Of course I should share some of the responcibility here since I was the test lead for a while on the IDE team.

Feel free to take Aarons survey and let him know what you think.  Your opinions really do make a difference.

Comments

  • Anonymous
    March 01, 2006
    You also have to remember that VS users are power users.  They want to be able to get to things and alter the IDE through Tools.Options or see what features are available through menus.  Sure, there are a lot of menus and options, but I think we should err on the side of adding too many rather than too little.  Plus, if you don't want something on your menu, Tools.Options and drag it off.  :-)
  • Anonymous
    March 01, 2006
    Suppose you have few important files to work on, but during debugging less interesting files open all over and drown the important ones..

    One possible thing is to show the files like this:

    tabs: important1.cpp important2.cpp ... [file grouping]

    and slightly similar to the taskbar, all files opened during debugging/automatically would go under [file grouping]. One could drag/dbl click a file in the group to move it to the normal tabs (important files). The debug file group tab thingy could be left or right aligned so it stays in same place instead of floating around.


    Another possibility is to tag/mark the "important" files or whatever to make them stay visible always if possible..
  • Anonymous
    March 01, 2006
    Aaron: You'd think you tested that feature or something. :-) i'll side with simpler in most cases... or at least easier to find options.

    Joku: I like that concept. makes me think of the tabs in Onenote that could be either top level or tab groupings.  Files I explicitly open would be top level, but files that debugging actions or drag and drop open would go into groups.