Let’s talk about the all-caps menus.
When we shared the RC design preview with you, we expected the uppercase menu would generate mixed feedback and emotions. We had seen similar reactions from early adopters and from our own internal users prior to posting about it. Rest assured that we’ve heard you, and we’ve been thinking through what should be done here. Using uppercase for the menus was not an arbitrary decision, and I think it will help the discussion to frame why we made this change.
We’ve chosen to use uppercase styling in the top menu for two main reasons: 1) to keep Visual Studio consistent with the direction of other Microsoft user experiences, and 2) to provide added structure to the top menu bar area.
On the first point, the use of uppercase text is becoming a strong signature element of styling for navigation and headings in Microsoft user interfaces. You can see it in the Azure Portal, in Zune, and in the latest Bing search results update.
On the second point, we explored designs with and without uppercase styling. In the end we determined it to be a very effective way of providing structure and emphasis to the top menu area in Visual Studio 2012.
Based on early feedback on this application of uppercase styling, we made two modifications to our design. First, we tuned the typography of the menu to better adjust to uppercase text, including increased spacing between menu items from 14px to 20px to make menu items stand out better. Secondly, we moved Quick Launch to the title bar to make more room on the menu bar, especially for cases where a user has installed add-ins that add their own top-level menus.
As with most style changes, there has been both positive and negative feedback. We realize that some of you will continue to dislike this change, and you’ve been very direct in expressing your opinions on this subject. Our view remains that this is the right design for the Visual Studio user interface for the reasons I mentioned above. That said, we will enable you to customize the casing, and we are exploring options for how to expose that choice. We will post again once we’ve settled on a final approach to be available in RTM.
Then please, DON'T make ALL CAPS the default… If a developer wants it, he or she can opt-in.
YOUR REASONING AS TO WHY YOU MADE THIS CHANGE ONLY MAKE ME MORE CONCERNED THAT YOU HAVE LOST YOUR WAY! THIS IS NOT ZUNE OR A WEBSITE! THIS IS A TOOL THE WE RELY ON TO BE AS PRODUCTIVE AS POSSIBLE. IT SEEMS AS IF THE PERSON WHO MADE THE DECISION DOES NOT USE THE PRODUCT ENOUGH.
ANYWAYS THANK YOU FOR PROVIDING A WAY TO MANUALLY REVERSE THE STUPID DECISION!
So first you screwed up the UI, then you tried to fix it by adding ALL CAPS. Really? VS 2010 was doing just fine without all caps.
"On the second point, we explored designs with and without uppercase styling. In the end we determined it to be a very effective way of providing structure and emphasis to the top menu area in Visual Studio 2012."
You guys CAN'T even explain it, what a joke!
1) All caps is bad design; the fact that other apps choose to have bad design is not a good excuse. I understand there is probably some internal politics involved but I hope whoever is pushing caps comes to their senses soon.
2) Menus don't need emphasis. They've been the same literally from the beginning of Windows. We're used to them. We know where they are. We know what they look like. And they're one of the most universal and intuitive pieces of UI.
This is a post attempting to justify an all caps menu bar on a site which has a non-all caps menu bar.
As long as the IDE works well then I could care less about the use of caps. I simply don't care.
I don't like the all caps but good work for finally coming out and talking about it directly. Talk like 'we are internalising your feedback' is just BS.
ALL CAPS DESIGN IS ALMOST ALWAYS BAD. I IGNORE IT IF IT IS USED ON SOME WEBSITE OR IN SOME MINOR SOFTWARE I SPEND ONLY FEW MINUTES IN. BUT I SPEND SEVERAL HOURS A DAY IN VISUAL STUDIO AND I REALLY DON'T LIKE IT. PRODUCTIVITY SOFTWARE, SUCH AS VS AND OFFICE SHOULD NOT USE IT. IT MAY BE FINE FOR MEDIA PLAYERS, GAMES ETC. BUT NOT FOR REAL SOFTWARE.
MICROSOFT, PLEASE, FORGOT ABOUT ALL YOUR UI DESIGN IDEAS. ALMOST EVERY YOUR NEW UI DESIGN IS A DISASTER. STARTING WITH OFFICE 2010, CONTINUING WITH METRO AND VS11. ONLY BRIGHT EXCEPTION WERE SOME PARTS OF W7. FOCUS ON THINGS YOU'RE GOOD IN – FEATURES, INTEGRATION, PRODUCTIVITY.
For everybody who does not like WHEN VISUAL STUDIO IS SHOUTING AT YOU go here http://www.richard-banks.org/…/how-to-prevent-visual-studio-2012-all.html and learn how to disable this "feature".
JACOB +1, YOU'RE ABSOLUTELY RIGHT.
I dispair.
ALL CAPS MENUS?
DO YOU KNOW THATS LIKE SHOUTING?!
– I don't like applications that shout at me.
"We realize that some of you will continue to dislike this change" – you misspelled "most"
Seriously, developers rarely enjoy change unless they can see value in it.
Go look up 'Cognitive dissonance', and how it applies to user interface design and stop messing with what works, and has worked well for around 20? years.
Begrudging thanks for a checkbox hidden deep in the options somewhere for turning this brain dead feature off.
I don't see any upper case in the Azure management portal – what am I missing here?
"On the second point, we explored designs with and without uppercase styling. In the end we determined it to be a very effective way of providing structure and emphasis to the top menu area in Visual Studio 2012."
Why do menus need emphasis? They are a utility, they don't need my attention unless I'm actively looking for them.
Keep the All Caps, don't deviate from the cross-product design patterns established by Zune (which is a beautiful app). You can't please everyone, the haters 'll get used to it – whether they acknowledge it now or when it happens. Can't wait for VS2012, looks slick …
I wonder how long it takes before someone comes up with a way for VS2010 to do .net 4.5? I mean, 2010 had a lot of issues that kept people on 2008 because of the awful state WPF was in, but it had more than enough going for it (multi-monitor support) to be a compelling Update.
VISUAL STUDIO 2012 ON THE OTHER HAND REALLY LOOKS LIKE IT WAS DESIGNED BY A PROGRAMMER, AND AS IF SOMEONE WITH A CORPORATE BACKGROUND FORCES IN THAT IT HAS TO LOOK LIKE METRO REGARDLESS IF IT MAKES SENSE OR NOT. CONTRAST, FOCUS ON THE IMPORTANT PARTS OF THE SCREEN, EASY TO GROK WHAT'S GOING ON – THE STAPLES OF ANY VISUAL DEVELOPMENT TOOL, ARE GONE IN 2012. I REALLY, REALLY DO NOT UNDERSTAND WHAT'S GOING ON, IT LOOKS LIKE MICROSOFT REALLY WANTS TO GAMBLE THE COMPANY ON METRO. APPLE MAY HAVE PULLED THAT OFF ONCE, BUT ONLY BECAUSE OS 9 WAS TRULY ANCIENT AND OS X WAS TRULY EXCITING. WITH MICROSOFT, WINDOWS 7 AND VISUAL STUDIO 2010 ARE COMPELLING, MODERN PRODUCTS. THROWING ALL THAT AWAY SEEMS MADNESS. I REALLY HOPE THAT THERE'S A 64-BIT VERSION OF VISUAL STUDIO NOW?
COMPARING VS WITH WEBSITES IS JUST INSANE.
BING/ZUNE HAS AROUND 5 MENU WHILE VS HAS AROUND 17 MENU. THAT IS A LOT OF DIFFERENCE AND IT FEELS LIKE VS IS SHOUTING AT ME ALL THE TIME.
ALL CAP MEANS ANGER, DO YOU SEE MENU ON THIS WEB PAGE? IS IT ALL CAP? ARE YOU BLIND?
Why are we still talking about this? Yes, I very much dislike the all caps, but they stated its going to be an option, so I'll just turn it off as I've already done with the reg key. I don't see this as being different than other defaults I change like where windows get placed. I change a setting once and then dont worry about it again. Thank you VS for listening to the feedback and adapting.
I just asked my sister (which in no means a technical person) which she prefers between the two menus and immediately she answered "definitely not the uppercase text". Most people just stick to what they are used I guess.
The more I look at it, I realize it does make the menus stand out more but menus doesn't need emphasis since we already know what or where they are.
You know, I don't mind the caps for the menu bar. I do like that there will be a way to disable it. It doesn't look like shouting to me because it is not complete sentences, just individual words.
FWIW, after 5 minutes of usage I didn't even notice the UPPER CASE menu bar. You have to take any programmer feedback with a grain of salt as there is a large discord between most developers opinions of their UI/UX abilities and their actual abilities.
For some reason my visceral reaction to the light theme is that it looks awful, and my visceral reaction to the dark theme is that it looks great. Despite it basically being the same thing, only dark. Go figure?
Very poor explanation. Just add switch to options, to enable/disable all caps, and conflict will disappear
While ALL CAPS is fine if you've got 5 or maybe 8 menu items it doesn't work with 17. Less than 8 and the user will look for the menu item by position, more than that and the user has to scan the menu.
Word recognition is based mainly on their shape of the word, by making it UPPERCASE you loose the word shape and slow down how quickly the user can recognise the correct menu. I'm sure it won't be a massive difference but it will still be slower, do some research on word recognition & you'll understand.
Again this would be fine if you had a 8 or less menu items, but choosing form over function for a tool that programmers live in is simply the wrong decision, I'll definitely be turning it off.
HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftVisualStudio11.0GeneralSuppressUppercaseConversion
REG_DWORD value: 1
Dude, those things on Bing search results that are upper case are not menus. They are links. And, if you search for like "panda", and you click the IMAGES link, the things on the Images page that are most menu-like, ("Size", "Color", "Type", "Layout", "People") are mixed-case. In Zune, the most prominent menu-like things ("quickplay", "collection", "marketplace", "social") are all lower case. The only upper-case I see on Zune is SETTINGS | HELP, which are so small they look like small caps. They're so small, they probably have to be upper case.
Just let me turn it off, please.
Eric
"mixed feedback and emotions" really? Anybody asked you to keep the CAPS?
"we will enable you to customize the casing"
cool, the registry trick is working, thanks! ^^
"On the first point, the use of uppercase text is becoming a strong signature element of styling for navigation and headings in Microsoft user interfaces. You can see it in the Azure Portal, in Zune, and in the latest Bing search results update."
That DOES NOT mean that it's a good thing.
@Michael Stum to your question about a 64bit version, this post: blogs.msdn.com/…/visual-studio-why-is-there-no-64-bit-version.aspx discusses some of the considerations on this topic.
I don't care if you use them or not, the monochrome icons are the issue for me. Have you heard of "digging yourself in a hole"? Equating website typography to Windows apps is crazy. You could have simply said that RTM will let you opt out. These answers that dance all around the real reason aren't making you look good.
Who writes this crap anyways? Is this a renegade, last ditch effort for somebody to save face in the company by trying to make it sound like this was not a total waste of time? "Rest assured that we’ve heard you, and we’ve been thinking through what should be done here"? The only thing we've been assured of is that when somebody gets a directive to do something, likely in the form of a commitment or team requirement, there's no amount of logic, common sense, or customer feedback that can stop it. If only developer productivity could be given as much time and effort as a corporate style mandate to make the world metro. What's next, the MICROSOFT logo? Re-branding of bing? Maybe we can just get rid of the shift keys like we did the start menu and create a world of only caps.
I'm still not convinced but I applaud the fact that you're being open about your design decisions with blog posts such as these. Will you cover the rationale for having no express edition that can produce desktop apps as well?
A couple of points here: First you may be distinguishing the line of menu options in all caps, however the all caps make each individual word LESS glancible. I have more cognitive dissonance when trying to glance to the menu and select the right option when the words are all caps.
Second, by adding more space between the words, it is less likely that the entire menu will display on smaller resolutions (or when presenting on a projector that only supports 1024/768.
Third, the amount of feedback that you are getting against the all caps should give Microsoft Corp an indication that the decision to use all caps in menus across their assets might be a BAD thing in the other apps as well. This wouldn't be the first time that a focus group provided contradictory information to the masses that use a platform daily. I have to wonder what kinds of questions were asked of the focus group to get them to indicate that the all caps was a good idea. Surveys are often made to elicit a desired response rather than to get true respondent sentiment.
"to provide added structure to the top menu bar area"
How? How does the capitalisation provide 'added structure'? It's still a flat list of menu titles. What is the 'structure' that has been 'added'?
….for two main reasons…. because some other team at Microsoft thought it would look good somewhere else…. And because we felt like we needed to change it some more.
@Jacob
"2) Menus don't need emphasis. They've been the same literally from the beginning of Windows. We're used to them. We know where they are. We know what they look like. And they're one of the most universal and intuitive pieces of UI."
You are not considering the fact that there are many people using a computer for the first time right now. Usability has to improve everyday. People always complain about the ribbon, but they're a huge win for newcomers. Software needs to become usable for the sake of the next generation.
IF there's enough research to sustain the argument of emphasis, then it's a good choice in the long term.
My word people. They will give you an option to change the casing. Get over it already.
Caps does not bother me, because I'm no native English speaker. I even like caps better, if purely in art aspect.
However, it does seem to contradict with what you said about Metro – emphasize the content. Menu bar is not content, why let it stand out? When we work with VS, we don't look at menu 99.99% of the time. (You know, we use shortcut keys more.) They are never worth attention. It is even OK to fade them out to gray when I don't use them.
I'm amazed at how many people seem to use Visual Studio for no reason other than to look at the menus. I personally use it to write software and not to read menu text all day long.
I'm also a confident enough a person to not get upset when I see some text in upper case and think that the author/ code/ etc is shouting at me and I need a hug to protect myself from the big scary world.
Thanks a ton for be honest, but this is not azure, zune or office, we are power users, we need to keep our minds in the code, not in the tool !!
At least provide some of these options:
1) Customize to disable the UPPER CASE (I already do it with the regkey)
2) Allow customize the color of the menu, maybe UPPERCASE with some kind of gray become less agressive
3) Allow to hide the menu from the options (So we dont need to install another extension for that)
All is about distraction, THE UPPER CASE MENU DISTRACT THE DEVELOPERS, the old style is better !!
"You are not considering the fact that there are many people using a computer for the first time right now."
Yeah, lots of people are using Visual Studio the first time they ever use a computer.
You trying to add UI styles for *other types of interfaces* to the traditional Windows UI. That's where you are misguided. Azure Portal is a WEB PAGE. The Metro look and feel belongs TO METRO APPS. If this was really about looking like next-gen UIs, it would have a ribbon, like the *new* Explorer (along with regular menus)…a *Desktop* application.
The case of the menu text doesn't bother me. What I still wonder is… why aren't you making use of the ribbon? One of the most frustrating things about Visual Studio, is when you change context – menubars get added and the code window shifts up and down. The ribbon bar would be a constant size.
"very effective way of providing …emphasis to the top menu area in Visual Studio 2012."
This is the problem with it from a design perspective – Why would you want to give the main menu emphasis? In the other cases you listed the menu IS the main form of navigation and as such deserves emphasis. In Visual Studio the main menu is the last resort way of finding something – first is shortcut keys, next toolbar, now the Quick Launch, and ONLY then do you go to the main menu.
And it's not only Visual Studio where the Main menu is considered such a last resort mechanism. Look at Windows Explorer, Internet Explorer, and Firefox. All of these programs consider the main menu so unimportant that the actually don't show it until you hit the alt key!
But as I've said before, it doesn't really bother me as I hide the main menu anyway. I just wish it wasn't done so we could stop focusing on it and discuss other things which are actually important.
… is the most ridiculous yet!
First off, why would you want to add *EMPHASIS* to menus when the design philosophy stated for the new look of VS was it didn't distract from the content we are creating?
Second, the examples provided of Bing, Azure portal and Zune are complete mismatches.
Bing doesn't add top level menus in ALL CAPS, quite the opposite: they are all in proper case. What you see in Bing is all caps used for pane titles. This difference is very important. Bing was more like the first beta of VS 11, not the latest bits. Also note the use of all caps is only about four or five items over the entire screen. VS top level menu is **SEVENTEEN** distinct items!!
Zune uses lower case at top level (quickplay, collection, marketplace), and all caps at the individual pane level, again not totalling more than 5 distinct items on any pane.
Azure portal on the web does use ALL CAPS for the top level menu, but it is only six items and uses a LOT of white space around and between them.
From a visual design perspective the examples given show use of white space, and clarity, whereas the VS 11 menu is cramped and way too busy. You cannot relate fourteen items to designs of five items, especially when the five item designs use copious whitespace, whilst VS menu does not.
It's great we will be able to change this, but sad so much effort is being wasted on a design implementation that really adds no value to VS, contradicts both its own design philosophy and those of windows guidelines.
FAIL.
HAVE THERE REALLY BEEN POSITIVE OPINIONS ON THIS? I'M JUST HAPPY THAT I CAN TURN IT OFF USING A REGEDIT HACK.
ALL CAPS MAKES IT SO MUCH HARDER TO READ, HAVEN'T YOU NOTICED THIS?
me personally i don't like the new design at all. The light theme is too pale and the regions of the UI aren't separated clearly for me. The Beta design was better than the RC design, but the old VS 2010 design was much better. So it plays no role for me if the menu is all capitalized or not.
+1 for getting out and finally saying something. That's a small improvement at least.
However, I truely cannot believe you are sticking to your guns. I can't accept you solicited 1800+ opinions – and then ignored them! – when the customers message could not be simpler and your task could not be easier!! I want to know:
First, what does that say to customers about their future relationship with you? Expect more of the same?
Second, there's something seriously wrong with Microsoft if you are saying corporate guided drivel can usurp clear and focused customer feedback and that of your own internal developers. That's what you are telling me!
Thirdly, why the wait before telling us? Logically, it makes no sense. If a) you waited to be sure the message was clear, why are you still going ahead with plans that by default are against the customers message? or b) if you were always going to ignore your customers, come what may, why didn't you tell everyone on day one, and save 1800+ people the effort of typing, wearing out their caps-lock key, and getting angry?!
What kind of logic is that? So, sure, "let's frame the discussion" about that. But it doesn't look good either way, does it?
But is everyone writing in soley about a stupid uppercase menu? If they are, I hope they let it go as their focus must be as bad as Microsofts. Isn't this more about Microsoft continuing to ignore customers and its crazy communication? The arrogance is truely breathtaking, as is the number of other customer unfriendly choices Microsoft has forced upon us, such as:
– the dropping of VS11 express desktop
– the random story of xp support
– the late, undated arrival of full C++ language support, despite many non standard inclusions arriving first.
– the random, bad, and unwanted UI changes like the CAPS menu and color changes.
All of these things have angered customers and they all point to one thing: Microsoft isn't customer focused, and it just wants to kill the desktop in its current form and leave anyone in that space behind to rot, and that MS doen't care about that. The only option is pay, move to WinRT and use the Store.
The introduction of new technology is a change agent. It can either usher in new technology or usher out old companies and their employees.
So this is the cross-roads is it not? Not a stupid menu. It's simply, accept Microsofts bad deal and bad attitudes, for ever more, or get off the bus?
Why should developers pay to go through more upheaval to support *Microsofts* new WinRT platform and when Microsofts attitude is so bad and it just keeps proving it is no longer a safe business partner, but a liability and a bringer of change for change sake whose intransigence is nothing but a constant irritant and when it no longer views developers as partners but entities to be milked harder. Get off the bus.
I'd rather reward the companies that care about my priorities and don't push me around. It's clearly time to leave this sorry company behind and use other tools and eventually, platforms. Let their WinRT, their phones, clouds and store aspirations wither. Boycot this product and give Microsoft a lesson about customer service.
I hope this blog becomes another 1000+ monster too. But then what?
Those people who DO plan to upgrade and DO approve of Microsofts attitude/plans, please write in and show Microsoft your support. I want to see if the views expressed above are shared, or just a vocal minority, or if this is all about a stupid menu… If it's the latter, people you need to get better work stories!!
It's not a chat! So they don't scream.
Keep the caps! I'm already used to them and realize they are a good thing.
LOL at the explanation:
1. We did all caps because we do things this way at Microsoft.
2. We did all caps because we discussed and decided that this is the way to do it.
I don't even care all that much about caps (there are plenty of much worse things that have to be fixed to make VS11 even worth considering for me), but the explanation in the post is simply pathetic. Roll on, Microsoft.
Stop moaning, people! You already won this one!
THE FIRST I'LL DO WHEN I FINALLY GET TO INSTALL VS2012 IS TO TURN IT OFF.
Give me more. Only harder. Faster. More CAPS! MORE! CAPS!
Wow. You're comparing the menu links in the Azure portal with a native desktop application? Zune I haven't used.
Maybe you should add ALL CAPS to the Windows 8 File Explorer, MS Paint and other integrated applications. For consistency I mean. Or maybe you're using different design guidelines?
Luckily there's a register tweak to remove the dumb ALL CAPS. The first thing I run after installing VS 2012. Run this in a PowerShell prompt: Set-ItemProperty -Path HKCU:SoftwareMicrosoftVisualStudio11.0General -Name SuppressUppercaseConversion -Type DWord -Value 1
Indeed, ALL CAPS in ANY user-interface element is just a bad idea, adding nothing to the usability – a software application menu is NOT a restaurant menu, and is NOT a book cover.
Making all caps the default just shows that you ignore your clients, that are software developers.
I think this is a bad move, having all upper case means that words are harder to recognize on a quick glance. Reseachers in the automotive industry wanted to make the road signs all caps first but after some test it was found that people would recognize the city name almost twice as fast if it was properly capitalized instead of all caps.
ALL CAPS SUCKS, I DON'T WANT MY VISUAL STUDIO SCREAMING AT ME EVERY DAY
Hi guys, just to let you know, there already is an extension which allows you to change casing: vscommands.squaredinfinity.com/features
You can get it from vsgallery: visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/a83505c6-77b3-44a6-b53b-73d77cba84c8
I've been using VS 2012 RC at work from the day it was released and not once was I bothered by all-caps.
They said there will be an option to turn that off. Now go and write some useful feedback!
Thank you for deleting my honest feedback. Who cares about dreadful user experience in Microsoft anyway?
AS LONG AS YOU GIVE US THE OPTION TO TURN THIS OFF, I DON'T HAVE A PERSONAL PROBLEM. I still don't agree with your reasoning, though.
I LIKE THE ALL CAPS, hehe 🙂
I really dobn't like all caps, too bad design.
I like the all-caps, too. But if I change my mind, nice to know I'll be able to change it.
@Mike Paterson: If you could care less, then that means you care. Which is it?
I think the all-caps menu is great eye catcher. It draws the user's eye to the menu. I like it.
I don't mind ALL-CAPS menu. I hide the menu bar by default since years. People should just learn to use the shortcut keys.
Relative to the other navigation and the other UI text, the uppercase in the Azure Portal looks like small caps and is upstaged by a more friendly line of navigation right below it. The menu text in Visual Studio does not do this, so it has more impact and looks significantly worse. Additionally, the uppercase in the Azure Portal uses Helvetica where the uppercase I does not have serifs (as they do in Segoe UI) which makes some word forms look strange.
They are different things and do not have the same effect when implemented; to use them to keep Visual Studio consistent with something it's not is, for the above reasons, a fool's errand. Like the monochrome icons before them, it sells out the feel and the integrity that Visual Studio has accumulated over many years and which people rely on to do their jobs. That doesn't mean "never change", it means "never change without a marked improvement and don't take change lightly".
You changed every single icon in the product, many of them now not clearly recognizable. You stomped on a lineage of consistent visual feedback in the Intellisense menu since Intellisense was invented. The mental high-level picture of "what the toolbar looks like" and "what this palette looks like" is erased and although you still find your way around intellectually, you can't go directly by intuition and have to re-learn your muscle memory. That's not a bad thing when associated with real change, but in many cases (and with notable exceptions), this just qualifies as a paint job.
You absolutely did not have bad intentions, but for a group of people who see Visual Studio as a power tool and the thing they live in and need to rely on, you made them lose their grip on a few important places and they feel like they don't have control. No wonder people were rioting in the comments then, and are now still upset about a similar change.
Kudos for daring to address this head-on; boo for not actually explaining what qualities using uppercase is supposed to bring to the table and for pretending that using uppercase in all places are functionally equivalent. If you really are up to letting us into the process, I look forward to a post where these things are given the focus they deserve.
By looking directly at your examples (Azure Portal and Zune) do you see how the all-caps menu font is much smaller than the low-caps text? That's acceptable, because then their menus don't end attracting too much attention. But you are using the same font size for both regular and all-caps text, thus leading to this terrible effect.
If you want to keep all-caps, please fix the font used by making it smaller.
Caps can be switched off. No problem.
I can't turn off monochrome in the interface though.
After using the Beta for a few weeks and now the RC, I've just gone back to Visual Studio 2010. Sorry guys, it's just too fatiguing to be constantly scanning for the right icon. In VS2012 all the icons in the Solution Explorer look the same. It *may* be pretty from a design perspective, but it's not usable. I'll miss all the brilliant new features, but I just can't handle the new interface. It's not about taste, it's about usability for me.
ALL CAPS CAN BE GOOD, BUT PLEASE LEAVE AN OPTION TO TURN IT OFF.
Menus are of secondary import, not something I go to every minute. It doesn't have to stand out like that, but rather be elegantly in the background. The lower case looks much simpler and less glaring. I stare at the code editor and that is the thing that should be in the focus.
Uppercase menu elements when mouse hovers over it or something if you absolutely must.
And I truly dislike the design directions in many of the recent products.
Azure Portal is not really a good example.. there it's clear why they use it – to distinguish a secondary menu ("secondary" because of its smaller text size) from the primary menu (which uses lowercase!). In VS11, there is only one menu.
It disclosed the policy of "impose". Why do not adhere to the policy – "to provide a choice"
This design debate sucks and waste so much resources. The facts are easy: the vast majority of VS users don't want CAPS, and somewhere in MS teams a few designers with a lot of credit (and ego) decided that CAPS is the future.
VS2012 is the result of a tremendous effort in several areas including performances and ergonomy. It'll be suited to focus VS2012 early-users attention on this.
VS2012 still lakes improvement in the extensibility model. And this point is particularly important for the future of VS, particularly poorly handled, and particularly ignored. Exactly the opposite of this CAPS debate thing.
Put an option for CAPS, but please be wise, stop the waste, move on.
What about the purple status bar? The whole UI is minimalistic and monochrome and then the purple status bar just ruins it.
I don't want my IDE yelling at me.
Thanks for providing the option to revert to a non-agressive look, otherwise I would have had to lose time coding it myself.
So you've defined spacing using absolute values (pixels)? Doesn't that inhibit increase of DPI etc.?
BILLY MAYS HERE SPEAKING FOR MICROSOFT! YOU ARE GOING TO LOVE OUR NEW DESIGN! WE HAVE UPPERSIZED THE MENU… FOR FREE! ACT NOW TO GET YOUR NEW SUPERSIZED MENU AND WE WILL THROW IN, FOR FREE, THE GREY, WASHED OUT WINDOW CHROME. FINALLY, WINDOW CHROME THAT LOOKS LIKE CHROME, BUT NOT HAVE ALL THAT SHINE TO GET INTO YOUR EYES. TWO PRODUCTS FOR THE PRICE OF ONE!!!
BILLY MAYS.
I just got a look at my solution icons now that I got past the menus. DAMN, they are ugly (I left off a letter on that last word). Whose idea was it to use 8-bit era dotted lines for open folders AND separators (I don't recall Metro design guidelines mentioning thick dithered lines as separators…thought it was more about simple, clean lines)? This thing looks like it was drawn in geoPaint…by me….in the 80s.
I tend to believe that a lot of Metro's simplicity is for the sake of battery life (like MS' decision to default Mango's color scheme to red of all things), but does *any* developer spend the majority of time using VS unplugged? You might as well single-thread the compiler if you care that much about battery life.
I think the choice to model a productivity tool's menu bar off of web sites that have no similarity to the target product was a poor design choice.
The menu bar in a Windows app stands out already (in mixed case) because the menu and content are separated by a multi-colored toolbar. Oh wait… I forgot that we degenerated back to 3 colors in the toolbar.
Microsoft is kidding with us. They say: 'please, please, download our latest beta/ctp/RC, install it, work with it, test it, w, tell us what is good, what is bad, write comments please, please…'
At the same time they do not care about problems screamed by users, about feedback, about comments and suggestions.
Why ?
Because they are releasing all this beta software, only to gradually accommodate users to their plans.
Caps off by default – if you want ALL CAPS it should be an option, not the default. The bigger question is why is it that Microsoft feels the need to keep changing the UI on VS (and all the rest of their products for that matter). Most devs are used to VS2010s UI why not leave that as the default UI for VS2012. Better still default to VS2010 UI and give the user the ability to change the colors, sizes, caps settings etc in the options. Stop trying to dictate a UI style direction. There is a strong chance that Metro will crash and burn as most people hate it already. Forcing devs to have to deal with some bad design is not the correct idea. Besides, dont you Microsoft folks have more important things to address in VS2012, like actual features that devs need / want to help them build apps faster and easier. How about focusing on that!
All caps are bad and you should feel bad.
Please don't put any more time into exaplning ALL CAPS. I don't want to know how many thousands of dollars have gone into this. Please move along and put that money into R&D. People are rediculous to even complain.
please, tell me this is a joke
is this the only missing 'feature' from your products?
haven't you better things to do in your time than talking about caps?
geeee-sus
WINDOWS HAS ALWAYS LOOKED LIKE IT WAS "DESIGNED" BY ENGINEERS, NOT BY DESIGNERS WITH AN EYE FOR GOOD LAYOUT. WHY SHOULD THIS BE ANY DIFFERENT?
Lets face it, most of the people complaing are developers and have you seen the interfaces they create! I dont think they have a leg to stand on, 99.999% of developers wouldnt know a good interface if it was staring them in the face.
Thoughts:
– Did anyone ever request an all-caps menu before the change?
– How much active support have you had for the change (as opposed to simple "Meh, it doesn't bother me" passive support)?
– How active is the opposition in terms of folks who have put in effort to contact you to oppose this change?
– Is this change in the service of branding or human factors? From what you wrote it sounds like you are changing the primary user interface for a LOT of people that you should be trying to keep happy solely to service the marketing branch of Microsoft. Stop making excuses.
Finally, you should probably talk to this guy about the whole deal, especially since Microsoft paid for his research:
http://www.microsoft.com/…/WordRecognition.aspx
If a future blog post doesn't indicate that someone has taken the time to discuss the menu bar with him, I'll assume it's all about you guys being pushed around by Marketing instead of caring about developers.
Moving the quick launch box to the title bar was a good move, however. Thank you.
However,
"As with most style changes, there has been both positive and negative feedback."
This implies the feedback has been generally balanced either way, which I highly doubt. If you find that you're writing blog entries justifying controversial design decisions, they are probably the wrong decisions.
It doesn't matter if your two reasons are for doing this are valid in isolation, either, because the overwhelming negative attention this decision has received means that your points aren't relevant. We're not YouTube commenters: we're developers, like you, and it seems the consensus is that your justifications don't stack up against the community's arguments that this is horrible to look at.
As a developer, I'm appalled when I hear instances of other developers frantically defending their decisions against overwhelming community feedback and user research.
The apps you compare it to make good use of caps, but they're not development environments. In this context it looks ugly and frankly, I don't want my menu "stand out". I want it to get out of my way until I want to use it.
OH GOD THAT'S HORRIBLE AND NOOB-like
Haha, the Azure page …
First row: WindowsAzure in camel case, then the register button in all caps.
Second row: All upper case
Third row: All lower case (which means, that it looks even more ugly for german readers, as its plain wrong.)
Then some lines in normal spelling,
followed by a button with all lower case. Again the german spelling is just wrong, as "Sie" meant as polite form of address has to be upper case. Lower case here might even be interpreted as an offense 🙂 (or the inablility to write)
… The page goes on with this "every line in a different style" nonsense. This is not style, its UGLY.
The Microsoft team has really lost its mind with this new UI. Go have a look at Photoshop or XCode to see how it's done. This is several steps backwards.
I don't understand this change! I have to work with VS hurting my eyes ALL DAY.
Man up and think with the head not the money pocket!
First you continue to make Internet Explorer making life hell for web developers, now this!
ALL Caps are bad … mmmmkay?
What is this, 1990 DOS Terminal? Delphi from 1994? All caps look terrible.
You UI is bad and you should feel bad
THIS DECISION IS CONSISTENT WITH OTHER DESIGN DECISIONS MADE BY MICROSOFT IN THE LAST YEAR. TELL THE USER WHAT THEY WANT AND THEN TELL US WE'RE STUPID FOR DISAGREEING. I KNOW I WON'T BE BUYING VS 2012 OR WINDOWS 8 THANKS TO THE TONE-DEAF MICROSOFT RESPONSE TO USER FRUSTRATIONS. I CAN WORK IN THE ENVIRONMENT I LIKE *NOW* WITHOUT PAYING MORE MONEY TO MICROSOFT.
Isn't caps lock annoying?
I THINK YOU RECEIVED PRETTY UNANIMOUS FEEDBACK THAT ALL CAPS ARE NOT A GOOD DEFAULT.
I wish some of the development effort that's gone into Metro-fying the UI and then partially reversing that work had gone into the the native C++ dialog designer.
Will you also provide an option for coloured icons better than what you gave us in RC ????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
I think you were trying to use this post as a way to explain your reasoning for a change to all caps, but failed. You reference that other MS products are using caps and it adds structure. Your article fails to explain why MS is making their change in their products? You reference Azure and Zune and those are web products, not a desktop app that is usually designed differently.
Will we see this in MS Office? IE? WMP? If so, then a more thorough explanation as to why the design change is happening would be helpful.
What is wrong with you people? What's the problem? It doesn't matter, caps or not. Just move on. Shh…
It's a Windows Desktop application (not a Metro one), and it's running in Windows. A menu in Windows applications don't use all uppercase…be consistent for a change.
Why don't you rewrite Visual Studio in Javascript and HTML5 while you're at it….good luck with that one.
Too much time spent on fixing things that 'aint broke – nice job if you can get it 🙂
So do y'all have an ambulance / EMT on standby for all the times you shoot yourselves in the foot?
What it is missing is cleartext, no all caps! Use font smoothing!
Is this a joke?
You mess up the menu bar to the extent its visually just a grey mass by removing all visual cues, and you decide the best way to fix this is by making the menu buttons caps?
Will you also provide an option for coloured icons better than what you gave us in RC ????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
right!!,
you should also provide that option.
Indeed, they deliberately made the text look FUGLY in the normal-cased version of the comparison screenshot.
This discussion makes me nauseous. We asked them to explain why they made the changes, and they did. We asked them to allow us to turn off the all caps, and they did. I'm done reading this discussion now, as from my perspective we're now the problem, not them, and I'm not going to continue enabling that. Good bye.
YOU ARE WRONG.
I'll be calling Visual Studio "Loud Howard" then.
Why not caps and small caps?
All caps stops being funny when the menu bar wraps around, showing a second line with only the "Help" or "Window" menu on the second line and me knowing this is completely unnecessary.
File Edit View Project Build Debug Team SQL Data Design Format Tools Test Architecture Analyze Window Help
FILE EDIT VIEW PROJECT BUILD DEBUG TEAM SQL DATA DESIGN FORMAT TOOLS TEST ARCHITECTURE ANALYZE WINDOW HELP
So if you want to make it all-uppercase by default, fine, but DON'T DARE TO REMOVE THE REGISTRY KEY TO FIX THE VISUAL STUDIO UI!
Oh, so we were right all along. It really was a "Oh ***, we have to be Metro. Quick how do you make something look Metro? Ah, upper-case text! Yay, problem solved, we can go home now"
Wow….. Perhaps you should have read some of the guidance *about* the Metro UI. Perhaps you should have asked some of the UI designers familiar with Metro.
Because you know, it's not just a matter of MAKING ARBITRARY TEXT UPPERCASE.
Believe it or not, despite the upper-case text in this comment, few sane people would consider this comment to be Metro either.
"Added structure"? "Signature elements of styling"? Boy! What a reasonable set of cost-benefit tradeoffs that are totally focused on users and not at all motivated by corporate bullshit!
Folks, head over to uservoice and vote for the option of a VS2010 theme in VS2012: visualstudio.uservoice.com/…/2819619-leave-vs-2010-theme-and-the-theme-editor-extensio
CONGRATULATIONS TO STICKING WITH YOUR GREAT UX IDEA,
I MEAN WHO CARES ABOUT LISTENING TO YOUR USERS
NO, REALLY, WHAT DO USERS KNOW ABOUT UX?
My observations:
1) The Title-Case menu takes up significantly less horizontal space where as the ALL-CAPS menu seems to just waste it. To my eyes, the first example also looks nicer (with the exception of the font smoothing).
2) In the examples listed, all caps was used to provide distinction between top-level and second-level navigation, and not menus. The same could be argued with regard to the Office15 ribbon.
3) You say that the ALL-CAPS design provides "structure", but don't provide any indication of what you mean by structure, or why you felt structure was lacking from the previous design. Saying the second design has more structure is little better than my saying the first design has more sizzle… they are both meaningless.
4) Providing an option to disable is a cop-out, if you need to appease the masses for something as trivial as menu casing, that should be your indication that you should just change the default. From the comments I've read, the general opinion isn't that mixed, it seems to be split about 80:20 between people that hate it and people that have expressed that they don't really care.
WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU GUYS? WHY ARE YOU TRYING TO FORCE FEED US WITH YOUR STUPID DESIGN IDEAS?
KICK THE DESIGNER TEAM OUT (THE ONES THAT ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR METRO AND VISUAL STUDIO) AND LET THE PROGRAMMERS DO THE DESIGN AGAIN. MICROSOFT WILL BE BETTER OFF THAT WAY….
I'm sorry to say, but these are just terrible reasons. It screams "designed by committee!", and "reasons" for doing it are made up afterwards. I think the number 1 counterpoint should be that it is very ugly. I have to stare at Visual Studio all day, and I don't want it to put me in a bad mood.
I believe that Microsoft's own Bill Hill would disagree. Why don't you just go ask him?
I CANNOT SEE THE POSITIVE FEEDBACK YOU HAVE MENTIONED ANYWHERE! PLEASE DEVOTE YOUR RESOURCES TO THE DEVELOPMENT/IMPROVEMENT OF USEFUL FEATURES OF VS. THERE ARE PLENTY OF THINGS THAT NEED MORE IMPROVEMENTS THAN THE UI OF VS2008 (YES I SAID VS2008, IMHO YOU STARTED SCREWING UP THE UI IN VS2010 ALREADY – WAY TOO DARK, LOW CONTRAST – BACK TO VS2008!)
THIS IS A STUPID IDEA.
… people who make software for Windows and other Microsoft platforms know what a menu is this late in the game. I don't really understand how uppercase item names provides structure.
All Caps is terrible design. Remove it immediately.
What do you think of just making a survey about the question: "Which UI do you like better: VC10 or VC11 RC?". Its result would clarify if there is a majority in favor of the new UI or not. (And please publish the result. Nobody trusts you otherwise, since there are thousands of comments against the UI, but you keep talking about "positive feedback")
I AGREE WITH THE ALL CAPS MENUS, ALL CAPS IS FUN AND EASY TO READ. I HOPE TEXT-TO-SPEECH ASSIST SCREAMS THE MENU ITEMS AT ME.
Thanks for explaining this. However, one thing is unclear to me: what exactly do you mean my "structure"? Why do you feel that structure was lacking from the previous design?
Answers to these questions would be greatly appreciated.
I agree with Zoidberg.
Stop chatting about "ALL CAPS"! Does it *really* hurt so much? Beta had capitalized tool window header and regular main menu, RC has regular toolwindow headers and capitalized main menu – I DON'T CARE. Really. I have used the registry tweak and I see no difference. It's as broad as it's long.
If you feel that your IDE is shouting at you, then it is something wrong with your nerves.
*FACEPALM*
YOU! COULD! FOLLOW! THE! EXAMPLE! OF! YAHOO! AND! HAVE! AN! EXPLANATION! MARK! AFTER! EVERYTHING! TOO!
All caps has a proven (measurable) reason for being bad UX.
uxmovement.com/…/all-caps-hard-for-users-to-read
When we read our eyes not only depend on the letters, but also the shapes of the letters relative to each other. All caps removes that difference: instead of seeing different shapes, we just see a line of similarly sized rectangles.
Also, as a developer, I don't need emphasis to the top level menu. It's always there, in the exact same spot and I rarely use it. Don't make it yell at me, please.
So you give us two main reasons:
1) To look like some other MS products. Meh. This is probably the main reason behind this whole redesign thing but at the same time the worse one. "Copying others" is not a good qualitative argument for a design. Especially not when it looks ugly. Also remember VS is a very unique product, with some unique challenges that are /really/ not shared by most METRO applications on a Win phone.
2) Add structure. OK, this sounds like a better argument to me. My answer: nice try but it doesn't work well. First the structure is not so evident (maybe more so with more spacing) and second it looks ugly. There are other ways to add structure, please think about it.
NO CAPS PLEASE!!!!!!!
You might want to look at your own research.
http://www.microsoft.com/…/WordRecognition.aspx
Two comments:
1) Thank you for being considerate enough to allow users to customize this without needing to hack the registry or apply some other unofficial patch.
2) You should strongly consider not using this as the default or taking a stronger look at what UI advantage this offers over the traditional menu casing. If this approach is more beneficial, why is not pervasive through the entire ecosystem (Windows menus, Office menus, Internet Explorer, Bing splash page, or any other Microsoft web property). This is more than the frivolous pushback given by Facebook users over minor tweaks. We use this product 8-12 hours a day.
I used VS2012 for two days before I realized the menus were uppercase and remembered there was a lot of bitching about it. It doesn't matter if you just calm down and focus on the code you are writing.
Good job Microsoft. I'm liking Windows 8 and VS2012.
"All-capital print greatly retards speed of reading in comparison with lower-case type. Also, most readers judge all capitals to be less legible. Faster reading of the lower-case print is due to the characteristic word forms furnished by this type. This permits reading by word units, while all capitals tend to be read letter by letter. Furthermore, since all-capital printing takes at least one-third more space than lower case, more fixation pauses are required for reading the same amount of material."
Tinker, 1963. via en.wikipedia.org/…/All_caps
This is not really a fair comparison. The lower case screenshot uses a different font or font style than the upper case screenshot. Focus only on the first F in FILE (File), and the difference is obvious.
At first i thought, "Oh, somebody found an old april fools joke", but when i saw the date of this posting … haven't read such big bullshit from M$ in a long time.
WHAT A GREAT IDEA
Who the hell came up with that, get him fired
What's old is new again….
en.wikipedia.org/…/Office_Assistant
"On the second point, we explored designs with and without uppercase styling. In the end we determined it to be a very effective way of providing structure and emphasis to the top menu area in Visual Studio 2012."
Because you know, users might not know where the menu is….
Idiotic decision
The ALL CAPS menus definitely stood out, but after hearing your take on it, I won't criticise.
However, I was disappointed with the interface in general. It's just as bland, dull and colourless as the VS11 Beta was…
It's difficult to say whether my opinion would change after longer use of VS11, but my initial thoughts are not positive.
I LOVE ALL-CAPS. IT IS SO MUCH NICER. I HOPE IN THE FUTURE YOU DECIDE TO REMOVE LOWERCASE LETTERS FROM WINDOWS ALTOGETHER. THANKS.
Would you like to also add clear instructions on HOW TO CHANGE MENUS TO LOWER CASE IN VISUAL STUDIO, because that is the first thing I'm doing with new Visual Studio.
I LOVE IT!
CAN I ALSO SET IT TO COMIC SANS?
ALSO, IF THE MOST USED MENU ITEMS COULD BLINK, THAT WOULD ROCK.
THOUGHT: MAYBE I COULD REPLACE MENU HEADERS WITH ANIMATED GIFS?
GEOCITIES FOREVER!
BOO BOO microsoft, shame, shame, who wants CAPSLOCK for menus? are you guys high__???
I find it funny that no one on the Visual Studio team was willing to sign their name to this post.
Maybe we should update the .NET coding standards and BCL APIs to make ALL CAPS more prominent since they are so good at conveying structure.
Did you guys look at using small caps? That at least gives more emphasis to the first letter of the word and still keeps everything caps. Assuming you choose a font that has true small cap glyphs it can look quite nice and pleasing to the eye. Certainly better then all caps.
Scott Guthrie must come back!
You keep making compromises since you are unwilling to admit your original color scheme ideas were a failure. This is contrary to ALL usability principles.
Using all caps cuts against all usability knowledge going back hundreds, if not thousands, of years.
If you need to show the menu, make it a different shade of grey. Visual Studio 2010 shows this.
Incidentally, by not using menu and toolbar separators with colors or lines, you've violated you own research. Stacks of toolbars now look like a big blob.
I honestly don't believe you understand usability and design.
Incidentally, Windows Azure looks like it was designed by amateurs. It's horribly ugly. The font choices are terrible, the colors are poor (there are no blacks, just gray on pastel), white space is used poorly and the all caps is just as hideous as in Visual Studio. This was designed to look hip, not to be used.
(Don't tell me this was properly tested because I know it wasn't. If it was tested, you've rigged the test. I once worked with a so-called "usability expert" that did this all the time. At best, he'd simply show people two designs and ask which they preferred, but more common he'd just show one design and ask people if it would work.)
This is a joke, right? Right? RIGHT?
STOP YELLING AT US MICROSOFT. HOW ABOUT UPPERCASE IS DEFAULT BUT THEN WE CAN MODIFY THE MENU LAYOUT IN OPTIONS THAT WOULD BE OK.
See this is much easier to read when it is not in uppercase.
designer friend of mine had these references:
uxmovement.com/…/all-caps-hard-for-users-to-read
also:
Miles Tinker, for his landmark work, Legibility of Print, performed scientific studies on the legibility and readability of all-capital print. His findings were as follows: All-capital print greatly retards speed of reading in comparison with lower-case type. Also, most readers judge all capitals to be less legible. Faster reading of the lower-case print is due to the characteristic word forms furnished by this type. This permits reading by word units, while all capitals tend to be read letter by letter. Furthermore, since all-capital printing takes at least one-third more space than lower case, more fixation pauses are required for reading the same amount of material. The use of all capitals should be dispensed with in every printing situation.
It's sad to see a company that was driven by engineering to buckle to the needs of a few stubborn 'suits' who derive aesthetic happiness from square blocks (Metro) and suddenly decide NOW is the time to push consistency everywhere. Here a Metro, there a Metro every where a squared box who's design philosophy RESULTS IN MENUS THAT YELL AT PEOPLE.
It's amusing to see someone actually defend a decision like this for a productivity tool that is relied on by thousands of developers across the planet and compare it to Zune and Bing search. Wow …. *face palm*
"Using uppercase for the menus was not an arbitrary decision"
"We’ve chosen to use uppercase styling in the top menu for two main reasons: 1) to keep Visual Studio consistent with the direction of other Microsoft user experiences, and 2) to provide added structure to the top menu bar area."
These sound very wishy washy reasons, and the entire issue seems very arbitrary. So why antagonize people by changing it so the menu bar IS YELLING AT YOU?
Please provide a switch, so all those who hate all caps menu will be able to revert it back.
There are bigger problems than that, like incompatibility with Windows XP. I couldn't care less about letter case in the main menu, but I do care about my programs compiled with VS11 not running under WinXP. Stupid cosmetic issues consume too much attention; real show stoppers are ignored. How about VS11 Express supporting non-Metro apps? Can we have a switch for that please?
STOP WASTING OUR TIME YOU MONEYBRAINED BUNCH OF BUFFOONS!!! DO YOU REALISE HOW STUPID THE ENTIRETY OF MS LOOKS NOW WITH WINDOWS 8?!?!?!!?!? LOOK IN THE MIRROR!!! O-M-G!!!!!!
THANK YOU FOR YOUR EXPLANATION. I SPECIALLY LIKE THE SENSE OF HUMOUR IN THE POST TITLE, REALLY GOOD TO BREAK THE ICE, BECAUSE SOME PEOPLE ARE JUST INCREASING THEIR ANIMOSITY AGAINST VS DEVS.
NO, SERIOUSLY, THAT WAS UNEXPECTED, I HAD A GOOD LAUGH.
ARE YOU GUYS GOING TO MAKE A CLR COBOL TOO? THAT WOULD FIT NICELY.
I HOPE THIS IS QUITE UNDERSTANDABLE.
ALL CAPS IS NOT ENOUGH. IT WOULD BE NICE TO REMOVE ALL THE SPACES TOO. THEY ARE TOTALLY USELESS: MUCHBETTERUSEREXPERIENCEWITHOUTSPACESTOO.
please stop the madness and at least give us control to configure this.
SHOULD HAVE POSTED THE ENTIRE ARTICLE IN CAPS
at least it's not all lowercase http://i.imgur.com/FmWWw.png
DEVELOPERS ARE NOT THE CLUELESS MORONS APPLE AND NOW MICROSOFT SEEM TO CATER TO STOP SCREWING WITH THE PROVEN UI MODELS.
It looks silly. Go back to how things are supposed to be written.
If you've read any typography books, you would know that ALL CAPS is much harder to see when your not letter spacing. The CAPS run into each other. Lowercase is made for clear readability.
Just fix the antialiasing on small fonts so your system will look like moders OSes and you won't need uppercase to make the text look good.
As a developer, I have no desire to move from Win7 and VS2010. That setup works nicely for me.
Never before have I seen software updates likely to cause so much irritation and productivity reduction as what we're seeing with Win8 and VS2012.
How many different interfaces do Microsoft want us to use? They want us jumping between Metro (yuck!), the Win8 desktop (explorer with huge ribbons, but no all-caps), and the monochrome shouty VS2012 interface…
Bring back some consistency!
GUYS CHILL OUT VISUAL STUDIO 11 WILL ONLY BE USED TO BUILD METRO APPS ANYWAY
Biggest bunch of whiners I've ever seen.
I DON'T KNOW ABOUT YOU, BUT BETWEEN THE STRANGE UX CHOICES BEING MADE, AND BETWEEN THE LACK OF C++ SUPPORT IN XP, I'LL JUST SWITCH TO CLANG ALONG WITH SUBLIME TEXT, AT LEAST THAT WAY I END UP WITH A DECENT COMPILER AND UNBURDENED BY A TERRIBLY SLOW IDE THAT DOESN'T SEEM TO BE IMPROVING IN ANY MEASURABLE WAY.
VS2010 INTELLISENSE DOESN'T COUNT CONSIDERING THAT IT UPDATES EXTREMELY SLOWLY, LEADING TO NEAR USELESSNESS.
You forgot one, it needs to be SOLUTION EXPLORER
I've been programming for windows for 10 years and you guys have no CLUE about design. All your ideas are terrible, I weep at how bad you are and not even realize it.
Now we remember why Microsoft continues to fade into irrelevance.
This should be in preferences…
Work on improving the Windows platform by adding and growing the Windows 7 product which is the best OS to date. You guys jump ship way too quickly to allow for full market maturity of your product. Also I hate Metro. You should keep it on phones and tablets and leave the desktops and laptops to the power users. Seriously.
Personally I don't like all caps anywhere.
I must admit though, that I hardly ever look at the menu during work so it's not a big deal.
However, how do you keep localization team happy? Not all letters have capitals…
why not give users the option to set font and size, and capitalization? OMG everyone wins?
– The top menu doesn't need emphasis. It's at the top. It can't be moved. We know where it is.
– You can't compare the design decision with Zune, website.. etc. This an app developers look at for hours every day and not an app/site which is used for seconds or minutes. The same design decision might not work properly in every situation.
– Then make it an option in the Tools menu to turn the caps on/off and everyone will be happy. So far it's an undocumented registry key which needs to be added.
WELL CHANGE THE AZURE PORTAL!
TERRIBLE DESIGN.
ALL CAPS ARE HARDER TO READ!!!!!!!!!!!ALL CAPS ARE HARDER TO READ!ALL CAPS ARE HARDER TO READ!ALL CAPS ARE HARDER TO READ!ALL CAPS ARE HARDER TO READ!ALL CAPS ARE HARDER TO READ!ALL CAPS ARE HARDER TO READ!ALL CAPS ARE HARDER TO READ!ALL CAPS ARE HARDER TO READ!ALL CAPS ARE HARDER TO READ!ALL CAPS ARE HARDER TO READ!ALL CAPS ARE HARDER TO READ!ALL CAPS ARE HARDER TO READ!
So you have the vast majority of your customers and internal users telling you they don't like it, and instead of thinking maybe, just maybe, your design decision is wrong, you stick to it?! The level of hubris is astounding! You guys remind me of the Iraqi minister who insisted they were winning the war and surrounding the enemy. This ship will go down burning before you change; so be it…
When we read, we read shapes of words, not individual letters. Making menus all caps means that we have to spend extra time looking for the menu we want.
Were people having trouble using menus? I don't understand how that could possibly be the case. Almost every application has menus, we're used to it. All this change does is piss off people.
The people using this product are engineers, we know what a menu looks like. The fact that you think you need to emphasise and add more structure to a simple *menu* is pretty insulting. Please think of your target audience here, it's not the same as those who use Bing.
It's fine the way it is, we like it the way it is, and there is no reason to change it. It's pretty obvious to everyone here that you are grasping at straws to find reasons to justify a decision, instead of making a decision based on well thought out reasoning.
HEY VISUAL STUDIO IS REALLY IMPORTANT EVERY MENU ITEM MUST BE SOMETHING THAT YOU LOOK AT HEY LOOK AT US LOOK AT THESE MENUS LOOK THERE IS A MENU OVER HERE AND ONE OVER HERE
Seriously?
Still looks like garbage. CAPS are unreadable, your designers need to go to typography school.
The "before" screenshot uses a Windows 95-style aliased font to make it look uglier. Very misleading, suspect it was deliberate.
I am very glad to hear you are going to provide an option. That is all we ask. And I can assure you, that I will definitely use the option, so it won't be wasted work 🙂
Please do not fall into the Mozilla approach of "you can disable it" or "you can use an extension". The defaults should be sane and robust, not some kind of fad of the day fueled by the horror of other design departments.
Please stop ruining the productivity tool of millions of people. It's bad enough that you're wrecking Windows already.
I would seriously be interested in the rationale behind the all-upper caps.
However your (1) "to keep Visual Studio consistent with the direction of other Microsoft user experiences" just comes across as an excuse: "the other kids are jumping from the bridge, too!".
Your (2) you don't provide any reason for uppercase – you just describe how you improved it after the fact.
Please, post facts.
—-
For the time being we have to assume some overpaid self-proclaimed expert was relegated to the UX team because everyone else wanted to get rid of him and his ideas of "doing something radical".
THIS SOUNDS LIKE A PRETTY DUMB IDEA TO ME. I CAN'T UNDERSTAND WHY ANYONE WOULD WANT TO TYPE IN ALL CAPITAL LETTERS ALL THE TIME. SHOULD OUR CODE ALSO BE IN ALL CAPS? I GUESS THAT MAKES THINGS EASIER.
THANK YOU FOR YOUR TIME.
IT CAN'T BE THAT HARD TO ADD SOME SETTINGS TO VISUAL STUDIO SO THAT A DEVELOPER CAN DECIDE WHAT HE wants OR DOES NOT WANT.
WHY DO YOU GUYS BECOME AS STUPID AS APPLE OPERATING SYSTEMS WHERE YOU CAN'T SET UP ANYTHING?
If readability is being ignored, and all-caps provides better "structure", why not make everything in the UI all-caps? I mean, if it's better, and makes things stand out more, then everything should be that way shouldn't it? I'll be very disappointed if all the menu items, and all the compiler error messages, and all the file/document names aren't all-caps. It's important for all of those things to stand out, so by your own reasoning, they should all be all-caps shouldn't they?
Why does the top menu need emphasis? Do you somehow think that if its contents was not all-caps, then users would have trouble locating it? I'm glad you made it all-caps then – I just wouldn't have been able to work out where the menu bar was otherwise.
I think the All Caps issue can be put to rest thanks to Richard Banks' registry hack and Microsoft's own admission that they'll allow users to change it themselves. On the larger issue of the overall direction of the Visual Studio UI redesign, I think this quote from the last blog post is instructive:
"We’ve chosen to use uppercase styling in the top menu for two main reasons: 1) to keep Visual Studio consistent with the direction of other Microsoft user experiences…"
There you have it, folks, that's all you need to know.
It's what many of us have said all along: Microsoft is applying the Metro look across their entire product line regardless of whether or not the Metro look actually improves the product in question. That's all there is to it. Every other silly justification they've made for their design decisions ('adding energy', 'help developers focus on the content') are pure smoke and mirrors. Though the quote above is referring to uppercase styling, clearly the same thinking went into the iconography and color palette decisions.
In the past, it seemed as if they approached each redesign of Visual Studio with the core philosophy of "let's make the UI meet the needs of developers." I thought each UI revision of VS since the original Visual Studio.NET was a great improvement over the prior version. This time around however, their primary goal was first and foremost to make Visual Studio look like every other Microsoft product – whether or not they actually made the UI better for developers was clearly irrelevant.
I get one trolling vote and here it is.
If VS was going to be a Metro app then I say go for it. If all menu's across the board are going to be changed, then that makes some sense from a system's standard point of view. As far as I know it is NOT. VS is not a Metro app, it makes them. Is this about making the tools look like the apps the way MS wants them to be made? (i.e., training wheels for the metro impaired?) To me VS is NOT remotely a consumer level application. If the new VS app will only allow the creation of METRO apps then (just one example off the cuff) maybe you can tie it to the keyboard and layout style you choose when you first start VS. If your changing it because the entire SYSTEM is going to have all caps menus, then I really can care less as long as you reasonably allow me to specify the look/theme myself (and seriously look into the localization bit.) It's your system, it does not appeal to me to have ALL CAPS. I agree it is harder to read (the screen shots proved it to me), design review process be damned (did the same team work on 3D movies? They are neat but NOT my first choice, because you are treading on preference here. The Windows way is to let the user decide, or at least give em an option). I do fear the next thing you will do is make toolbar items be live tiles. Hey! a Metro alert just popped up "Your undo function is now ready to used since you made a questionable user experience change!" (please do not think that is a good idea either e.g., live tile toolbar buttons)
A coworker just pm'd me on this topic! His 2 cents, and I agree, the IDE makes the dev experience what it is. The *CURRENT* IDE is why I keep coming back, for a breath of fresh dev air (i.e., easy mode) what next? Are you gonna stop supporting the extensible nature of if if said extension does not directly apply to Metro? I use fallacy to highlight my fear, however irrelevant to truth. It makes me worried is all.
This is such a waste of time to be bothered about. That is the saddest part of the whole issue imo. On all sides. I want my 30 minutes back…
My teacher laughed out loud saying " Oh my god"
Some of us develop on ultralights (12") and netbooks (7"-10"). Maybe you should stop taking UI cues from Fisher Price and realize that some of us need the IDE to be compact. The UI should be there when I need it, but otherwise it just needs to get out of the way.
And why do you need to add emphasis to the top menu? It's not like we'd forget it's there without you highlighting the blasted thing with aesthetically-challenged capital letters. All-caps is a terrible decision if you have to work with more than three words. IT'S VISUALLY TAXING TO READ TEXT WHEN IT ALL LOOKS LIKE THIS. WHO DOES YOUR UI RESEARCH ANYWAY?
Although considering you can't develop for anything outside of Metro in the Express versions of VS, I think you've stopped caring about developers, and are instead targeting middle management and marketing.
Have fun driving all the developers away from Windows. It's not like we're an important segment of your platform or anything. OH WAIT, THAT'S RIGHT…
Everybody posting sentences IN ALL CAPS AS IF IT WERE RELEVANT are dumb. The menu consists of single words, and they look more defined in all caps, standing out from the sub menus. WRITING FULL SENTENCES IN ALL CAPS IS COMPLETELY DIFFERENT.
Thanks for making this a option – I really dislike the ALL CAPS, but appreciate you addressing the feedback and allowing the user to ultimately choose.
I like the caps menus. It looks industrial and proffesional.
I seriously thought that Microsoft did that just to upset developers and get them to stop complaining about the rest of the horrible interface changes. I can imagine that users of other Microsoft software that YELLS at them won't appreciate it either. And why do you need or feel the need to treat Visual Studio like other Microsoft products? Comparing Visual Studio to Bing Searches is a horrible comparison. Why can't you listen to your users? At this point, I'm not sure if I even want to upgrade to VS 2012. I can't get over the lack of color and ugly icons. It actually hurts my eyes. I'm unable to see the value of other changes to the VS 2012 because of the interface. At least give an option for a 'classic' mode.
I drew what I imagined your design concept must be. I hope you can update the Windows 8 UI and all of your Microsoft products to follow it:
http://imgur.com/f3SLb (f3SLb on imgur)
You guys truly suck at everything. It is amazing how Microsoft can do NOTHING right anymore. I think the last time a truly innovative, well developed, excellent product came out of Micro-crap it was Windows 95/98.
Now the menu bar occupies even more horizontal space for the same information. Congratulations.
YOU'VE GOT TO BE JOKING! ALL CAPS IS A THROWBACK TO THE 1960'S OF COMPUTING. HAVEN'T YOU HEARD? IT'S THE 21ST CENTURY. GET WITH IT!
This leads me to believe you don't have any designers working on your teams who have ever taken a basic typography course. Information & type design are both heavily nuanced in what makes either successful. A quick glance at a menu with Title Case is easier to glean info from more quickly because you first see the uppercase letter and can quickly disgard the options you don't need without needing to read the entire word. Notice how much extra space is also needed between options to make it easier to read when it's all uppercase? You've now got a larger space to find the info you need, which takes more time. I have a specific filter on my browser to not show comments in YouTube that are typed in all caps, mostly because nothing of importance was ever typed entirely in caps but also because it's freaking horrid to try and read anything longer than a few words in all caps.
This is not a step forward in design, it is yet another way of making it more difficult and take longer to find info you should be trying to make easier to find. Obviously this is not the most important discussion but hey, why make something worse, simply for the sake of change, when you (could) keep the current, better option?
"Using uppercase for the menus was not an arbitrary decision, and I think it will help the discussion to frame why we made this change." Erm, you've made a decision for the RC, yet you're claiming it's a 'discussion' despite masses of feedback to the contrary. What is 'frame why' supposed to mean? Please cut out the business b*llsh*t language. We're developers, not management.
When you figure out a way to make all the other 'legacy desktop' apps from the last 20-odd years also have shouty file menus and look 'consistent', then VS can go that way as well.
For the risk of saying this until we're blue in the face, 'Windows is a desktop OS, Metro-style is for a tablet OS, Metro IS NOT Windows. Windows IS NOT Metro.' Good luck with Windows 8 btw.
Wow.
I thought this was an April Fool's joke.
I find it disturbing that this made it into the public view. Is there no quality control anymore at Microsoft?
Seriously though, you are unifying your products around a concept that:
a) does not translate from Web to Desktop applications (it would probably look good in a Metro UI), and
b) has been known to actually _infuriate_ users; in particular power users and designers, which are exactly the users VS is directed at
Please, stop.
As someone who has an eyesight disability I much prefer the ALL CAPS METHOD. I find the letters are more spaced out and at a glance I can read the text much easier. +1
Is there anyone who really gave positive feedback? Do something useful for the developers. I don't think any developer wants to talk about all caps menu!
I FOR ONE LOVE THE NEW CAPS MENUS. PLEASE MAKE THEM BOLD ALSO. OR AT LEAST GIVE ME AN OPTION.
*not an actual VS user
"… exploring options to expose that choice…" you mean you really consider adding an option to your menus to disable menu caps? Somehow that sounds even worse than the caps themselves are already.
Between this and the vomitus that your colleagues are pleased to call the Windows 8 UI, its plain to see that Microsoft actually have stopped even pretending to give a damn what users thing. Please stop banging on about listening to customer feedback when you clearly don't.
You're embarrassing yourself and insulting your customers. And nobody should be doing one of those things as often as MS have been lately, let alone both.
maybe an Apply button in Options dialog?
Can be "APPLY" if you want… but PLEASE!
PLEASE DON'T DO ALL CAPS, MICROSOFT.
The menu from Standard Case menu looks a lot better, in my humble opinion.
Please at least give us an option to choose uppercase or lowercase. I've been using Windows since I was four, and I never had to deal with uppercase menus. I've been designing user interfaces for years now, so I at least have some idea of what you guys are going through.
Please understand this. Even if it's difficult, please do not introduce these ALL CAPS MENUS. Thank you.
Don't make ALL CAPS the default, please!
At the moment, we need a 64bit version of VS
"In the end we determined it to be a very effective way of providing structure and emphasis to the top menu area in Visual Studio 2012."
That sentence is a bunch of words that don't actually say anything. Actually, it does say something, but it's simply, "we like the look of it." This is an IDE. I don't need "structure and emphasis". I need the tool to fade into the background, allowing me to effortlessly explore *my code*, not *your UI*. Further, the notion that VS users require emphasis to a drop-down menu is ludicrous.
Is this even based on statistics? Has this been AB tested?
"Based on user feedback" means nothing without some kind of context. Can you really qualify this?
I have no vested interest in this, I don't use Microsoft products any more, but I don't particularly want anyone to fail. I'm also not trying to Microsoft bash here.
This looks like arbitrary posturing and arbitrary change. Perhaps Microsofts AB testing is just very, very long term. A) Release a product/idea, if it fails hard, B) try something else.
Really interested to hear rebuttals.
I hate the ALL CAPS MENU.
Isn't it funny how they have to have ALL CAPS, and refer to other WEBSITES that have ALL CAPS. But this blog's menu DOESN'T have ALL CAPS.
I tried to have a strong opinion about this, but seeing as how I'm on Vista for the foreseeable future, VS2012 is not in the cards for me any time soon.
However, did your usability testers try the all-caps menus on a portrait-mode display, such as 900×1440? Do the menus still "fit", since it seems that all-caps are a significant increase in width?
Writing in all caps is just wrong. It's wrong for Azure, wrong for Zune, and most definitely wrong for VS! No need to follow some misguided design direction blindly.
Are you just doing your "visual changes" to your UI's (VS and W8) just for fun, or actually SOMEONE is really using it in Microsoft Corp ?
OH HAI, LET'S GO MAKE ALL MENUS IN CAPS LOCK, IT'S GOING TO BE SO MUCH FUN !
what the *** ?
GOTTA MAKE CHANGES TO JUSTIFY NEW VERSION
This is a joke, right? It is, isn't it?
Of course it looks awful, because we are so accustomed to the old way. It's almost impossible to look at it without prejudice, but it really might not be that bad. To me, at the moment, it looks like some 16-bit game for Windows 95. But the more I look away and back again, the more acceptable it gets.
I AM GLAD THAT I DON'T DEVELOP ON THE WINDOWS PLATFORM. IF I DID, THIS COULD WELL BE THE LAST STRAW!
INSTEAD, I WILL POINT AND LAUGH.
HA, HA!
HI. THAT'S STRANGE? IT SEEMS TO ME THAT USING AN ALL-CAPS MENU IS JUST FINE!!!!! IN FACT, I HAVE NO IDEA WHY ANYONE WOULDN'T WANT THAT!!!!! MAYBE PEOPLE ARE JUST STUPID I GUESS???? LOL
You are talking only about allcaps which sucks but theme colors are even worst. VS 2010 has a better UI.
Stop killing my developing App… Priority should be confort and not put VS with metro look.
"Let’s talk about the all-caps menus." That would imply that the author of this post and the team are going to reply to this conversation… or is the talking suddenly over now?
Wow. Are you guys trying to make all of your serious users switch to Linux and Mac? Because honestly if I ever meet more than like two developers that think all caps are a good idea I'll be shocked. HAVE YOU TRIED READING THINGS TYPED IN ALL CAPS?! Many mac/linux users actually disable the key, because it's pointless. Have fun getting mocked by every serious computer user Microsoft.
Time to change to MONODEVELOP
Would you all just shut up? I'm sure when you work in the program the Caps make it less confusing when you need to glance back and forth. Man, what a bunch of whiners.
The screenshot you provide is horrible. That is, the all-caps looks horrible and harder to read – much harder, and that is absolutely not desirable in a ui.
This is sad. In a time and age where menus are being de-emphasized in favor of better, superior UIs (like Ubuntu's HUD) that do not require complicated mousing, Microsoft chose not to innovate, but rather to *deteriorate* their own user experience, from the already-shitty menus into the even-more-unreadable realm that is uppercase text.
The Edsel of user interfaces, the Crocs of styling. Microsoft!
Your UI has always been an abortion on toast, but the all-caps labels make it noticeably worse.
ARE YOU GUYS STOOPID?
Well played Microsoft, well played. A troll post in homage of Eduard Khil.
I HATE ALL CAPS. SERIOUSLY??
To the team at Microsoft – I really appreciate the next level of tools you have provided. That's why I cannot understand the purpose of this distraction. Yes, that's all it is. A distraction. A distraction away from real issues, real discussions, such as detailed debates about technical issues such as Metro language, APIs, sandboxing, etc. Instead you are creating this distraction. This is the oldest trick in the book in politics. Create something to keep people occupied, to cover up some other hidden agenda. I'm sure you're all laughing at this debate right now, saying, you can't even believe it worked. Meanwhile you are getting a huge headstart on building the next generation of Metro apps, all Microsoft branded, and all never seen before, even in the RC. The big bang appears on the day of RTM. Yes, your silly ploy of making us mad about trivial things is working. Working well.
This explanation is embarrassing for you guys. If this is truly how MS is making design decisions these days, you've got bigger problems.
@Anders, your question was "So you've defined spacing using absolute values (pixels)? Doesn't that inhibit increase of DPI etc.?" – the spacing between items increases by the amount of DPI percentage change.
Zune? You mean the product that Microsoft abandoned due to it having no marketshare?
Yeah..
OH GOD THIS LOOKS HORRIBLE.
To all those with negative comments: uppercase styling is necessary to provide adequate "structure and emphasis," just as explained in the blog post.
To the Visual Studio Team: Bravo, and here's an idea for additional "structure and emphasis": why not have the menu text blink, as well? Or it could pulse in different colors. Either way.
"THANK YOU MICROSOFT!!!!! I HAVE VISION PROBLEMS AND THE SMALL TEXT IS HARD FOR MY EYES TO SEE," said nobody ever.
We spend our day=to=day lives telling people to stop YELLING when typing text and now you're introducing uppercase into menus. You have broken all the rules of the English language and have made menu items impossible to read.
Are you stupid or are you stupid?
You know, for a product group producing a tool for a *very* specific target audience (developers) these kind of changes are hard to justify.
The first point is simply inane – there's no sensible or rational reason why a *development tool* should look like Bing or Zune or any other non-development tool, service or product.
Secondly, there is no specific reason why a menu bar must be emphasized. What other (modern) Windows application uses all caps menus?
Now why don't you do what you should and listen to your target audience? Create a user poll and let the developer community have a say.
R
Never go full retard. Microsoft just went full retard.
stop ****** with it or you'll go blind
Ewwwww The all caps menus are so hard to read.
IT JUST SEEMS LIKE A REALLY BAD WAY TO DO THINGS. EVEN IF THERE IS MORE SPACING BETWEEN WORDS
I THINK THIS IS A BAD IDEA! IT LOOKS UGLY AND I DON'T LIKE IT WHEN MY COMPUTER SHOUTS AT ME!
THANK YOU AND GOOD DAY SIR!
So first you screwed up the UI, then you tried to fix it by adding ALL CAPS. Really? VS 2010 was doing just fine without all caps. (2)
The lower case versions provide much more distinct word pictures. Even at the low resolution of the screen shot, you can quickly locate Debug in the lower case version. Not so in the upper case version.
Changing an established convention is only justified if you add value. In this case you are doing the opposite, changing an established convention for something worse.
yuck
Clearly a decision made by a developer and not a designer. All-caps greatly impacts readability and increases the time it takes to distinguish words from each other. This is due to the lack of variation in x-height across the word/sentence.
There are certain instances where I'd be willing to chalk this up to just being easier to work with or looking better. Most of those situations come with ample white space and a very small number of words. Zune and Bing are pretty effective in this because they aren't expecting people to differentiate 17 different words from each other at a time (hell, even less than half that number most of the time).
It's important to look at design decisions in specific situations, and not apply a style blindly across an entire suite — this is a prime example of that idea in action.
Oh well, I guess I'll continue not using Visual Studio.
This is a terrible idea. Microsoft used to be a company that actually understood user interface design.
NOBODY USES ZUNE, AZURE, OR BING. IT'S POINTLESS TO MATCH THEIR HORRENDOUS MENU STYLE.
THE PROBLEM WITH ALL CAPS IS THAT IT IS NOT ONLY ANNOYING TO READ, BUT PEOPLE ASSOCIATE IT WITH YELLING. BUT HEY … FIXING SOMETHING THAT ISN'T BROKEN IS A GREAT WAY TO SPEND YOUR TIME MICROSOFT.
There's a massive mistake in this post – the date's wrong. Should be 1st April…
back to 80s?
The reason is just dumb, maybe the real reason is in someones bonus?
No one wants a Zune, developers should rarely use Azure and Bing isn't useful at all. I don't see why Visual Studio needs to look like dead projects.
New low, new low, I am offended by the stupidity of your design department. Sigh.
I really couldn't give two flying spaghetti monsters whether the menu is in all caps or not. Why you all losing your rag about this?
While we're at it: Can we get all C# keywords in uppercase as well? That would provide structure and emphasis, and would also be a strong signature element.
I really don't see the point of emphasizing menus like that. Visual Studio is not a play-thing. I don't need to be distracted to the menu every time I look at my screen.
There's absolutely no need to make them screamy. We know where and how to find the menu.
MICROSOFT THINKS THAT PEOPLE FIND ITS UNRELENTING, OVER-THE-TOP HOSTILITY RATHER REFRESHING. UNFORTUNATELY FOR IT, IT'S WRONG. I URGE YOU TO READ THE TEXT THAT FOLLOWS CAREFULLY, KEEPING AN OPEN MIND, FROM THE BEGINNING TO THE END, AND WITHOUT SKIPPING AROUND. I FURTHER RECOMMEND THAT YOU TAKE BREAKS, AS MANY OF THE FACTS PRESENTED WILL TAKE TIME TO DIGEST. MICROSOFT IS DIFFERENTIATED FROM YOUR AVERAGE UNPROFESSIONAL, SELF-SATISFIED PEDDLER OF SNAKE-OIL REMEDIES BY VIRTUE OF THE FACT THAT IT WANTS TO ISSUE A FLOOD OF BOGUS LEGAL DOCUMENTS. MICROSOFT SAYS THAT ITS WISHY-WASHY GANG IS A BENIGN AND CHARITABLE AGENCY. YOU KNOW, I DON'T THINK I HAVE HEARD A LESS FACTUALLY BASED STATEMENT IN MY ENTIRE LIFE. MICROSOFT WOULD SWEAR ON A STACK OF BIBLES THAT WE SHOULD BE GRATEFUL FOR THE PRECIOUS FREEDOM TO BE ROBBED AND KICKED IN THE FACE BY SUCH A NOBLE CREATURE AS IT. ENOUGH SAID.
WELL, MICROSOFT, WE'RE ALL GETTING A LITTLE TIRED OF YOU AND YOUR KIND MESSING UP THE WORLD AND THEN REFUSING TO ACCEPT RESPONSIBILITY FOR WHAT YOU'VE DONE. WE'RE FED UP. AND THE DAY IS COMING WHEN YOU'LL BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE FOR YOUR PEEVISH GRIEVANCES.
IF YOU WERE TO ASK MICROSOFT, IT'D SAY THAT IT DOESN'T REMEMBER CONFUSING, DISORIENTING, AND DISUNIFYING. NOT ONLY DOES MICROSOFT UNDOUBTEDLY HAVE A VERY SELECTIVE MEMORY, BUT WHEN IT HEARS ANYONE SAY THAT BY PROVOKING ITS RIVALS TO IRRATIONAL RAGE, IT MAKES THEM LOOK LIKE WHAT I CALL TENDENTIOUS SPONGERS, ITS ANSWER IS TO SUPPLANT NATIONAL HEROES WITH THE WORST TYPES OF YELLOW-BELLIED PRACTITIONERS OF PRIGGISM THERE ARE (ALSO KNOWN AS MICROSOFT'S CONFRERES). THAT'S SIMILAR TO TAKING A FEW DRUNKEN SWINGS AT A BEEHIVE: IT JUST MAKES ME WANT EVEN MORE TO DEFEND WITH DEDICATION AND FEROCITY THE VERY RIGHTS THAT MICROSOFT SO DESPERATELY WANTS TO ABOLISH. NOW, I DON'T MEAN FOR THAT TO SOUND PESSIMISTIC, ALTHOUGH THE FIRST THING WE NEED TO DO IS TO GET MICROSOFT TO ADMIT THAT IT HAS A PROBLEM. IT SHOULD BE COUNSELED TO RECITE THE FOLLOWING:
I, MICROSOFT, AM A SHIFTLESS FINK.
I HAVE BEEN A PARTICIPANT IN A GIANT SCHEME TO CONFUSE, DISORIENT, AND DISUNIFY.
I HEREBY ADMIT MY ADDICTION TO SAVAGISM. I ASK FOR THE STRENGTH AND WISDOM TO FIGHT THIS ADDICTION.
ONCE MICROSOFT REALIZES THAT IT HAS A PROBLEM, MAYBE THEN IT'LL SEE THAT IF WE DON'T TELL IT LIKE IT IS, OUR CHILDREN WILL CURSE US IN OUR GRAVES. SPEAKING OF OUR CHILDREN, WE NEED TO TEACH THEM DILIGENTLY THAT IF IT WERE UP TO MICROSOFT, WE'D ALL BE GRAZING CONTENTEDLY IN THE PASTURE OF RUFFIANISM RIGHT NOW. WE'D BE ENTIRELY UNAWARE OF THE FACT THAT ITS PSYCHASTHENIA LEADS IT TO CON US INTO SAWING OFF THE VERY TREE LIMBS UPON WHICH WE'RE SITTING. THINK ABOUT IT, AND I'M SURE YOU'LL AGREE WITH ME.
WHEN I HEAR MICROSOFT SAY THAT HUMAN LIFE IS EXPENDABLE, I HAVE TO WONDER ABOUT IT. IS IT COMPLETELY IMPETUOUS? IS IT SIMPLY BEING SOPHOMORIC? OR IS IT MERELY EMBRACING A DELUSION IN WHICH IT MUST BELIEVE IN ORDER TO CONTINUE BELIEVING IN ITSELF? WE MUST UNMISTAKABLY ASK OURSELVES QUESTIONS LIKE THAT BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE, BEFORE MICROSOFT GETS THE OPPORTUNITY TO WAGE AN ODD SORT OF WARFARE UPON A LARGELY UNPREPARED AND UNRECOGNIZING PUBLIC. THAT'S JUST ONE SIDE OF THE COIN. THE OTHER SIDE IS THAT THERE ARE FEW CERTAINTIES IN LIFE. I, NOT BEING ONE OF THE MANY SALACIOUS BLUSTERERS OF THIS WORLD, HAVE COUNTED ONLY THREE: DEATH, TAXES, AND MICROSOFT ANNOUNCING SOME DOUR THING EVERY FEW WEEKS.
IF ANYTHING WILL FREE US FROM THE SHACKLES OF MICROSOFT'S OPPUGNANT, PETULANT ACTIVITIES, IT'S KNOWLEDGE OF THE WORLD AS IT REALLY IS. IT'S KNOWLEDGE THAT THERE IS TRULY A DAMNABLE DIMENSION TO ITS QUIPS. OR, IF "DAMNABLE" IS TOO NARROW OF A TERM, PERHAPS YOU'D PREFER "SHAMBOLIC". IN ANY CASE, MICROSOFT BELIEVES THAT IT'S MORALLY OBLIGATED TO DISGUISE THE COMPLEXITY OF COLOR, THE BRUTALITY OF CLASS, AND THE IMPORTANCE OF RELIGION AND SEXUAL IDENTITY IN THE CONSTRUCTION AND PRACTICE OF MYSTICISM. THE REAL DAMAGE THAT THIS BELIEF CAUSES ACTUALLY HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE BELIEF ITSELF BUT WITH PSYCHOLOGY, HUMAN NATURE, AND THE SKILLFUL PSYCHOLOGICAL MANIPULATION OF THAT NATURE BY MICROSOFT AND ITS PARVANIMOUS, ORNERY JANISSARIES. IF MICROSOFT HONESTLY BELIEVES THAT SOME OF MY POINTS ARE NOT VALID, I WOULD LOVE TO GET SOME SPECIFIC FEEDBACK FROM IT.
MICROSOFT'S PLEDGE NOT TO POOH-POOH THE REAMS OF SOLID EVIDENCE POINTING TO THE EXISTENCE AND OPERATION OF A VENAL COTERIE OF PHALLOCENTRISM IS MERELY EMPTY RHETORIC, INVOKED ON OCCASION FOR THEATRICAL EFFECT BUT OTHERWISE STUDIOUSLY IGNORED. IF I WEREN'T SO FORGIVING, I'D HAVE TO SAY THAT MICROSOFT HAS A KNACK FOR CONVINCING VOLAGE-BRAINED POTHOUSE DRUNKS THAT THE KIDS ON THE PLAYGROUND ARE HAPPY TO SURRENDER TO THE SCHOOL BULLY. THAT'S CALLED MARKETING. THE UNDERLYING TRICK IS TO USE SESQUIPEDALIAN TERMS LIKE "PSEUDOLAMELLIBRANCHIATE" AND "HETEROCHROMATIZATION" TO KEEP ITS SALES PITCH FROM SOUNDING UNCIVILIZED. THAT'S WHY YOU REALLY HAVE TO LOOK HARD TO SEE THAT WHEN UTTERED BY MICROSOFT, THE WORD "GLOBAL", AS IN "GLOBAL SPREAD OF SATANISM", IMPLIES, "IT'S NOT OUR FAULT". IN REALITY, WE'D SURELY HAVE A LOT LESS SATANISM IF IT WOULD JUST STOP TOURING THE COUNTRY PROMOTING FLIPPANT INTERDENOMINATIONALISM IN LECTURES AND RADIO TALK-SHOW INTERVIEWS.
MICROSOFT WILL DO EVERYTHING IN ITS POWER TO OVERTHROW THE GOVERNMENT AND ELIMINATE THE MONEY SYSTEM. NO WONDER CORRUPTION IS ENDEMIC TO OUR SOCIETY; MICROSOFT KEEPS INSISTING THAT IT IS A MARTYR FOR FREEDOM AND A VICTIM OF OLIGARCHISM. TO ME, THERE IS SOMETHING FUNDAMENTALLY WRONG WITH THAT STORY. MAYBE IT'S THAT SOME ORGANIZATIONS ARE RESPONSIBLE AND OTHERS ARE NOT. MICROSOFT FALLS INTO THE CATEGORY OF "NOT". IF WE FAIL TO COMMENT ON A PHENOMENON THAT HAS AND WILL CONTINUE TO MAKE THE POT OF EMOTIONALISM OVERBOIL AND SCALD THE WHOLE WORLD THEN ALL OF OUR SACRIFICES WILL BE AS FORGOTTEN AS THE SAND BLOWING ACROSS OZYMANDIAS'S DEAD EMPIRE. THE "DECAY OF THAT COLOSSAL WRECK," AS THE POET SHELLEY PUTS IT, TEACHES US THAT MICROSOFT IS NOT JUST UGLY. IT IS UNBELIEVABLY, ASTRONOMICALLY UGLY.
MICROSOFT'S DISSERTATIONS ARE SENSATIONALISM REINCARNATE, SO TO SPEAK. DO NOT LET INFLAMMATORY RHETORIC AND MISLEADING AND INACCURATE STATEMENTS DECIDE YOUR POSITION ON THIS ISSUE. I PLAN TO WORK WITHIN THE SYSTEM TO PERSUADE MY FELLOW CITIZENS THAT THE CLAIM THAT THE KEY TO LIVING A LONG AND HAPPY LIFE IS TO NUMB THE PUBLIC TO THE TOTALISM AND INJUSTICE IN MAINSTREAM POLITICS IS REALLY ILLUSORY, NOT BECAUSE I LACK THE COURAGE FOR MORE DRASTIC STEPS BUT BECAUSE WE MUST MAKE EFFORTS DIRECTED TOWARDS BROAD, LONG-TERM SOCIAL CHANGE. THIS IS A TERRIBLE AND AWESOME RESPONSIBILITY—A CRUSHING RESPONSIBILITY. HOWEVER, IF WE STICK TOGETHER WE CAN CAN SHOW THE WORLD THAT YOU SHOULD CHECK OUT SOME OF THE THINGS MICROSOFT IS SAYING ABOUT CLASSISM. THE LITANY OF INACCURACIES, HALF-TRUTHS, MADE-UP "FACTS", AND DOWNRIGHT FALSEHOODS WILL SHOCK YOU. AND I WON'T EVEN BOTHER MENTIONING THAT MICROSOFT IS A HARD WORKER. IT WORKS HARD TO PREVENT ANYONE FROM COMMENTING ON ITS MUTINOUS DOCTRINES. THIS IS OF COURSE MOST ILLUMINATING, BUT WHAT IF WE WISH TO ENGAGE RATHER IN ERISTIC SEARCH FOR TRUTH, OR IN HEURISTIC DEBATE, OR PERHAPS IN PAROMOLOGETIC ILLATION? IN MY EXPERIENCE, THERE ARE SOME SIMPLE TRUTHS IN THIS WORLD. FIRST, WE HAVE A RIGHT AND AN OBLIGATION TO RAISE A STINK ABOUT MICROSOFT AND ITS MILITANT, BAD-TEMPERED SUBLIMINAL PSYWAR CAMPAIGNS. SECOND, MERE ASSOCIATION TENDS TO LEND CREDENCE TO MICROSOFT'S CRINGERS BECAUSE PEOPLE ASSUME THEY CAN'T BE THAT BAD IF A RESPECTED PERSON IS ASSOCIATED WITH THEM. AND FINALLY, I THINK THAT MICROSOFT IRRITATES ALL AND SUNDRY. YOU PROBABLY THINK THAT TOO. BUT MICROSOFT DOES NOT THINK THAT. MICROSOFT THINKS THAT CULTURAL TRADITION HAS NEVER CONTRIBUTED A SINGLE THING TO THE ADVANCEMENT OF KNOWLEDGE OR UNDERSTANDING.
I PAUSE TO NOTE THAT MICROSOFT'S MIND HAS LIMITED HORIZONS. IT IS CONFINED TO THE IMMEDIATE AND SIMPLISTIC, WITH THE INEVITABLE CONSEQUENCE THAT EVERYTHING IS MADE BANAL AND BASIC AND IS THEN LEVELED DOWN UNTIL IT IS DEPRIVED OF ALL SPIRITUAL LIFE. SOME PEOPLE HAVE COMPARED GRUMPY, PATRONIZING FRIBBLES TO THE MOST SUPERFICIAL PARTY ANIMALS I'VE EVER SEEN. I WOULD LIKE TO TAKE THE COMPARISON ONE STEP FURTHER: MICROSOFT HAS SEPARATE, OFTENTIMES ANTIPODAL, INTERESTS FROM OURS. FOR INSTANCE, IT'S INTERERESTED IN SULLYING A PROFESSION THAT'S ALREADY HELD IN LOW ESTEEM. IN CONTRAST, MY INTERESTS—AND PERHAPS YOURS AS WELL—INCLUDE TELLING PEOPLE THAT MICROSOFT IS A PSYCHOLOGICALLY DEFECTIVE ORGANIZATION. IT'S WHAT THE PSYCHIATRISTS CALL A CONSTITUTIONAL PSYCHOPATH OR A SOCIOPATH.
IF I SEEM A BIT INATTENTIVE, IT'S ONLY BECAUSE I'M TRYING TO COMMUNICATE WITH MICROSOFT ON ITS OWN LEVEL. HERE'S SOME FOOD FOR THOUGHT: MICROSOFT HAS SPENT UNTOLD HOURS TRYING TO LAY THE FOUNDATION FOR SOME SERIOUS MISCHIEF. DURING THAT TIME, DID IT EVER ONCE OCCUR TO IT THAT ITS APPROACH IS GENERALLY TO SEIZE UPON AN ANECDOTE OR A NARROW AND LIMITED MANIFESTATION AND/OR PURPOSE, AND THEN TOTALLY BLOW IT OUT OF PROPORTION TO JUSTIFY ITS COMPLACENT, ETHICALLY BANKRUPT RUSES? THIS IS AN IMPORTANT QUESTION BECAUSE MANY PEOPLE ARE INCREDULOUS WHEN I TELL THEM THAT IT INTENDS TO ALLOW FEDERALLY FUNDED RESEARCH TO MUSHROOM INTO A PRISSY, GROSSLY INEFFICIENT SYSTEM, HAMPERED BY FORK-TONGUED PSEUDO-INTELLECTUALS AND MACABRE MEANIES. "HOW COULD MICROSOFT BE SO STUBBORN?", THEY ASK ME. "IT DOESN'T SEEM POSSIBLE." WELL, IT IS CERTAINLY POSSIBLE, AND NOW I'LL EXPLAIN EXACTLY HOW MICROSOFT PLANS TO DO IT. BUT FIRST, YOU NEED TO REALIZE THAT IT WOULD HAVE US BELIEVE THAT ITS PAROXYSMS ARE THE CARRIERS OF CIVILIZATION AND THAT WITHOUT THEM HISTORY IS SILENT, LITERATURE IS DUMB, SCIENCE IS CRIPPLED, AND THOUGHT AND SPECULATION ARE AT A STANDSTILL. THE REALITY, IN CONTRAST, IS THAT IF I WANT TO LANGUISH IN PRISON ON TRUMPED-UP CHARGES, THAT SHOULD BE MY PREROGATIVE. I UNDENIABLY DON'T NEED MICROSOFT FORCING ME TO. OKAY, I'VE VENTED ENOUGH FRUSTRATION. SO LET ME END BY SAYING THAT PEOPLE LIKE MICROSOFT MAKE ME SICK.
LOOKING FORWARD TO THIS CHANGE AS I FIND THE REGULAR MENU TO EASY TO READ.
ONE QUESTION: WILL IT BE POSSIBLE TO AUTOMATICALLY MODIFY ALL MY SOURCE CODE TO ALSO BE IN ALL CAPS SO THAT I CAN BE IN COMPLIANT WITH THE MICROSOFT AZURE DESIGN GUIDELINES?
. . . IS CRUISE CONTROL FOR COOL.
Fire your UI designers, they're smoking something really bad.
WHY IS THE MENU BAR SCREAMING AT ME?!
Make it CONFIGURABLE, the USER knows BEST what (S)HE wants!
Just another reason not to develop for Microsoft!
STOP ****** WITH YOUR UI.
You haven't actually provided "reasons" for the uppercase menu. You provided your preferences, based on personal opinion.
If you have tested it and found that people can locate menu options faster, or more consistently, that would be a reason. If you have done eye-tracking and found that more people notice the menu during their first use, that would be a reason.
"Consistency" with other products and "more structure" are purely aesthetic preferences.
I couldn't care less which one you go with, personally, but if you're gonna do something, have reasons, or just shut up about it.
Or do what Microsoft always does and make a button for that option. (Which is the reason you need more "structure" in the first place.)
THIS IS HILARIOUS.
Oh my god. Don't screw up the menu. This is a developer tool, we don't need a 100% Metro look, we want that thing to be usable.
Undo!
So many comments about only ALL CAPS in menu ? There is much bigger problem. Whole new VS, new NET, new Windows 8 is this big problem. MS be careful, You can lose our respect faster than you think, and we can go to another alternatives faster than you think.
VS2010 theme -> visualstudio.uservoice.com/…/2819619-leave-vs-2010-theme-and-the-theme-editor-extensio
So, one reason to keep it even though you know your userbase will *HATE* it, is to stay consistent with other places that you're also going to do it? Really?
Wouldn't want us to *only* hate some of your products, right? All for one and one for all! Consistency is king!
/boggle
***
If you have to make a blog post to explain a design decision that is almost unanimously hated, then you are doing it wrong.
If you have to add a user preference to revert it to how it should look, then you are doing it wrong.
Even if it is consistant, wrong is wrong, bad is bad. The mess that Visual Studio has become over the years is consistantly a poorer developer experience with each UI interation.
You just can't make this stuff up. You really do need 8 levels of management to pull this off.
I don't care about the menus, just change it back to make all of these trolls shut up, please.
MICROSOFT HAS JUMPED THE SHARK. THIS ALL-CAPS IDEA IS SO INCREDIBLY STUPID THAT IT'S HARD TO BELIEVE IT ISN'T A JOKE. IF THIS LAME IDEA ACTUALLY GETS INTO PRODUCTION I WILL ENCOURAGE MY COMPANY NOT TO UPGRADE TO VS 2012.
HOW HORRIFYING.
It would be a good thing to allow the user to set a default when they run setup.
I am incredibly excited about some of the new features but the shouty interface is a deal breaker for me, i'm sorry to say.
Is there a way to switch ALL-CAPS menus on in VS2010?
" A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines" — Ralph Waldo Emerson.
I believe that the blog above serves to validate this quote to the extreme. Thank you MS for giving me even less reason to want to use your products!
Just open any developer tool on this page and run
document.body.setAttribute('style', 'text-transform: uppercase;')
Now your page has "structure". Thanks
Wow that looks truly awful. Not only does it waste space but it also removes visual cues which help people use the software. Maybe Microsoft think developers are producing software too fast and wants to slow them down by visually impairing the development environment by removing all color and turning the text to all-caps.
AWESOME IDEA!! ZUNE WAS SO SUCCESSFUL YOU SHOULD FOLLOW THEIR LEAD WHEREVER THEY GO.
"AHA! NOW WE KNOW WHAT HAPPENED TO THE UX GURU WHO THOUGHT THAT METRO WAS JUST AS USABLE ON THE DESKTOP AS IT WAS ON A MOBILE DEVICE! HE GOT TRANSFERRED TO THE VS2012 TEAM!"
Of those two screenshots, I find the first with the Standard Case menu to be much easier to read and locate the item that I need.
This is just on tiny symptom of a much larger problem — Microsoft has finally lost its focus on DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS!
If you're betting the company on making everything look, and feel just the same as Windows Phone, you're _very_ likely to get your wish, and end up with something that sells just like Windows Phone.
I'm off to re-train as an iOS/Android developer, at least these platforms have got a future.
This is utterly idiotic and needs to be undone. As others suggested, make it opt-in, not customize every single menu item.
I FIND IT FUNNY THE OFFICE TEAM WANTED TO DE-EMPHASIZE MENUS BY CREATING A RIBBON AND THE VISUAL STUDIO TEAM WANTS TO EMPHASIZE MENUS WITH ALL CAPS.
NICE CONSISTENT DESIGN ACROSS YOUR PRODUCTS MICROSOFT.
Wow, so you're just going to go against 30 years of human interface design because you decided that you think it "adds structure"? You do know that programmers invented CamelCase, right? If you look at the history of computing, people moved away from ALL CAPS as soon as the technology allowed it. This is asinine.
I am glad that you have made this change. It will make BOTH those people that own a Zune feel at home.
pretty unoriginal. It's like the ebb and flow of car designs over the decades. They go from boxy to curved, then from curved to boxy. Back in the windows 95 era the windows were square, everything was more technical, then by XP and win7 everything has nice ergonomically curved lines, clear window panes, etc. Now that's old so the only thing you can do is go back to technical, BOXY text. And whats worse is you're forcing it on people, which is typical MS style.
You guys previously explained the reason for removing most color was that it was too distracting for the developer. Then you went and added Caps to the titles of all property windows, then removed them, and now they are back at the top of the menus. HAVING ANY TEXT IN ALL CAPS ANYWHERE IS DISTRACTING, never mind for the menus! Please be *consistent* and remove the Caps.
Whats next, forcing all Caps within the editor windows? Or maybe just the comments? How about Caps in the context menus too?
I swear you guys are are toying with Caps just so people don't complain 100% about everything else you've done to wreck the product's visuals.
Wellp, time to stay with VS10 and never switch. Ever.
Great, we can fix the case on menus ourselves. Trivial, but better than nothing
We're stuck with unusable icons, er, "glyphs", though. In a misguided effort to make a software developer's productivity tool look like a designer's tool, we have to suffer mightily. I've been trying to use the RC, and it's hard to deal with. When I moved from 2005 to 2008 to 2010, those changes were pretty easy, and I was not only productive within the day, but discovering and using the new features. Not so with the RC. I'm noticing spending time staring at / searching for an icon that might mean something, and they're just too damn similar. Ditto solution explorer – for any project of reasonable size, it's just that much harder to find the differences between files of different types without a lot more reading.
Please stop wasting your shareholders' money with this nonsense
Does anything know of a VS extension I can use to turn all my declared variables in my projects to UPPERCASE so that I can keep it consistent with the design environment?
What I would suggest is that Microsoft use Comic Sans Serif for the font. 🙂
This is what happens when you let Steve Ballmer in on design decisions. It's not too late to turn back, and whoever persists in saying that CAPS is the future.. well it's time for them to go (preferably strapped to an ACME rocket – poetic justice).
Its a change for the sake of change, and Microsoft are being like a stubborn child or just plain foolhardy!
For those who are interested. Take matters into your own hands and turn the CAPS off
http://www.richard-banks.org/…/how-to-prevent-visual-studio-2012-all.html
Enjoy
Any chance we could get back more colors in the Solution Explorer for VS 2012? My eyes have a hard time finding things because it all looks the same. In fact, when I'm showing all items, it's not very visually clear which files are included in the project and which aren't. VS 2010 was wonderful with it's usage of color in the Solution Explorer.
Why ask for feedback if you're going to ignore it?
EVERYONE HATES ALL CAPS.
"Thanks for the feedback, we hear you… but f*** you, we're doing it anyway!"
F*** you too, Microsoft. I don't care what Azure, Zune, and Bing do – I'm a developer, developers use Visual Studio, and we're telling you we hate ALL CAPS. So you're going directly against the express wishes of the target audience of your application… so you can build a stronger brand image with Bing??? Why the heck would I care about your brand image? I just want a useable IDE.
I CAN NOT BELIEVE THAT YOU HAVE DECIDED THAT ALL CAPS IS SOMEHOW MORE READABLE THAN MIXED CASE . THERE IS NO WAY , BY ANY MEASURE , THAT THIS MESSAGE IS MORE READABLE THAN MIXED – CASE . BUT , SINCE MICROSOFT HAS DEEMED THIS TO BE THE WAY OF THE FUTURE , I WILL START WRITING ALL OF MY MESSAGES IN ALL CAPS . TO IMPROVE READABILITY , HOWEVER , I WILL ADD A FEW EXTRA PIXELS OF WHITESPACE BETWEEN EACH PAIR OF WORDS . I BELIEVE THAT THIS METHODOLOGY CONFORMS TO MICROSOFT ' S NEW DESIGN GUIDELINES .
If number 1 is true, then Visual Studio should get a ribbon. Aren't a lot of MS apps getting a ribbon…or already have it?
WHAT'S NEXT MICROSOFT? WILL vISuaL StUDio 2014 bE l33t letTeR cAsInG?
OMG, THIS IS THE MOST INANE THING SINCE METRO UI WAS ANNOUNCED FOR WINDOWS 8!!! HAS EVERY USABILITY EXPERT AT MICROSOFT BEEN TAKEN OVER BY POD PEOPLE?
Uggh! I can't even stand typing that long in CAPS!!
Let's put it this way:
I write code.
I spend most of my day examining text.
CodeCanMeanManyThings dependingOn _capitalization; Developers() AND languages put A_LOT_OF_NUANCE <into> text::formatting To *convey "semantics."
A productive IDE shall not interfere with this critical task by imposing cognitive dissonance on the developers that use it.
I am just gonna go do something else now. I always wanted to make kites. This computer stuff is pointless; next year it's more of the same, only it doesn't work any better. Never better, only different, and dumbing down to the lowest of the low – the neaderthal. So keep your whatever-it-is-you-think-you-have-there, and I'll go fly a kite!
The last truly functional version of Visual Studio was VS6. Do what you want with 2012. Nobody writes software for Windows anymore anyway and anybody writing ASP.NET code should rethink their career path.
IDIOTS
YO MAYBE YOU HAVEN'T BEEN LISTENING MAYBE YOU SHOULD NOT PUT UPPERCASE TEXT IN UI DESIGN EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER
This might be sOme guidaNce foR YOU
http://www.sapdesignguild.org/…/text_cap.htm
Saying 'it's the standard' is no excuse for ugly. Both of your reasons break down to "we think it's prettier". It seems like you let your graphic designers run roughshod over the UX team.
These are not decorative elements, they are core utilities. Imagine if a car maker decided to make the windshield opaque because it's more consistent with their branding.
YOU SUCK!!!
You do have a brain problem. What part in the sentence "all caps is harder to read" does your brain have a problem with ?
This is NOT a web or Metro app. Can we stop pretending now? Please?
OMG ALL CAPS! ZOMFG!
will you people calm down, it's really not that big of a deal… and your filling up the threads with this screaming nonsense and keeping others from being heard with legitimate dialog…
i want to say that: i have custom menus, and its awesome that it capitalizes their headings to match what the other menu headings look like, however it doesn't do this to commands pinned at that same level, which i feel is curious (granted this is a strange setup…)
People: Don't forget to vote for the option of a VS2010 theme over at uservoice: visualstudio.uservoice.com/…/2819619-leave-vs-2010-theme-and-the-theme-editor-extensio
Here's a snippet from the design team (and I use that term loosely!) regarding the menu styling…
Hipster designer 1: "You know, some pretty cool sites have all lowercase menus"
Hipster designer 2: "yeah! Let's be all avant-garde and go all caps!"
Hipster designer 1: "Hell yeah! It will be our little tribute to Billy Mays!"
After installing and using RC I can honestly say I shrug at the menu. It's perfectly readable, and that's about all that matters, so, no actual issue detected.
The only thing that bugs me is the brightly colored status bar. While using the dark theme the status bar is… let's say "perhaps overly prominent". Without a setting to turn that bright colorization off my choice boils down to turning off the status bar and losing line/column (not an option) or dealing with the laser beam shooting out from the bottom of the screen.
The main issue for me isn't whether some particular text is suddenly in ALL CAPS, but the fact that VS team has got time on their hands to spend time doing such trivial things that annoy lots of people instead of focusing on really important things for developers like makig sure the codes runs on as many platforms as possible – not just including XP but also Linux/Mac.
That's right – it would be a proper killer feature for .NET if it had stable support core running on different operating systems. You need something that actually keeps you competitive and you having less and less of it.
@alexc Totally agree. VS2010 was a disaster for me and the company I work for. Switching was one of the worst decisions I made 2 years ago. Too many issues, bugs and missing features. So when I hear about MS spending time on something so trivial I have to wonder what the hell is going on over there. Do you guys realize you shipped without intellisense support for managed C++?!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Like most people I've never used Bing, Zune or Azure. I just opened Bing's homepage and don't see any capitals anywhere. Hell, even Bing is written "bing".
I hate to admit it, especially with my having been so vocal on previous posts about the UI and how much I hated the idea of the capitalised menus, but I spent about 4 days solid on VS2012 last weekend and to be totally honest after a few minutes I found that the menus were not really a problem.
I did miss some of the icons that used to be there, and it took me a while to determine what the new icons actually meant (and get used to them) but all in all after an hour or two I was probably just as productive on VS2012 as I am already on VS2010.
Of course, I will leave it up to you dear reader to assume how productive that is!
So you want to puts "emphasis to the top menu area"… but WHY!? I thought the whole point of the redesign for VS11 (monochrome icons in Beta etc) was to put emphasis on the code/editor component.
The menu is the least used component anyway – I think it's safe to assume that anyone who develops with VS becomes accustomed to the keyboard shortcuts and maybe uses some toolbar buttons, but very seldom uses the menu. And now, with the addition of Quick Launch, the menu is more or less unnecessary anyway.
I honestly hate the Metro style, and it is frustrating that MS is choosing to go in that direction. Twenty years worth of UI / HCI research and design tells us one basic thing: GIANT WALLS OF TEXT, ESPECIALLY ALL CAPS TEXT, ARE DIFFICULT TO READ AND HURT USABILITY.
I guess I'll just stick with WIndows 7 and VS2010. There's no point in buying a product that is essential a "conceptual experiment" that Microsoft Marketing shovels out as a final product.
Windows 8 & VS 11 = Windows Vista… Don't buy it, just wait for the next iteration and maybe they'll fix it.
VS2010 theme -> visualstudio.uservoice.com/…/2819619-leave-vs-2010-theme-and-the-theme-editor-extensio
VS2010 theme -> visualstudio.uservoice.com/…/2819619-leave-vs-2010-theme-and-the-theme-editor-extensio
I seriously thought this was a joke at first. Somebody pulling my leg. That's how stupid this idea sounded.
Well, it's still a stupid idea. Please explain why this is a GOOD idea, and was a change needed to solve a specific UX problem. Otherwise it seems like you just changed it for the sake of changing something for your Release Announcement.
This is totally idiotic. It's bad enough that VS often crashed and throws cryptic errors, now it's shouting at me. PLEASE MICROSOFT ACKNOWLEDGE TYPOGRAPHIC CONVENTION!
I thought this was a bad joke until I read it in the official VS blog.
This is hilarious. Please just start working on the Service Pack you will need to fix this back to the way it was. Thanks.
So far, almost every single "feature" and "improvement" made to windows 8 and related tools has been something that I find annoying, pointless, or just plain wrong.
I generally dislike other operating systems, but at this rate, whenever Windows 7 is obsolete, I will end up switching to something that makes sense.
As someone who used to work on the Visual Studio team (and at Microsoft for 14+ years, left in 2008) — i am disappointed by this ridiculous choice. ALL-CAPS is a terrible UI metaphor; proven so many times in usability studies. Lower case is far more legible (again proven many times over in usability studies). To ignore the fundamentals of typography demonstrates a shocking ignorance of design principals. Why on earth would you do this?
All these developers commenting, and no one has pointed out that changing the case of the menu does not in any way change the "structure" of the menu. It's an aesthetic change only. This blog post is 100% grade-A balonium.
$10 says Steve Ballmer himself is behind this. That's the only possible explanation.
Cool, now that Microsoft's bumbling ineptitude has given me absolutely no reason to buy into either Windows 8 or Visual Studio 2012, I can spend my cash on an iPad instead.
There are a lot more pressing productivity issues in Visual Studio. This blog posting tells me that you're not allocating your development resources wisely, and you're also further undermining the confidence in Visual Studio that has been sliding for several years now. Maybe you should run these things by upper management at devdiv and see what their priorities really are.
Please, bring back colors and icons from VS 2010. One thing you can fix, is to remove gradients from UI
The logical flaw is that keeping with the design of other MS products is a good thing. Read the feedback and mainstream reviews of Windows 8 Metro, and you'll know you have a giant lemon on your hands.
THIS IS A GREAT IDEA.
LOWER CASE IS SOOO 2010.
ALSO PLEASE ADD COMIC SANS FONT. COMIC SANS OS REAL HOT RIGHT NOW !!!1!!1!!!!111!
Please tone down the colors for the Status Bar!
The bright blue status bar when you're in "Ready" status is way too bright. Why not make the status bar the same color as the tool bars? The status bar should fade into the UI, not demand your attention.
@ScottBruno – You said it perfectly: "Without a setting to turn that bright colorization off my choice boils down to turning off the status bar and losing line/column (not an option) or dealing with the laser beam shooting out from the bottom of the screen."
All of your examples and justifications look terrible. Look at the capitalization of this very page! All-caps is all-craps.
MICROSOFT HAS GONE BYE-BYE, EGON
As I was visiting this blog, I was watching the television and a feature came on about the history of road signs in the UK. One of the tidbits explained how in the late 1950's the case was changed to title case from all caps, because (drum roll) mixed case is easier to read than all caps. True Story.
This is an awful decision. The additional space between words does nothing to compensate for the fact that the actual words are now harder to read. Without explicitly taking time to read them they appear as grey/black blocks. There is a very good reason that all-caps is rarely used anywhere because it makes individual letters hard to identify. Maybe you should check out some of the stuff on your own websites: http://www.microsoft.com/…/wordrecognition.aspx
Please, ensure that there is an easy way to turn this off and then, after you've measured the number of developers who take up this option, fix it in a service pack.
The lunatics have taken over the asylum. If this is the future of Windows, I'm going to brush off my Java skills and jump into Android development, because Windows has no future.
Seriously, I love coding with Visual Studio, but when these idiots start shooting themselves in the foot this way, it's clear that the rot has well and truly set in.
I never had any @pple products but after what I saw with win8 and vs12 I am going to buy some. As a developer I have to be prepared for what future brings, and the MS' future is dim and square
YOU KNOW, ONE OF THE BEST THINGS ABOUT THE MICROSOFT DEVELOPMENT STACK HAS BEEN FOR A LONG TIME HOW GREAT VISUAL STUDIO IS. IT WAS ALWAYS A PRODUCT THAT COULD BE RELIED ON TO PLACE FUNCTION OVER FORM AND TO NEVER COMPROMISE AT ITS PRIMARY DESIGN GOALS — MAKE DEVELOPERS PRODUCTIVE. IT WAS THE TOP-TIER DEVELOPMENT TOOL, NOT JUST ON WINDOWS, BUT OF ALL PLATFORMS.
IT'S NICE TO SEE YOU GUYS ARE DROPPING THE BAR TO GIVE COMPETING TOOLS A CHANCE TO REPLACE VISUAL STUDIO. KEEP LETTING THE BONEHEAD MARKETING AND "USER INTERFACE EXPERTS" MAKE THE DECISIONS AND VISUAL STUDIO 2012 WILL SUFFER THE SAME FATE AS WINDOWS 8 — IT WILL BE 100% IGNORED BY ALL OF THE ENTERPRISE AND PROFESSIONAL WORLD.
PS: WHAT THE HELL!?
Guys, the all-caps menu is a terrible idea – it makes the IDE uncomfortable to look at, and thus more difficult to use. I honestly can't comprehend how your usability folks could allow this to happen.
With all of the business challenges Microsoft is facing, you really don't need any self-inflicted wounds, especially one as silly as this.
Microsoft Visual Studio team forgot something: Windows Explorer menu does not use CAPS. None of the non-Metro apps that ship with Windows use CAPS in their menus. Only Office 15 RIBBON uses caps. Office 15 has RIBBON not a MENU. Big difference.
You're following the wrong example. Don't try to copy something that is being used for a RIBBON and apply it to a MENU. It's the wrong approach. CAPS do not belong in ANY menu. Please forward this to Jason Zander and Soma, get everyone in a room, have a meeting, and then post a new blog post: "mea culpa, we screwed up, we will never mention CAPS again in relation to Visual Studio. The RC is the last you'll ever see of CAPS and we'll never mention or talk about this waste of energy distraction again". It's that simple. You could have this done in 2 days. Just get the power brokers all into a room. Even Jensen Harris if you must. He seems to be pulling the strings these days from his Office days.
CAPITALIZED WORDS LOOK STUPID. MICROSOFT IS GOING TO BE A LAUGHINGSTOCK. HAHA, I WONDER IF LAUGHINGSTOCK IS ANYTHING LIKE CHICKEN STOCK BUT FOR LAUGHS.
1) How does that improve programmer productivity? 2) How does that improve programmer productivity?
Your efforts to supply a "signature element", presumably in the hope that some upper-upper management type will take notice of your efforts to "blend in", fall upon a very unsympathetic audience.
I see a significantly wider menu structure that draws the eye to a place it shouldn't care about. Why are you trying to draw attention to something that everyone knows is there, and is at best a distraction until it is used (and fairly rarely).
The menu is a crutch. DON'T MAKE THE CRUTCH BIGGER.
Are you guys mad? VS is a tool for developers (us), not playground for some self-proclaimed UX guru. Bring back VS2010 theme!
The all caps doesn't bother me all that much (i cant change it) the purple icon being invisible on my win7 taskbar annoys me as does the location of the quicklaunch which ends up behind the Ultramon buttons (since your starting to focus on multi monitor support at MS, it seems crzy you guys dont use UltraMon).
What you're saying is that someone with a huge ego chose ALL CAPS as the future direction for Microsoft's UI design. That person refused to admit an error in the face of overwhelming criticism and a barrage of technical research showing that blocks of caps deny users helpful shape recognition.
It's been a pitiful episode, but mercifully, ALL CAPS can be turned off in VS.
Certainly we're headed for more battles as people discover that someone at MS has banned gradients, shadows and other interesting visual elements all over the place as part of the Metro-oriented foolish consistency.
Has anyone pointed out to you that Zune does not have ANY MENUS AT ALL? All those are just buttons!
You should all be fired! It's like you fell asleep when they were teaching the most basic ui rules. You people are pathetic and you should be ashamed of this garbage!
HAHAHA this has to be an attempt at viral marketing? This can't be real. ALLCAPS menus? Shizzatiscrazaay
I THINK YOU ARE ONTO SOMETHING BIG. WE NEED MORE SPACE SPACE BETWEEN UI ELEMENTS. SPACE MAKES EVERYTHING BETTER !
Seriously, Microsoft. Please stop letting your summer intern PM's make decisions.
This UI will kill Microsoft.
I dont think anyone will complain if you just dont use all caps.
sometimes change for the sake of change is bad.
" the use of uppercase text is becoming a strong signature element of styling for navigation and headings in Microsoft user interfaces"
THERE'S YOUR PROBLEM. CHANGE THE OTHER APPLICATIONS! I DON'T WANT MY IDE YELLING AT ME FOR EIGHT HOURS A DAY, THANKS.
Look it up.
I think they're just bored… Every few years I see something "completely new", but after all it's the same software with ALL CAPS added.
The image without uppercase styling doesn't have font hinting applied to the menu options so it clashes with the interface surrounding it.
I haven't installed VS2012 in any form yet, but one thing I'm interested to know: all the screenshots I've seen, show that the window title bar is plain grey. Is that when the VS window is active or inactive? What is it that distinguishes between the two? I don't know. I can't tell. All the screenshots I've seen look like the window is inactive. The images in this blog post look like the VS window is inactive. Is that the case? It's not obvious what state it is. If I'm running multiple copies of VS (not unusual), am I going to get confused all the time over which instance is the active one?
So given that, isn't the "we need an all-caps menu bar to provide visual distinction/emphasis" problem, really a problem with the window title bar, and not a problem with the menu bar? It's the window title bar that needs the "structure" and emphasis. Then the menu bar takes care of itself, because it's always the first thing just below the window title bar.
Why not use numbers instead of those old-fashioned menu names? So
1 2 3 4 5 6
ist like File Edit View Project and so one
This approach is even more structured, very well designed and keeps MS in discussions.
Hey, Microsoft, wake up, you are doing a mess!
VS 2012 is some tool people have to use many hours per day, it has to be as functional as possible. You are doing many things wrong at the moment….
I think this ALL CAPS is just a diversion. I'm pretty sure they'll change it to normal for RTM. They just want to get the attention off no XP support and no desktop app support in Express.
TERRIBLE!!!!!1!! JUST TERRIBLE. YOU KEEP GOING BACKWARDS MICROSOFT.
I must admit that switching to all-cap menu text is not as ascetically pleasing as the standard. Is it functional? I doubt that the change will prove any more effective than changing to a bolder font.
If you consider this issue a big deal I feel sorry for you. There are so many great features I am always amazed how people are talking about smal UI decisions.
The problem is right here in the title: "DESIGN".
There are boneheads in the VS team who seem dead set on "designing" VS, even if that comes at the expense of usability.
Sure, your screenshots might look cooler. Sure, it might look great if painted on a wall. Sure, it might create a visual identity with your other products.
But the fact remains that this is provably less usable. Just like the lack of borders, the custom title bar, the crappy icons[glyphs].
Stop trying to "design" Visual Studio and give us a usable IDE.
Reason 1, we are cowards and unable to stand up to marketing idiots
Reason 2, we are hoping to get a job at google before this decision costs us our jobs, and are just sticking our heads in the sand and going lalalal, until it happens.
thanks for nothing.
I expected to find some hard facts supporting the decision to use an all-caps design in the new product. All I could find was "we decided it and reagrdless of what you say, we'll stick to it." I am in programming since the mid eighties and I learned from the start, that all caps is one of the most forceful ways of scriptual shouting to you users. I just wonder why microsoft has nearly forgotten everything with their new ui design as soon as it comes to user experience. VS is a productive tool and no computer game and certainly no funny gadget; just look at the price. To me it seems like you are trying to defend some obscure fuzzy decision by someone who just tries to implement some "management ideas". Sorry, please try again and better this time.
woohoo, this extension can remove all caps without a blink: visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/a83505c6-77b3-44a6-b53b-73d77cba84c8
Why is everyone bitching? Is the all-caps issue making the tool less productive? NO! Move on, people. If i were leading the development of VS, I would have to say that we are not going to waste valuable time fixing what is not broken. I personally don't get the reasoning behind it. I mean, a menu is a menu. They've been around forever and have worked the same – looked the same even. So, now there will be one with ALL-CAPS. Oh well. Who cares. I still got just as much work done – and YOU will too.
@Jason Barrera
Jason – the issue here is not CAPS, but the fact that Microsoft pushes stupid stuff that is easy to fix (and it does not even negatively affect their revenue if they did fix it) despite massive outcry – what hope can one have for them fixing real hard things like getting .NET 4.5 work on XP.
I FRIGGING HATE THE CAPS!!!!!!!! THEY LOOK LIKE CRAP!!!!!
I clicked through to the Azure Portal and saw the UPPERCASE headings, but right below those were three bigger, lowercase settings.
I went to the Zune website, and all of the headings there were lowercase.
I went to Bing and searched, and every heading was Mixed Case.
I don't think this is a very strong signature element as the three websites quoted here are giving mixed signals.
April 1st was two months ago guys. I know you're behind the times and all, but this isn't even funny.
Looks fine to me. The all-caps menus stand out and look more distinct from the toolbar items.
I like it.
Everyone knows the perils of "developer art". The comments here only serve to show how true that sentiment is.
Lol this is ****** retarded.
"Our view remains that this is the right design for the Visual Studio user interface for the reasons I mentioned above." — SO WHY ASK US WHEN YOU ALREADY HAVE YOUR VIEW ALL MADE UP? MICROSOFT IS SO GOOD AT FIXING THINGS THAT ARE NOT BROKE.
Only MS can justify a design decision for a professional tool with a website design.
Because so many people are bashing you right now I wanted to tell you Microsoft guys:
Keep up the good work! Ribbon is awesome and Metro looks cool and you usually make the right decisions lately. And I don't see why all-caps should lower anyones productivity. Try it, and see if it works!
Shut up hypocrites! You all like writing YOUR_PRECIOUS_CAPS_MACROS, don't you?
If ALL CAPS is there to emphasise the menus, why not make the code (which needs the emphasis) ALL CAPS, bold italics? It would be emphasised really well. Unreadable, like the menus, but what the heck?
Alternatively, consult with a designer or someone with an ounce of typographical knowledge. Or just try reading ALL CAPS for a while.
Ignore the comments about shouting. That's not the point. The human brain recognises words by their general shape, not the individual letters in the word. Going to ALL CAPS takes away this shape, making the text harder to read. To make something hard to read just to stick with a corporate design policy (that in my humble opinion is a bad policy) is not very bright.
i'll just use good old vim and icc/idb. nice knowing you, vs
ARE YOU GUYS DOING THIS FOR THE SAKE OF IT? IT DOESN'T MAKE SENSE FROM A UI PERSPECTIVE. And to top it all, you then move the quick start to the title bar because it might get in the way of additional menu items – ignoring the UI problem of too many menu items that can be shown even without the quickstart.
Seriously, you've spent years getting design right, only now to junk it all in favour of some nonsense that is different. Stop it, a consistent menu system was the reason Windows took off – everyone knew what the basic menus were, the could all open a file because every app had a file->open menu item. Now you're taking this great, mature, stable system and screwing it. No wonder everyone's going with Apple.
ALL CAPS is the least of VS2012's problems… I would appreciate some more "dialog" about the horrible icons used in Solution Explorer/Intellisense. These are the show stopper for me. I just find the all caps menu/general light theme only somewhat annoying. More for the fact that they were changed for no good reason than the actual look.
How many people have to demand a wholesale return of the VS2010 UI before it is considered? I think I am wasting my breath yet again. Even though I love .Net/VS, I kind of hope that this whole thing is a massive failure so I can say "told you so" (while I look for a new career).
The magic phrase "we will enable you to customize the casing" is all I wanted to hear. Thank you, Microsoft. I still think all caps menus (or any UI elements in fact) is very bad design and makes it harder to read, but if there is an option to turn it off then it's fine with me.
The menu doesn't deserve emphasis. It's also hard to read.
Thank you for trying to explain your use of ALL CAPS but I'm afraid you have failed to convince most people that it is a sensible move.
I would respectfully suggest that if you are trying to make Visual Studio fit in with other products that use ALL CAPS then those products are wrong and should be changed.
ALL CAPS and Underline used to be used for emphasis back in the days of typewriters because that is all they could do. Bold and Italic are much better for adding emphasis to text because they don't reduce readability.
However, I question the need for emphasising the menu at all. It is the topmost thing in the window (under the window caption) and so very easy to find.
It is commendable that you have made a decision and are sticking with it. However, the fact that you cite products that are not the most widely used in their genre as being a reason to adopt the same 'styling' just emphasizes to me that you may be more out of touch with your clients than was thought.
Thanks for finally responding to us, your customers. I look forward to next month, or maybe the one after, for the next installment.
It's a shame; a lot of time is being wasted on this reasonably unimportant and unnecessary change; you've wasted many opportunities for receiving useful feedback about your product. Because of that alone I'd suggest whoever approved this change takes a long hard look at monster.com.
I agree – please do NOT use caps, it looks horrible!
I suppose the all caps menu is just a little side story to distract us from real problems.
All developers/commenters, please focus on the other problems like contrast, icon set, window layout and usability (e.g. tfs checkin dialog) etc.
The caps problem is evidently present (even the MS guys must see this after three posts with tousends of comments) and there already is a fix present, even if it is not (yet) the default setting.
So CAPS OFF, BUGS ON!
LET THE ALL CAPS BE THE DEFAULT STYLE ON MSDN AND TECHNET!!! (I'm just kidding…)
Hi VS Team,
I had very few time to spend on the most important features of the new VS 2012.
My overall idea is the look is not as important as the REAL features (reliability, productivity enhancements, performances) and – after the first tests – I am sure you have done an excellent job with VS 2012! (and this is the most important).
On the other hand, I am quite upset with the new look because of 2 reasons:
1. The reduced contrast and emphasis to the different tools (buttons, menus etc.) does reduce productivity and get eyes much more tired: just test it by working a full day with VS 2010 and compare it with a full day with VS 2012. It is like playing football with stiletto heels!
2. I fear this focus on the look of a productivity application is quite worrying because professional developers (like me) rely on Microsoft and Visual Studio for their work, we open every day VS to create and deliver top level applications to our customers and we need the highest productivity to compete in the market. To summarize… we are not playing, Visual Studio is not a Game or a Website, and all we hope that the "User Experience" team working on VS is aware of it.
Just a last word… I can barely figure the resources spent for this new "makeup" of the Visual Studio IDE… and the refactoring tools for VB language are still missing ?!?!
If you didn't remove all depth visual clues from the design, you wouldn't need to "fix" the structure by using CAPS.
Continually fixing stuff that isn't broke, a pity. Psychotically rearranging interfaces while a user's 15 to 20 years worth the learning get's flushed and we're left with the turds such as Office 2007/10 – pitiful interface. psst, here's a tip ms, fire the nut job adolescent programmers and hire some superb programmers. Stop trying to outsource overseas to get cheap labor which results in idiocy. Stop trying to be Apple while you're at it. You guys do your thing well, they do theirs. Focus on your core competency and stop !@%!@#$% with programmers and users. Many of us are getting bored watching the sham that has become ms.
I like the app caps design. I think that it fits good with the rest of VS2012. It is even less disturbing than the other design and it nicely keeps the menu line alignment.
I wonder how you will implement this change for non-alphabetical languages.
I'm using Japanese version of Visual Studio. As you can guess we don't use any alphabets in our menu. What's happen here?
"…providing structure and emphasis to the top menu area in Visual Studio 2012…"
If you so desperately want to provide structure and emphasis to the GUI, then why making everything flat, plain-colored and without any separators like lines etc. in the first way? That escaped me…
DON'T USE ALL CAPS MENU IN RUSSIAN VERSION PLZ KTHX
What are you guys smoking? First the terrible Windows 8 "start screen" and now this? You don't need to change the UI with every release of Visual Studio; just make it faster and more reliable!
I would like to have this option for all text in microsoft products, even this site. I don't want to see all caps words in the comments.
We're witnessing the beginning of the end for MS if they think this is the direction that they should be heading with their UX. Time to start learning objective C !
CAPITALIZE ALL THE THINGS
"As with most style changes, there has been both positive and negative feedback."
Who are you trying to fool, there's certainly no positive reaction here and I am yet to come across a colleague who likes the all caps approach
When I look at the menu, I glance up there, and expect to find common words, like "Tools". When it doesn't look like that, I can't find it. I find it mentally painful to look at the menu. Some people read words letter-by-letter. Some find words by shapes. When common words like "Tools" look like "TOOLS" instead, it stops looking like the word I'm looking for, and makes the whole UI just look like I want to hate it, because it hates me.
If this is the direction other microsoft applications are going in, then they are WRONG also. When designing UIs, or tools that coders need to use, please ask the coders who use the thing, and not the random art fenatics who don't know how to code.
Lets hope the CAPSLOCKMENU is not still in to focus publicity on this subject and degrade all other problems to a sideshow.
The menu looks great. Less change in height variance makes for a more uniform look. It's an obvious improvement.
The menu has long been the last resort to access a function. There are hotkeys, buttons and now you can even access actions through a quick search. If you're still clicking yourself through menus all day long, sorry, you're not making the most of your time.
Makes no sense. Consistency? Does this mean we'll see all caps menus in Notepad, Charmap, Regedit, Calc in future? Let's hope not, for all our sakes.
LEAVE MAIN MENU ALONE!!!!
So
1. Metro is all about content focus
2. CAPITALIZE menus so focus is lost
Seems legit, looks like even MS does not know wtf Metro supposed to be
I WANT MY INTERFACE IN BINARY; EVERYTHING IN BINARY PLEASE. NONE OF THIS SISSY ALPHA/NUMERIC STUFF AND NO PUNCTUATION. THAT WAY, THE STYLE WILL BE SIMILAR TO HOW THE COMPUTER. ALSO, DO AWAY WITH THESE SISSY C#/C++ LANGUAGE STUFF; ALL COMMANDS MUST BE ISSUED IN BINARY DIRECTLY INTO THE PROCESSOR. DO IT YOU TARDS, DO IT YOU'RE GOOD AT SCREWING UP INTERFACES SUCH AS OFFICE, DO THIS PLEASE.
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THIS IS PLAIN BULLSHIT, CAPS MENU IS PURE ***. ALSO THE METRO STYLE SUCKS ON THE DESKTOP, SO NO NEED TO COPY IT ELSEWHERE.
I BELIEVE THE ALL CAPS SHOULD BE TURNED OFF BY A MENU ITEM AFTER THE "HELP" MENU THAT SAYS "PLS STOP THE CAPS". CLICKING THIS ITEM WOULD DISABLE CAPS. WHILE YOUR AT IT, ADD ANOTHER ONE THAT SAYS "MOAR COLOR, PLS", AND FINALLY ONE THAT SAYS "SHOW ME HOW TO SWITCH TO AN IDE AND PLATFORM THAT SPENDS MORE MONEY ON USER EXPERIENCE".
The entire UI is a complete fail. Sure we'll adjust, but adjustment != acceptance.
The Oatmeal says it best:
theoatmeal.com/…/capslock
Hope that someday visual studio will take medicine and cure that CAPS LOCK desease and will not be targeted to PocketPC-s with its small screens as Windows 8 fails to do. Hope that VS will continue good traditions of VS 2010 and embed somehow its great experience….
Please stop spending my license fee messing up the UI and concentrate on enhancing existing features.
Sure tweak some bits, but don't reinvent what was already working well (and vandalise it in the process).
We are professionals. We use VS as a tool not a play thing. METRO is for touch (tablets) at the moment. It doesnt belong in visual studio.
Are you sure it's not just the size and spacing of the text that you like? Why not try the same size/spacing with Regular Menu Text. My eyes seriously keep wandering to the menu and that's not a good thing.
"1) to keep Visual Studio consistent with the direction of other Microsoft user experiences"
Oh you want a consistent experience, then ADD SOME COLOUR LIKE YOU DID TO WORD
Seriously MS is SO inconsistent it's not funny.
All-Caps is not the way forward. It doesn't look good, it doesn't enhance the user experience. It just makes it feel like the UI is yelling at you.
This WE KNOW BETTER attitude towards users is the direct way into the abyss. Visual Studio developers often don't really have a choice in the short run — in the long run, they do.
By the same token, forcing the Metro "experience" onto desktop users is going to make Windows 8 a disaster that will make Vista look like a mild spring rain. You heard it here first.
Ironically, you emphasize the least commonly used element of VS. The most important thing in Visual Studio is code. Not the menu.
DRAIN BAMAGE!!! (misspelling intentional)
"WE KNOW WE SCREWED UP BECAUSE EVERYONE KEEPS TELLING US BUT WE WON'T ADMIT IT SO WE ARE GOING TO COME UP WITH A LAME EXCUSE AS TO WHY IT IS BETTER THIS WAY."
Maybe what they are doing is taking all of the feedback and making it all caps because that gives the feedback "more structure". That would explain why they don't seem to be "getting the message" even though the are "receiving" the messages, because when they read the messages they are all caps and are harder to read. Duh!
"Maybe if we tell everyone that the Earth is really flat, and we keep insisting that it is flat, people will actually believe us eventually." – Microsoft Design Team
I actually think it improves readability a lot and honestly, I don't quite understand what people are complaining about.
I REALLY THINK ALL CAPS SOUNDS PRETTY GOOD, IT MAKES THE MENUS MUCH MORE READABLE AND SIMPLE
PLEASE PUT IT BACK- IT'S HURTING MY EYES!
I am afraid Microsoft has become suicidal lately…
Why do you continue to defend all caps? And then comparing a productivity tool to a website? Obviously there's no understanding of design here. Funny thing, Blend for Visual Studio doesn't have all CAPS!
Be consistent if you're trying to defend these decisions.
When you see a single-word sign in all caps, maybe a road sign for example that indicates you're entering a new city, like PLEASANTVILLE, do you feel like you're being "shouted at"? Does it seem like PLEASANTVILLE!!!!!!!!! to you? If so, seek some help. There's a difference between [FILE EDIT VIEW], and A FULL SENTENCE FILLED WITH WORDS THAT ARE IN ALL CAPS. Come on.
I'm surprised so many are still banging on about this. MS considered the complaints, rejected them but have said they'll allow customisation in RTM (not to mention the existing registry hack and VS extension to do this). Now, I too don't like all cap menus (but consider it a minor issue), and disagree with MS's justification, but since they've said they will give us a [official] choice it's time to get over it and move on to better things.
I have another problem with the new visual studio, other than the all caps menus. Why have you abandoned the old setup and deploy solutions for programs developed in visual studio. This was a simple and easy way to create setup programs for small projects that worked like a charm. The requirement to get a 3rd party product (Install Shield LE) to enable this old functionality is irritating. I have a lot of programs that I have written for my wife to use at work that are now rendered obsolete. Install Shield is cripple, to a point, and a hell of a lot more confusing to use. Why did you remove the old setup and deployment project type that we have been using for years?
I agree with all of the posters. This is just change for change's sake.
CAPS LOCK IS CRUISE CONTROL FOR COOL, THEREFORE WE SHOULD ALL TALK IN CAPITAL LETTERS BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT ALL THE KOOL KIDS ARE DOING.
I WILL MAKE SURE THAT EVERY COMMENT I POST HERE IS IN ALL CAPS BECAUSE THAT'S PART OF THE DESIGN.
Please listen. These ugly capitals should be opt in, not opt out.
This is amazing. There are 31 pages of negative comments, and you guys will not listen. What do we have to do to get through? Or is there simply one stubborn person on the team that has veto?
The look is still bad, unorganized, unpleasant to use. I have to say it after using it for a couple of days.
But the responsiveness of the UI is very good, I love it.
Just add an option to turn it on and off. That will solve the issue.
Well, Zune is dead, and Bing is second.
1 out of 3 isn't bad.
It feels a bit like the menus are yelling at me. I might get used to it, but I'm not a fan so far.
>Our view remains that this is the right design for the Visual Studio user interface
How arrogant. WE buy and use the tool, and if WE don't like it then WE will use something else. When so many people react so violently to a change, no matter how YOU feel about it, the least you could do is to reconsider and make it optional. It's called listening and you should learn to do it more.
All caps is harder, slower to read. Or we'd be writing anything and everything in uppercase, would not we? In particular road signs that must be read quickly. Or our source code. Interestingly, we don’t: it was an error, just admit it and don't force it on us.
As a side note, why not look at recent versions of Adobe Photoshop and get rid of the caption bar altogether, and put the menu up there instead? The all caps move was, by your own admission, just an attempt to better utilize the huge wasted space at the top of the window, so why not start by wasting less space in the first place?
IM SURE THAT THIS IS MORE USERFRIENDLY. THE NEXT STAGE IS TO REMOVE ALL THE EXTRANEOUS WHITESPACELIKETHIS. MUCHMOREREADABLE.
I must admit I'm surprised at the amount of people that are moaning about a simple aesthetic change and how exactly they're expressing their opinions;
"It's like the menu bars are shouting at me", how is this a legitimate complaint? Do you really feel that a program is… shouting… at you, specifically because it has an all caps menu bar.
"THIS IS MY COMPLAINT", this is neither witty nor funny, if anything it makes it less likely to have your case (no matter how relevant) looked at, at least in my opinion.
etc.
They announced it will be an option presented to the end-user. Why are you still complaining about its inclusion? If you don't like it, you can change it, simple as that. Stop shitting up the comments of a good blog post with such idiocy, please.
Yeah, OBVIOUSLY all caps is an inept design decision here, but the real problem is why they think they need them in the first place. That is: because they've removed most delineation between UI elements.
They're claiming in this blog that it was to save real estate, but the new UI is taking up more space per element, and they're only saving space by invading the window "chrome".
No, they removed delineation from the UI because someone told them it would make the interface cleaner. But it doesn't. With all the UI elements floating in undefined space, it looks "noisier", or at least less organized. The fact that they're tempted to use bad typography as delineation shows that they're feeling the failure of this approach.
(gimbal-lock-blog.blogspot.com/…/vs-2012-gui-snafu.html)
You wieners are wrong because caps are good. If not for caps there would be no structure, and no emphasis. Structure and emphasis are required elements of a powerful design. I am so sure I am writing this on the walls of this WC. There.
haha all this attention for menu casing. What a bunch of babies. How about an option to capitalize every third letter. And an option for anti-aliasing on vowels only. What will you need next? For microsoft to burp you?
"On the first point, the use of uppercase text is becoming a strong signature element of styling for navigation and headings in Microsoft user interfaces."
Just because you've made a bad decision in one product does mean you should feel the need to drag it into all the others. That's like saying "I painted the kitchen purple and everyone hated it so I've painted the lounge purple to match."
When viewing the images in ALL-CAPS, the entire menubar does not fit on my screen. The menubar using lower-case does fit. You could even merge it with the title-bar to save one extra line.
I actually like ALL-CAPS menu. Unsurpisingly, it does not obey System-wide menu font size settings.
What I don't understand is ALL-GRAY small command icons – this goes against anything written in UI books about complex UIs, especially like these http://www.bing.com/…/search, but I would be happy to use VS11 without any icons at all and with menu in "Comic Sans MS" if VS supported WM6.5 native development in C++11.
Should have gone with a Ribbon then we wouldn't be having to read bullshit posts on why bad UI choices means bad solutions. Sorry to be blunt but someone needs to wake up.
Could you please design a special font for the menu? My telemetry data suggests that users are distracted by vertical lines. So please remove vertical lines from all glyphs in the font!!!
Gimbal Lock in these comments gave us a great link that sums it up really well:
gimbal-lock-blog.blogspot.com.es/…/vs-2012-gui-snafu.html
Please Microsoft read it and do something about it!
Thanks for explaining the decision. I'll admit that the ALL CAPS was an immediate turn off for me. However, looking at the Azure portal, the ALL CAPS there don't bother me as much for some reason I can't put my finger on. Likewise, I'm not a fan of the mixed cap menus in the screen shot. This leads me to believe that the opposition to the ALL CAPS has more to do with the way the colors and font are working (or not working) together than the actual capitalization itself. Maybe a lighter foreground shade so the menus don't jump out as much or a very slight gradient to provide the structure you're talking about?
Allow users to choose a theme they prefer. We code in this all day everyday and the less color style is really hard on the eyes! Please listen to your developers. Most of us want to continue using a colorful theme (as in VS 2010) so if you want to change it – at least let us customize it – that would be a great new feature. Same for the ALL CAPS. Default it to normal menus, but let developers choose if they want CAPS. Otherwise, keep up the great work on speeding things up and making it better for us to develop applications for Windows. We can still make Windows 8 and Metro apps – even if we won't have Aero anymore in Win8. Not having Aero shouldn't mean we get this ugly GUI.
I think it will be great to share metrics about how much developer's will enable SCREAMING MENUS after releasing Visual Studio 2012.
For all the folks going ALL CAPS IS BAD BLAH BLAH BLAH LOOK HOW TERRIBLE THIS LOOKS, notice they're not writing sentences in it. It's one word at a time. ONE word. Notice how having ONE word capitalized at a time adds a sort of "foundation-y" effect? Even in a string, there's wide separation between CAPS HERE AND HERE. I personally think it makes each word appear to be the root of a tree which when clicked springs up, well down actually, into the menu branches, or in the case of Office, the ribbon. Yes WRITING IN ALL CAPS FOR WORD AFTER WORD RUNNING ON AND ON is hard to read, but one at a time lends strength, helps it stand on its own, and is actually pretty nice.
Just my thoughts. Thanks for doing this, actually.
Man the colors are horrible. I sure do hope someone will make an extension to put the colors back like vs 2010.
I like Metro style but Hate the new VS. It makes my head and eyes hurt.
MS has lost their way. Bring back Bill Gates!
I HATE THIS CHANGE. Thank you for making it customizable!
That is just.. Odd. No other way to put this. It should concern you that you are spending all this time on first implementing a feature that you have no rationale for, then tweaking it based on overwhelmingly negative feedback, and then spending more time to look into how to allow people to disable it (which will add complexity to the code base and UI).
I guess Visual Studio must be absolutely perfect if you can't find anything better to do with your time.
Really, you had positive feedback? What did these people say?
Why don't Zune and Azure change their experience to be more like VS? That way their menus would fit with the user experience that the users want and deserve.
In defence of the VS team, I'm sure the stylisation rubbish was brought down upon them from above.
Please add color and get rid of caps! Starting to like the Mac alot more. Please start listening to your customers.
Commenting in all-caps as sort of portest ist just silly and refering to it as "shouting" childish… are you developers, or teenage chatter victims?
YOU'RE NOT AS BEAUTIFUL AS ZUNE AND OFFICE 2013, OK?
YOU HAVE NO LICENSE TO USE ALL-CAPS FOR MENUS.
OF ALL THE APPS THAT DESERVE TO GET AN ALL-CAPS TREATMENT, THE CURRENT UI OF VISUAL STUDIO 12 WOULD NOT BE IT.
YOUR SENSE OF TYPOGRAPHY IS POOR AND MISINFORMED.
YOU HAVE NO ARTISTIC TASTE TO HAVE THE RIGHT TO USE ALL-CAPS IN MENUS AND CALL IT A DAY.
THIS VS12 BLOG'S MENUS DOESN'T EVEN HAVE ALL-CAPS MENUS.
CAPS LOCK IS LIKE PUTTING PEPPER ON FOOD. THE BEST CHEFS HAVE THE ARTISTIC RIGHT WHEN TO USE TOO MUCH OR TOO LESS PEPPER.
IN THIS CASE, YOU PUT IN A LOT OF PEPPER ON FOOD JUST BECAUSE YOU SAW A CHEF ON TV PUT A LOT OF PEPPER ON ONE OF HIS RECIPES.
THESE ARE THE TIMES I WISH MICROSOFT WILL MANDATE ALL ATTEMPTS TO IMPLEMENT METRO UI'S TO UNDERGO REVIEW AND APPROVAL BY THE GUYS WHO DID THE WINDOWS PHONE 7 METRO UI.
I have to add my voice to those who despise all caps menus. IMHO it is an extremely poor way “of providing structure and emphasis” to menus.
*** VS2012!!!
I've used it for two weeks and don't even notice it any more. What a bunch of whining over nothing.
WELL AS YOU SEE NOW THAT YOU HAVE BROUGHT ALL-CAPS BACK BECAUSE YOU THINK IS COOL AND TRENTY IMAGIN THE ENTIRE WEB TYPING LIKE THAT!!!!! YOU ENJOY IT????
but because i am not a TROLL like Microsoft, i cant type like that! you CANT force me to do so!
your ART direction and DESIGN will FAIL! it already FAILED!!!! what do you want to get that? no visual studio 2012 sales? col you will not have, and with that the Metro Apps will also fail, and with that Windows 8 is next to fail because everything is LINKED together!!!!
let me also inform our beloved users that your failed design doesnt stop in VS but has moved to MSDN and Microsoft website its SELF!!!!!
there were created lots of plugin to allow forums and blogs to nicly coloring source code because it was MORE helpfull for the developers to read the damn Code! now yo are removing that and you are forcing us to go back to 1970 with black and white TEXT in the source code!
just take a look at this Picture! This is the future that Microsoft Designers Believe is the best fro the company…..
http://i.imgur.com/vhkBE.png
FAIL!
caps=off
I agree with everyone who hates the new ALL CAPS menu. Especially those who say that a tool like VS should not be taking its design cues from enrelated applications which have equally unrelated usage patterns. Thank you, THANK YOU for giving us an option to turn th is off without having to resort to registry hacks (and hopefully you will gather telemetry data on the use of this option).
I agree with others that you have totally disregarded the opinions of your users, all for a marketing ploy. Why not just come right out and say it, and don't patronize us any further? We're not stupid. You did it because you wanted to, regardless of what your users think. Otherwise, we wouldn't even be having this debate right now.
Next time, instead of asking for opinions, just develop and release the product to manufacturing without any user input, because it's worse for you to ask and then not listen. At least then, us users can't blame you for not listening.
Hey guys, Office users aren't complaining. GET OVER IT. Its just a menu, focus on your code.
ALL CAPS ALONG WITH NO COLOR STILL SUCKS IN THE RC.
So, basically you've "listened to our very vocal feedback" & decided to ignore it because you want "to keep Visual Studio consistent with the direction of other Microsoft user experiences".
Unbelievable.
Is there anyone on here who actually wants ALL CAPS!?
As much as Microsoft overly relies on stupid market surveys to dictate product design, you would have thought they'd have at least asked the development community what it wanted!
ALL CAPS is just the straw dog to distract from the real problems with this iteration of .net and visual studio. Look on User Voice and see how many of the Top requests (look at declined ones too). See how many were done.
Microsoft wants to fight us on this so we are blinded by the other glaring issues with this release. We will then get exhausted on something so dumb that we just give up when it comes to the tons of other glaring issues with this release. (XP Support, In-Place Upgrade, C++ Feature Set, Disproportionate effort on WinRT, the list goes on an on).
HAVING EVERYTHING IN CAPS MAKE ME FEEL LIKE MY PC IS SCREAMING TO ME. I HOPE I CAN AT LEAST OPT-OUT OF THIS SILLYNESS?
I will give me opinion when after while, but thanks
I will give me opinion when after while, but thanks
I will give me opinion when after while, but thanks
I will give me opinion when after while, but thanks
I will give me opinion when after while, but thanks
I will give me opinion when after while, but thanks
@Superspit,
quote:
Lets face it, most of the people complaing are developers and have you seen the interfaces they create! I dont think they have a leg to stand on, 99.999% of developers wouldnt know a good interface if it was staring them in the face.
—
The point is that 99.999% users of this particular product are, in fact, developers.
So, it would be beneficial to design the GUI so it is consistent with the preferences of the majority of its users, and leave the "ALL CAPS" user interfaces to their own target group, if such a group exists at all.
As for the good interfaces – I am not seeing anybody outside of Microsoft doing this travesty. I suppose companies such as Adobe and Autodesk know a bit or two about good GUI design for professional applications.
It is sad to see how company management is working their best to destroy the once best product in its class. I hope that amounts of negative feedback will influence some decisions in Redmond, before it is too late.
The all-caps menus are hardly the worst part of this tragedy of a UI.
Try looking at a Solution Explorer with hundreds items in it – a sea of tiny, low contrast "glyphs" all running together.
I really hope you had time to hear the cries of outrage from your users before RTM…
The functionality is awesome, the terrible UI is, unfortunately, a total deal-breaker.
I have to look at this every day? No thanks.
I HAVE USED THE REG ENTRY TO SUPPRESS THE UPPERCASE CONVERSION, BUT WANT TO NOTIFY THE DECISION MAKERS OF HOW I FEEL. DO YOU GET THE POINT?
not sure if anyones mentioned this, but its a desktop app, not a web site… the rules are different with Azure/Zune web sites vs a friggin desktop app… Good luck putting that in Outlook or Office… everyone is gonna flip a lid…
Well…no problem…Microsoft is on the way back to early 80s anyway…seems you don't understand your own code anymore so you have to strip functions until you reach the functionality of DOS 2.11 (but only with at least 4 GB RAM…)
It's a pity that the world's biggest software company gives such a pathetic picture to the outer world.
Furtunately I don't own any MS shares I'd have to sell ASAP.
USING ALL CAPS FOR THE VISUAL STUDIO MENUS IS REALLY SILLY, THANK GOD SOMEONE FOUND A WAY TO DISABLE IT.
Well, RTM is here, but I don't see any option in the Options dialog to change the menu case back to mixed. Where is it?
The first time I saw the all caps menu, I thought what are they smoking? That has to be the stupidest looking user interface I've seen. And now, even after so many people have express their negative opinion, it's still there. And from what some have said, no easy option to turn if off. And the "engineers" explanation of why is such a joke. But, typical Microsoft – Let's make some changes, just to make changes; there's no good reason; it may look horrible; but we'll do it anyway. And if our uses don't like it – tough. (Microsoft??… listening to their customer? Talk about an alternate universe…)
And for those who say "stop complaining, there will be a way to turn it off"… why default to on? Default to normal, mixed case menus – like the rest of the world. The 3 of you who want it (and the brain-dead monkeys at MS who thought it was a good idea) can turn it on.
Hey wait.. I think I know.. This has got to be from the chief monkey, Balmer, isn't it? Mr. DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS! It all makes sense – he's out of touch with reality.. this change is out of touch with reality!
This product costs a decent amount of money and I simply will not buy it until this is fixed. I've seen some horrible UI's but this is obviously some kind of joke or PR stunt (like discontinuing the whopper).
"1) to keep Visual Studio consistent with the direction of other Microsoft user experiences."
Feel free to make fun of your users, but please do not make fun of your developers.
The UI is absolutely horrible, some of us are even considering not porting our apps to Windows 8.
uxmovement.com/…/all-caps-hard-for-users-to-read
en.wikipedia.org/…/All_caps
designfiles.net/…/reasons-avoid-caps-website-copy
Even the designers say that ALL-CAPS are less readable.
EVEN THE DESIGNERS SAY THAT ALL-CAPS ARE LESS READABLE.
Which do you find easier to read?
By the way, hideous icons, dreadful colours and awful style in general.
Please, VS2012 wonderful new features, but with VS 2010 design.
By the way, I am not those change haters. I am falling in love with Windows 8. I am adapting to the new interface and excited about it. Even the dismissal of glass chrome I loved in Windows Vista/7 is acceptable. Having windows with a look and feel that reminds me of the old Watercolor theme (from XP days) after a few moments becomes actually cool… The entire Metro, aham, Windows 8 experience is awesome… But Visual Studio 2012… com'on guys! Someone got carried away and went too far on the minimalism… aahhh, I can't stand those icons…
> That said, we will enable you to customize the casing, and we are exploring options for how to expose that choice. We will post again once we’ve settled on a final approach to be available in RTM.
RTM is here, and still the only way of reversing this horrible decision is via a registry hack. Great job!
Yeah…..as everyone else here has noticed…um….no way to change the menu casing in RTM. But then again, why should we believe anything that MS says anymore? This whole new product line is really screwed up (I'm talking VS2012, SBS 2012 Essentials, Server 2012–ugh…butt ugly!, and with a Windows 8 Start Menu optimized for touch…on a server???? WHAT FOR?).
This is looking worse and worse all the time. (Sorry for the rant on Win 8 / server 2012…but these along with VS2012 are indicative of the direction MS is heading, that is, down.)
The S.S. Microsoft must be sinking; they had to throw XP support overboard. Oh, I guess you won't be able to read this because it is not "structured" enough, so THE S.S. MICROSOFT MUST BE SINKING BECAUSE THEY HAD TO THROW XP SUPPORT OVERBOARD.
Windows 8 with 500 tiles after installing VS2008, VS2010 and VS2012. And then this, is MS doing so weel that they want us to change platform? Apple seems like the right choise, if MS keep doing stupid GUI.
Why is NO BOOKS IN THE WORLD written in uppercase? Maybee MS shoukld pulish books in uppercase too.
It's sooooo nice to go back to VS2010 after using VS2012 for a few hours. It's like a weight being lifted off my shoulders.
First thing after installing, setting
HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftVisualStudio11.0General
"SuppressUppercaseConversion"=dword:00000001
This way the characters are lower case again.
Please VS Team, integrate a VS2010 Style (including colored icons). The Style of VS2012 is really really awful.
Both explanations just do not cut it. This was a terrible decision and to justify by the circular reasoning that other products do it does not increase your creditablity. Please back off from trying to make "improvements" nobody wants. Reminds me of the fins on 1950 chevy's – just stupid.
Erm…is there a reason the all caps image uses anti-aliasing on the menu text, and the sane image does not?
You can turn off it in HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftVisualStudio11.0General
add aDWORD value named SuppressUppercaseConversion with value 1.
just installed it. confirming all caps there is batshit stupid.
SERIOUSLY DUDES – WHAT DRUGS WERE YOU TAKING?????
HAVING SAID THAT, THE ENTIRE DESIGN IS A USABILITY DISASTER WHICH I CAN ONLY ASSUME IS BECAUSE ALL OF THE DESIGNERS ARE NOW WORKING AT GOOGLE OR APPLE AND YOU HAD TO RESORT TO USING UNTRAINED MACAQUE MONKEYS?
UPPERCASE WORD MAKE ME WANT TO PUNCH SOMETHING!
I wonder when and if Microsoft will understand the competitive advantage they will have if they stop changing UI's on every release. Keeping the look the same then allowing users to change it IF they want creates a higher performing user group based on their tools whether it be Visual Studio or Word. Changing the UI produces a loss in productivity and a user group that hates you for the change.
You have to be joking. THE MENU IS SCREAMING AT ME!!!!!!!!!
IF ALL CAPS IS SUPPOSED TO BE A NEW MICROSOFT STANDARD WHY DO NONE OF THE OTHER FLAGSHIP PRODUCTS USE THIS CASING? SQL MANAGEMENT STUDIO, OFFICE, OUTLOOK, IIS, AND EXPRESSION BLEND ALL USE MIXED CASE FOR THE MENUS AND AS A RESULT THEY ARE ACTUALLY LEGIBLE, UNLIKE THIS THE MENUS IN VS2012
Thankfully MS saw sense in the RTM and made it optional, if a bit secret.
Just create this registry value and you'll get sane menus again:
HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftVisualStudio11.0GeneralSuppressUppercaseConversion
REG_DWORD value: 1
Microsoft is lost.
IT'S I THOUGHT, THAT SINCE YOU LIKE ALL-CAPS SO MUCH THAT YOUR EXPLANATION SHOULD HAVE ALSO BEEN IN ALL CAPS. SO I TOOK THE LIBERTY OF RE-POSTING YOU TEXT IN THE ARTICLE IN ALL CAPS IN THIS COMMENT. DO YOU THINK YOU COULD HAVE ALL CONTENT ON MICROSOFT POSTED IN ALL CAPS? IT IS SO MUCH NICER, AND REMINDS ME OF THE DAYS OF THE MAINFRAME.
————————— ALL-CAPS RE-POST ————————————————————————-
LET’S TALK ABOUT THE ALL-CAPS MENUS.
WHEN WE SHARED THE RC DESIGN PREVIEW WITH YOU, WE EXPECTED THE UPPERCASE MENU WOULD GENERATE MIXED FEEDBACK AND EMOTIONS. WE HAD SEEN SIMILAR REACTIONS FROM EARLY ADOPTERS AND FROM OUR OWN INTERNAL USERS PRIOR TO POSTING ABOUT IT. REST ASSURED THAT WE’VE HEARD YOU, AND WE’VE BEEN THINKING THROUGH WHAT SHOULD BE DONE HERE. USING UPPERCASE FOR THE MENUS WAS NOT AN ARBITRARY DECISION, AND I THINK IT WILL HELP THE DISCUSSION TO FRAME WHY WE MADE THIS CHANGE.
WE’VE CHOSEN TO USE UPPERCASE STYLING IN THE TOP MENU FOR TWO MAIN REASONS: 1) TO KEEP VISUAL STUDIO CONSISTENT WITH THE DIRECTION OF OTHER MICROSOFT USER EXPERIENCES, AND 2) TO PROVIDE ADDED STRUCTURE TO THE TOP MENU BAR AREA.
ON THE FIRST POINT, THE USE OF UPPERCASE TEXT IS BECOMING A STRONG SIGNATURE ELEMENT OF STYLING FOR NAVIGATION AND HEADINGS IN MICROSOFT USER INTERFACES. YOU CAN SEE IT IN THE AZURE PORTAL, IN ZUNE, AND IN THE LATEST BING SEARCH RESULTS UPDATE.
ON THE SECOND POINT, WE EXPLORED DESIGNS WITH AND WITHOUT UPPERCASE STYLING. IN THE END WE DETERMINED IT TO BE A VERY EFFECTIVE WAY OF PROVIDING STRUCTURE AND EMPHASIS TO THE TOP MENU AREA IN VISUAL STUDIO 2012.
BASED ON EARLY FEEDBACK ON THIS APPLICATION OF UPPERCASE STYLING, WE MADE TWO MODIFICATIONS TO OUR DESIGN. FIRST, WE TUNED THE TYPOGRAPHY OF THE MENU TO BETTER ADJUST TO UPPERCASE TEXT, INCLUDING INCREASED SPACING BETWEEN MENU ITEMS FROM 14PX TO 20PX TO MAKE MENU ITEMS STAND OUT BETTER. SECONDLY, WE MOVED QUICK LAUNCH TO THE TITLE BAR TO MAKE MORE ROOM ON THE MENU BAR, ESPECIALLY FOR CASES WHERE A USER HAS INSTALLED ADD-INS THAT ADD THEIR OWN TOP-LEVEL MENUS.
AS WITH MOST STYLE CHANGES, THERE HAS BEEN BOTH POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE FEEDBACK. WE REALIZE THAT SOME OF YOU WILL CONTINUE TO DISLIKE THIS CHANGE, AND YOU’VE BEEN VERY DIRECT IN EXPRESSING YOUR OPINIONS ON THIS SUBJECT. OUR VIEW REMAINS THAT THIS IS THE RIGHT DESIGN FOR THE VISUAL STUDIO USER INTERFACE FOR THE REASONS I MENTIONED ABOVE. THAT SAID, WE WILL ENABLE YOU TO CUSTOMIZE THE CASING, AND WE ARE EXPLORING OPTIONS FOR HOW TO EXPOSE THAT CHOICE. WE WILL POST AGAIN ONCE WE’VE SETTLED ON A FINAL APPROACH TO BE AVAILABLE IN RTM.
Ouch !! tht hurts !! Now tell me one good way if you consider this as "Right" design . Then how we are supposed to distinguish between icons !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! especially in Menu / Solution explorer ? Thats something ridiculous . frankly speaking I have got specs . And looking at the screen constantly on monochromatic icons especially on solution explorer did really hurt . Okay if u dont wanna listen Then dont . But keep visual studio 2010 and visual studio 2012 side by side and ask your self . Is it more quicker to find an icon in visual studio 2010 or visual studio 2012 ? Especially In solution explorer ?
I seriously doubt you got any positive feedback from actual customers on this issue. WTF is going on inside MS these days that leads to these decisions?
Saw the post from Microsoft regarding the color schemes for Vs 2012 . http://goo.gl/1eLvT is the link . But on the top of the fact changing the outer colors wasn't the target at all . The monochromatic icons still leave the eyes to hurt ??? You cannot still distinguish which is which . I still have to look for the extension which icon is which one . I am not saying microsoft isn't trying their hard but trust me It really DOESN'T help . I am all the way back to 2010 and still the colorful icons in solution explorer is so lively . The changing colors isnt the fact you change the outer boundary colors . But actually the main purpose is to distinguish between menu icons / solution explorer icons . That's the sole purpose. I think the visual studio team is missing the point being colorful isnt just ONLY to change the color scheme 🙂 . Sadly they understood us all opposite 🙁
Sometimes I think your UI designers are blind, or don't actually use VS.NET themselves. It's the only rational explanation I can think of for the horrendous design of VS 2012. This issue, combined with the universally-slated Fifty Shades of Gray theme makes me think that perhaps you need to fire your UI team and get a less arrogant team in? Your designers are so far up their own behind it makes me cringe…
So, by your own admission, you've had to increase the spacing of menu items "to make them stand out better", and you STILL didn't realise at this point that you'd ruined the usability of the menus? I think there's an IQ problem here…
I AM NOT A FAN OF THE ALL CAPS MENUS AND BELIEVE THE UI CONVERGENCE MICROSOFT IS AIMING FOR IS POTENTIALY DANGEROUS. VISUAL STUDIO IS SOMETHING I USE EVERY DAY AND TURNING THIS OFF SHOULD NOT REQUIRE A REGISTRY CHANGE. THE COMBINATION OF THE RIBBON UI, WINDOWS 8 AND NOW DEVELOPER TOOLS BEING AFFECTED IS PUSHING ME TOWARDS DEVELOPING FOR LINUX.
Kudos for the Quick search bar. Minimal wasted screen real estate and rapid effective navigation. Nice!
However, EPIC FAIL on the all caps file menu.
This design choice makes a fundimentally incorrect assumption. As a developer, I DON'T want emphasis on the file menu. In fact, the file menu it is a seldom used distraction. My focus is on the task as hand: completing my code, reviewing test results, updating work items… and so on. For almost every action navigable via the file menu, I use a short-cut key. I really only go to the file menu when something is wrong with source control, project settings or my build environment.
In a sampling of my team of 85+ developers and QA EVERY SINGLE USER has either employed the registry hack or used an add-on to make the style usable. Not to mention every colleague or aquantence I interact with in Social media has over-riden the setting. I don't know of a single user who has left the all caps file menu! This design choice certainly isn't resonating with the developer community that I interact with. Maybe we're all weird; but, judging from this post I'd hardly say that is true.
I'll be frank. The VS 2012 UI sucks!
It seems to me that Microsoft have completely lost the plot, is there is no one on your design team who has a clue about usability, the interface changes are pathetic. VS2010 has its bad points but the UI was not one of them, when are you guys going to learn? We are your customers, I have not read all of the comments here but I cant see that there is much positive feedback, really ALL CAPS and no colour in the icons, get a grip and change the UI back to VS 2010 or at least make it an option.
A design with all-caps? "I bet somebody got a really nice bonus for that feature" – blogs.msdn.com/…/922449.aspx
Please wise up folks. It's an IDE, it doesn't need "a strong signature element of styling" or any of that stuff; it just needs to run fast and get out of your way when you don't need it in your way. The same applies to the UI in general – it's a tool, so drop the pretties. Yes, there is a lot to commend in there, but it's despite these changes, not because of them, and the overall heaviness and sluggishness just ruins the party and undoes all the good work.
"We’ve chosen to use uppercase styling in the top menu for two main reasons: 1) to keep Visual Studio consistent with the direction of other Microsoft user experience"
"On the first point, the use of uppercase text is becoming a strong signature element of styling for navigation and headings in Microsoft user interfaces. You can see it in the Azure Portal, in Zune, and in the latest Bing search results update."
I can expect to see this everywhere? Surely the Zune, Azure and Bing do not represent the MS user interfaces. Doesn't Metro have almost no upper case anywhere?
Anyone else looking to replace their system fonts with fonts that contain no caps at all?
I don't think I can say anything that someone here hasn't already said but I will cast my vote for THE NEW UI SUCKS! And if this "styling" is Microsoft's new direction for all their applications, I say good luck with that… The developer world is really small compared to the Office user base. Be prepared for corporate America to "skip" that release just like they skipped Vista…
I'm sure the ALL CAPS menu was … backed up with sound arguments.
It's not important to me AS LONG there is a way to revert that.
I've just taken my first look at 2012 today and can honestly say it's bad enough for me to want to stick with 2010. What have you done? Grey, grey and more grey. It's just dreadful. As I'm currently doing SharePoint 2010 development, I'll definitely be going back to 2010.
So Zune and Bing, neither of which I use, are driving how VS's interface is designed? Not sure what you are smoking but you should stop.
please remove the caps lock… i don't care about zune, it's just HORRIBLE
GRRRRRR! ALL CAPS BAD!!!!!!
press file.. I mean File .. I MEAN FILE ____ FILE!!!!! …
joking aside, it just seems and odd change. And to an earlier poster on "other software" , i'm currently staring at OFFICE 2013 and it's ALL CAPS CITY here too.
Kudos to Microsoft (I really mean this) on adapting a uniform look N feel for the entire product line, especially as it relates to tablet/pad/touch/etc design. But this one particular item just seems oddly unnecessary.
I would like to know if there is any way for the menu item to change its backcolor when mouse pointer in pointed on it. Please let me know
Can you please tell me, how "keeping Visual Studio consistent with the direction of other Microsoft user experiences" by using design technique, which is known to be flawed for a very long time will increase our productivity?
Man, looks like you really believe users will like your ugly product just because you are paid too think so..
For your information: WORKING WITH VS 2012 IS NOT FUN AT ALL!!
colors, icons, menus, fonts – each by itself and all together make it a pain.
THE CAPS ARE AWFULLY DISTRACTING; BUT they can be switched off, which is sooooo cooool!!!
Hi,
At least give people the option to turn off the upper case menu. Another option to turn off the monochrome color.
We don't like this.
The CAPS are truly awful – I just don't get it.
Is it just me or most of you who thinks that the Metro thing is ruining all Microsoft products?
i THINK YOU MIGHT MAKE A BOLDER STATEMENT BY INVERTING YOUR CAPS. mAKE THE FIRST LETTER LOWER CASE AND THE REST ALL CAPS.
fILE
sAVE
pRINT
eXIT
iSN'T THAT REFRESHING?
iN FACT, MAYBE YOU COULD SAVE EVERYONE A TON OF SPACE BY STORING ONLY THE CAPITOL LETTERS IN A NEW TEXT ENCODING STRATEGY. wE ALL NEED YET ANOTHER FILE ENCODING TO WORRY ABOUT, AND I THINK mICROSOFT HAS AN OPPORTUNITY TO LEAD THE INDUSTRY HERE. iMAGINE THE SAVINGS IN LABOR AND SPACE IN FONTSETS ALONE! lEAVE THE LOWER LETTERS TO THE ImAC CROWD.
It is really ugly. Have you guys attended UI design training class? .NET 4.5 is great but VS 2012 UI is as ugly as new Windows 8's. Please rollback to VS2010.
Because of the capitals, the menu (with a lot of extensions installed) rolls over on two lines. This gives me one less line to focus on the code.
Because of the capitals, you had to add extra spacing between the menu-items to make the menu clear, that also does not really help in making the menu stay on one single line.
Maybe you could add some color to the menu- and toolbars to add some structure. Adding some color would could make some icons stand out more. This would allow me to spend some more time in the code and less searching for the gray icon I need to click on.
Idiots!
I can't believe I missed this post the first time around and I'm only finding it now. JUST CHIMING IN THAT I AGREE THAT ALL CAPS IS EXTRAORDINARILY ANNOYING NO MATTER WHERE IT IS FOUND, WHETHER ON THE WEB, IN VISUAL STUDIO, IN WINDOWS 8, OR ELSEWHERE. IT IS A BAD DESIGN. PERIOD. EXCLAMATION POINT. MICROSOFT NEEDS TO GET AWAY FROM IT.
"On the second point, we explored designs with and without uppercase styling. In the end we determined it to be a very effective way of providing structure and emphasis to the top menu area in Visual Studio 2012."
Is it really necessary to emphasize the menu area? really?, as a developer I don't want to emphasize it, I don't even use it in many sessions, because I use shortcuts, and as Gary Cooper points out in his book "About face", it's not absolutely necessary to follow ideas based on other programs only to make them uniform, at the end truth wins.
Why is it that so many otherwise fine developers & designers exhibit the height of arrogance when making UI changes? This problem isn't restricted to MS, but is on display in most companies and institutions. MS does have its fair share.
This is another example of MS arrogance: arbitrary changes that serve no real purpose for the vast majority of users, imposed on us with little choice. Even if many of the ALL CAPS changes are optional at first, past experience tells us that this won't last. Rather than provide a friendly, customizable interface, we'll end up with a klunky, MS-imposed interface.
Here's news for you: people hate this sort of arrogant imposition. If you keep this up, people will flee MS products. In case you haven't noticed, MS's monopoly is breaking apart. In the future, you'll have to win customers the old-fashioned way: good customer service. Hint: this isn't it.
Pride really does go before a fall. Wake up before it's too late.
I have tried the ALL CAPS menu for several months. I have to say… IT SUCKS and I've finally turned it off. Good thing there is a registry setting to overcome this silly UI decision. I am glad VS IDE is getting more and more like Eclipse with every release. It makes it much easier to work in multiple environments.
Yes, you do need some added structure to the top area, and you know why? Because you blended the title bar with the rest of the program.
What an ugly release. Honestly. Metro-style is nice… for the Metro mode. On the desktop, this is exceptionally ugly. Exceptionally. Ugly. As far as I'm concerned, you guys have failed at designing pleasing visuals. Utterly so.
So you tuned it? Tune it back! Also icons and look and feel to Visual Studio 2010. It looks as even awful as Windows 8 Metro-stuff!! Boahhh!
COPYINGABADDESIGNISABADIDEA.JUSTBECAUSESOMEOTHERSOFTWAREUSESABADUIDOESNOTMEANTHATVISUALSTUDIOSHOULDASWELL.
LowerCaseLettersProvideWhiteSpaceThatMakesWordsEasierToDistinguish. They take up less space allowing for quicker detection and use. In addition, colors provide queues that allow for quicker reaction times. By eliminating these fundamentals of UI design, VS2012 has become almost unusable when compared to other similar products.
THE MENU IS STILL NOT FIXED ALTHOUGH THE PRODUCT HAS BEEN RELEASED. IF YOU WANT TO HAVE IT STAND OUT, AS FAR BACK AS 1985 PEOPLE WERE USING ALTERNATIVE COLORS FOR THIS PURPOSE. I WOULD SUGGEST THAT MICROSOFT LOOKS INTO THIS.
(It's unpleasant, isn't it, all those caps?)
"As with most style changes, there has been both positive and negative feedback."
I wonder how much positive feedback was from the people who actually work in VS.
Designers have found Capitals to be less less readable.
I have no need for the menu to take up more horizontal space.
Your first argument is also a void since both in Bing and the Azure Portal the top bar are links not menus and they show where you are located on the web side.
I also have to say that I totally hate the new icons. Being visually impaired these totally black icons on gray just become invisible.
Where is the positive feedback? You said mixed reactions. All I see is negative. I spent 20 minutes of my time just to get rid of that horrible shouting menu. It was extremely distracting. I can't say I am a big fan of the new color scheme either though. VS 2010 actually felt "cleaner" in a number of respects.
Don't bullshit us. If it wasn't an arbitrary decision, why did you move the all-caps from the tool windows in the beta, to the menu bar in the RC? You needed to put all caps SOMEWHERE so it'd be metrofied.
WHAT'S WRONG WITH ALL CAPS?
If you haven't figure it by now, you are beyond redemption.
All caps — CHECK
Monochrome – CHECK
Don't listen to devleopers – CHECK
Force businesses to upgrade when no upgrade is needed – CHECK
Abandon things that the company said was the future – CHECK
Let marketing take over and make decisions – CHECK
etc., etc., etc.
I am not talking about MS – those were observations of working with IBM for many years.
In the early days of MS, billg and Paul Allen used to laugh at IBM – and rightfully so. The irony here is that MS has become IBM.
The only thing you are missing is JCL — ooops – I forgot – PowerShell.
Guess we've gone back in time. Typewriters were capable of doing UPPER and lower case except for the earliest ones. I will not be upgrading to VS2012
ALL CAPS…..STUPIDEST IDEA….EVER
STOP USING ALL UPPER CASE ! HOW DO YOU LIKE IT WHEN PEOPLE SHOUT AT YOU?
Fire the smart PM who come up with this idea! I installed VS2012 and C# is not working. Put your energy to make sure that product is functional and rich such as adding auto indention support for C++.
SIMPLY HORRIBLE!
WHY DON'T YOU ALSO USE THE CAPS TEXT AT MICROSOFT.COM WEBSITE? BY THIS I MEAN ALL THE TEXT IN IT AND ALSO MS PRODUCTS, CUSTOMERS WOULD LOVE IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!11111111111111111
This shouldn't have been the default
Just fire the entire design team at Microsoft that invented the METRO crap and the CAPS LOCK.
They are just harming Microsoft.
There are no positive and negative feedback, just negative! Microsoft behavior is just an awful abuse of their users, knowingly that we have no alternatives 🙁
Just fire the entire design team at Microsoft that invented the METRO crap and the CAPS LOCK.
They are just harming Microsoft.
There are no positive and negative feedback, just negative! Microsoft behavior is just an awful abuse of their users, knowingly that we have no alternatives 🙁
I THINK THE PROGRAM MANAGER WHO CAME UP WITH THE ALL CAPS UI DESERVES TO BE FIRED. How can he sell this kind of $hitty UI to the world and then justify what he has done is right. This is height of stupidity from microsoft.
I'm surprised how much this has bothered so many people, in our office of 4 coders myself include, I'm the only one who prefers upper casing, I agree it brings an added sense of structure. My work colleges on the other hand really despise it and feel that the words are being shouted at them. This really is a preference thing and while I do prefer it, I think they should have made lower case default and have an option. It's worrying how Microsoft are increasingly restricting their software.
i like it
After introducing the all-caps suppression registry key, the location of the launch box did not change.
I LOVE TYPING IN ALL CAPS! CAN YOU HEAR ME FROM OVER HERE?
Fortunately there is a registry setting to turn off the retardedness.
DID WRITER OF THIS POST WORK FOR SOVIET COMMUNIST PARTY LEADERS AS SPEECH WRITER?
There is a simple test you can apply. Print out a line of text in mixed case and a line in all upper case. Take a sheet of paper and cover the top half of each line. Notice how much more difficult it is to read the all uppercase line. This is because people don't look at the individual letter, they scan the shape of the line. Using all uppercase make text harder to read. This fact should determine your design decisions. The explanation provided basically says that we made a decision and we are sticking to it. Any business that takes that approach is doomed. Case in point. I continue to use Office 2003 and refuse to upgrade because I hate the UI in the newer versions. Every Office application is more difficult to use. (Access performance is dismal in newer versions) Why are you screwing around with your customers? We will vote with our pocketbooks!
i dont like caps
somehow the new menu looks foreign to me
The entire Internet agrees that UPPERCASE IS SHOUTING, and yet Microsoft says, "Whatever.".
How about you hire smarter people at Microsoft? All of the design decisions made for Visual Studio 2012 are wretched. Nothing flows or makes any sense from a design standpoint.
> to keep Visual Studio consistent with the direction of other Microsoft user experiences, and 2) to provide added structure to the top menu bar area.
So 1) to be like we are, err like how we've just changed to and 2) to return structure to an area we recently removed all demarcation from.
Sorry, buddy. Those are absolutely arbitrary reasons.
STUPIDES IDEA EVER!!! I'd fire the guy who made that call with uppercase
THE FACT THAT I HAVE TO TURN THIS STUPID *** OFF USING A REG KEY IS A WASTE OF MY TIME.
THIS IS ONE SUCH REASONS WHY I HATE YOU SO MUCH MICROSOFT!
I AM TAKING MY BUSINESS TO APPLE/ANDROID 😛
We can add this to the list of other famous GUI blunders from Microsoft:
1. Bing search website with the big wallpaper that visually distracts the user. Hence, most people prefer the cleaner UI option that google provides.
2. The black and white menus in Visual Studio 2012. WHY ? WHY ? WHY ?
3. The crappy GUI in Windows 8 – calling it different and expect the users to adapt is just an excuse for poor design.
4. User Access Control in Windows Vista – we all know how well that worked out.
5. TFS Pending changes menu in VS2012 – very ugly design
AT LAST, I CAN FINALLY THROW AWAY THAT ANNOYING SHIFT KEY, LOVE THIS NEW STANDARD IN TYPOGRAPHY!
WHILE I DON'T HATE IT PER SE, IT IS NOT 1980 ANYMORE. I DEFINITELY PREFER NORMAL TEXT.
The whole "direction of other Microsoft user experiences" is simply insane. The flat, washed out, everything looks the same, guess if there's anything clickable at all design is both ugly and nonfunctional and if you gave developers a way to switch back to the old VS2010 design I do believe at least 90% would do that and never regret the decision. Even if you forced the new misdesign on them for a month before allowing them to switch back to sanity.
Fire your design department!
I remember a guy working for Microsoft, giving a speech about the vision of Microsoft. It went like: "Developers, Developers, Developers, ….".
Maybe the designers should go talk to this guy.
Microsoft's designs are usually awful but this is just a joke.
Visual Studio Engineering Team-
It's good to see that you've thrown out the last 20 years of HMI design guidelines. I wanted indistinguishable icons in Source Control, no separation of toolbar controls & menus, and guaranteed eye strain through the use of dull, poorly contrasted, non-primary colors.
<irony_mode>
I think the next step should be to remove the letter "i" from all menus/commands/names. It is simply ugly from the user point of view, who prefers a fashion interface in any case. And of course, it could be confused with a lowercase "L" when used in the uppercase menu. Please make this additional improvement to your almost perfect interface. Doesn't WNDOWS 8 sounds and looks better than Windows 8?
</irony_mode>
Why should you care about functionality and content when you can sell a product pretending it is innovative just because it has a different User Interface?
– Functionality, like: FULL support of C++11.
– Content, like: describing in the Visual Studio website if Visual C++ 2012 FULLY supports C++11. I still don't understand if it is supported or not. I needed to check Wikipedia to know that it has "improved" support…
– Content, like: provide in the Microsoft main website a way to easily find the Visual Studio website (I had to use Google…).
The defense that this is is what Microsoft is doing elsewhere reminds me of the words of my beloved mother: If everyone else jumps off of a cliff are you going to?
The all caps styling is a terrible design direction in any form. All caps words aligned horizontally are difficult to scan quickly and the menus in VS only underscore this since there are many of them. It is even difficult to quickly differentiate one menu from another.
I truly hate this look in VS, Office, and everywhere else it is used. All caps titles occasionally can work in limited design situations but generally this is a very bad design.
I'm not sure why so many people are being so negative over a relatively small issue. I personally like the upper case menu given the overall styling changes in 2012. Without the upper casing, the menu just gets lost in all the other things happening at the top of the IDE.
Over 600 comments and I counted less that 30 comments pro-caps. Removing caps is the 2nd most voted UI change on UserVoice.
But never mind that, ignore your users, carry on regardless with some very weak justifications and then say absolutely nothing for over a year.
Smoothe
The horror, the horror… For some time, people in Redmond have started smoking every crap that they find along the alley and it shows. Windows8, VS2012, VS2013.
THANKS SO MUCH FOR THIS I HAVE BEEN TELLING EVERYONE THAT THE BEST WAY TO WRITE ANYTHING IS ALWAYS IN ALL CAPS WITH NO PUNCTUATION IT IS SO MUCH MORE STRIKING YOU CAN SEE I AM A GREAT DESIGNER JUST BY THE WAY THAT I WRITE THIS TEXT I REALLY FEEL LIKE MICROSOFT FINALLY HAS JENIUSES JUST LIKE ME TO DESIGN STUFF IT MAKES ME HAPPY TO KNOW THAT FINALLY MICROSOFT HAS PEOPLE WORKING ON DESIGN THAT ARE AS SMART AS I AM
I find that the ppl at MS have no idea what the developers using their products want.
This is all just dressing and is meaningless.
1) stop changing stuff, to is expensive to retrain developers to find stuff when you move it around or change the icon
for example, i use 2005, 2008, 2010 and 2012
in 2012 I have to search around to find the icons since they changed in look, waste of my time for something so meaningless
2) the look is important but the functionality means more.
the intellisense in 2012 does not work right
3) There is a coding standard and interface standard that is used by MS and this breaks it.
4) NO YOU ARE NOT THAT SMART AND YOU MAKE OUR LIVES DIFFICULT WHEN YOU THINK YOU DID SOMETHING COOL THAT IS REALLY DOGMA
FOR EXAMPLE
ENTITY – it is garbage
After reading all the comments here I hope the person that designed the 2012 IDE was fired or at least jumped off a building
I found this web site and changed Caps to lower wrgms.com/…/tired-of-all-caps-menus-on-visual-studio-2012
ALL CAPS IS SHOUTING! I DON'T WANT MY APPS SHOUTING AT ME!
i have to say this is AS STUPID AS WHAT YOU DID IN WINDOWS PHONE.
STUPID IDEA, AND YOU SAID YOU'VE THOUGHT ABOUT IT.
stupid WINDOWS PHONE… oh sorry I'm off the topic but just cannot help.
but i believe THIS STUPID IDEA is because of the sin of STUPID WINDOWS PHONE modern UI (metro? haha). you are neglecting users! and making requirements!
I DON'T CARE.
I DON'T WANT TO HEAR YOUR REASONS.
I DON'T WANT TO HEAR YOUR EXCUSES.
STOP SHOUTING AT ME.
EVEN AS AN OPTION, THIS IS BAD.
The solution to this all caps issue is simple. Give people a choice that can be easily changed under Tools / Options.
I won't impose my preferences on you if you reciprocate and don't force your preferences on me.
Seems like a win-win proposition.
If the menu is what breaks Visual Studio, then clearly people aren't using it for what it is intended.
IT = change and evolution, deal with it.
Why some random designers decide what is better for practicing developers?
Why noone care about developer opinion and invite new and new ways of how to make developer work more difficult?
Why instead of real work I should look through internet trying to find solution to a problem created by designers?
For what it's worth, I hate it just as much in Office and other Microsoft products. Awful design decision company wide
"Our view remains that this is the right design for the Visual Studio user interface for the reasons I mentioned above."
Well you're wrong.
Consider the following two sentences:
1) "All-Caps can only ADD emphasis when not EVERYTHING is emphasized."
2) "ALL-CAPS CAN ONLY ADD EMPHASIS WHEN NOT EVERYTHING IS EMPHASIZED."
Did you notice the subtle difference? So, when the entire menubar is emphasized, then nothing is.
I appreciate the efforts of whoever wrote this article– they are obviously attempting to do what all of us have had to as some point in our careers: soldier bravely on and put the best face onto a stupid directive from higher-ups. I once worked at a router company that built weather and map widgets, and a full-scale paid-app store, into their browser-based Web UI. Why would anyone want to hit their router configuration page for weather or a map? NO REASON. Did we still have to build it that way? Yes we did. (BTW, did you notice the very effective, eye-catching use of all-caps for emphasis in that paragraph? Eh? Eh?)
So, anyway, kudos to you, Microsoft-engineer-or-PR-person, for your gallant attempt to keep a straight face as you explain that We Hit Upon This Amazing Concept It Turns Out That You Can Use All-Caps And They Add EMPHASIS!! Did You Know That?? Isn't That Incredible?!? I, for one, appreciate knowing that you basically did it because someone in Corporate got a wild hair and decided this is the new "look" for all the company's software. I have sat in a lot of design meetings, and I know (at least from this engineer's perspective) how arbitrary it all is– like fashion. You're basically saying, "Our new line of jeans is boot-cut this year because jeans are boot-cut this year."
It is certainly true that, in the search for novelty, things that are stupid, ugly, and non-functional can become fashionable and carry the day for a while. At least Visual Studio isn't hanging its butt out of its pants.
"Ballsy. Stupid, but ballsy."
I think the all caps looks ugly, and is bad form in typography. It is an unnecessary and unwarranted change with previous behavior (change-for-change's sake) and I don't buy the arguments that it is necessary for consistency reasons with other Microsoft products or especially that it provides any sort of structure — that latter argument sounds very thin, and like one that is an after-the-fact justification.
The fact that the design decision was further perpetuated into VS 2013 is astonishing – would the dev team care to publish what their own telemetry tells them about users tweaking the register to revert this behaviour?
ALL CAPS IS A LITTLE HARD TO READ I'M AFRAID. I'VE BEEN A GRAPHIC DESIGNER FOR OVER 20 YEARS AND ALTHOUGH FASHIONS CHANGE, TYPOGRAPHY, IN RELATION TO READABILITY AND LEGIBILITY, DOESN'T. BESIDES, IT'S PLAIN FUGLY. AT LEAST THE REST OF THE INTERFACE IS PLEASING TO THE EYE (PREF. IN LIGHT/DARK MODES RATHER THAN BLUE) AND IT'S NICE TO SEE MICROSOFT DESIGN IMPROVING (AERO GLASS – NO! NEVER AGAIN!)
After reading all the comments here I hope the person that designed the 2012 IDE was fired or at least jumped off a building, or fired, oh wait it must be Stiv Balmer!
THAT IS WHY BOOKS FOR THE PAST TWO HUNDRED YEARS HAVE BEEN USING ALL CAPS. OH WAIT, we use lower case to make it _easier_ to read. Maybe the UI designer(s) should go look up "bicameral script" before trying to justify their ignorance.
The tone of this article is like disciplining a three year old.
User: "I don't want all-caps menus! I like to see the first letter of each menu item already brought forward by relative height and blockiness. I submit that for every possible font and size, mixed case is more legible than all caps. Observe:
FileEditViewProjectBuildTeamSQLDataDesignFormatToolsTestArchitectureAnalyzeWindowHelp
FILEEDITVIEWPROJECTBUILDTEAMSQLDATADESIGNFORMATTOOLSTESTARCHITECTUREANALYZEWINDOWHELP
The only entry that is hard to locate in the first example, with no spaces whatsoever between items, is SQL – Because it is in all caps. The second one REQUIRES spacing to be at all legible. Will you restore this to the usual Office behavior?"
MS: "No. We are right about this."
User: "Please make it an option, at least. A toggle somewhere so that we can decide what works best."
MS: "Maybe…"
The caps stays. And that's the end of discussion
Horrible. Just, horrible.
Hire better designers please.
CAN YOU REMOVE THE ALL-CAPS NOW?! AND YES, I’M YELLING AT YOU.
Regarding all caps – i see in 2013 rc3 at least it's made optional.
However, why on earth this should be a default setting I can't begin to comprehend.
There are several case studies that explain in great detail that the human mind has been trained to read and understand lowercase and camelcase text much faster than ALL CAPS.
This is the usual microsoft mentality,. "we think it's great, so here you go a new feature by default". Just make it optional and leave all original settings as they are – can't be that hard surely?
Why is blogs.msdn.com top navigation menu in mixed case if upper case is supposed to be so much better? Grr. I googled/binged for over a day to figure out how to remove these awful stylistic choices you made. Just awful. Why can't you have an Option for "Office 2010 Look and Feel?"
Stop screaming at me.