This idea is in contrast to http://visualstudio.uservoice.com/forums/121579-visual-studio/suggestions/2723735-make-net-4-5-work-on-any-os-that-supports-4-0 and http://visualstudio.uservoice.com/forums/121579-visual-studio/suggestions/3116039-support-xp-for-4-5-until-the-end-of-xp-support-, which I do not support. It is parallel to http://visualstudio.uservoice.com/forums/121579-visual-studio/suggestions/3095632-make-vs2012-not-hide-net-4-0-bugs-when-targeting-, but I think is the converse of it.

Consider a developer who must support customers running Windows XP, and who also is unable or unwilling to debug their applications on a machine separate from their main development machine. Such a developer may feel that he cannot upgrade to Visual Studio 2012, since that installation would replace the .NET 4.0 assemblies on the developer machine, making it impossible for the developer to encounter the fixed .NET 4.0 bugs.

Unfortunately, it is not impossible for their customers to encounter the fixed bugs!

Microsoft should make available a service pack for Windows XP and all other operating system versions which currently support .NET 4.0. This service pack should fix all of the bugs currently fixed in .NET 4.5.

Furthermore, as Microsoft produces service packs for .NET 4.5, there should be a corresponding service pack for .NET 4.0 systems, again targeting those .NET 4.0 bugs fixed by the service pack.

Some of the developers who are unwilling to upgrade to Visual Studio 2012 may be willing to do so if they can require their customers to install a service pack.

This may mitigate some of the ill will and confusion caused by the in-place upgrade of .NET 4.0 by .NET 4.5.

Visual studio used to have a kick *** interface. However, everything about the 2012 interface looks.. amateurish.

-The icon looks like something a 3 year old did.

-The lack of depth makes the whole thing jump into my face.

-The upper cased menus are screaming at me (try posting on a forum in all caps... see what the response is).

In a nutshell, whoever designed the interface needs to go back to the grade school I'm sure they dropped out of and finish their education. Maybe get a job at a fast food place running a cash register... Because they have zero talent for making a good looking UI.

We have incredibly high resolution monitors that can render beautiful images. To go all grey (or black) is such a step backwards that I can not believe this really passed user testing.

You'll notice that iPhones went from this type of boring UI and changed to using high res displays with lots of good color. You should have also noticed that this was exactly what people wanted.. and they sold like hotcakes.

In the old days people scrambled to get color monitors just to get away from the ho-hum grayness of working with a machine all day. To send us backwards is irritating at best and abusive at worst.

Please, make Visual Studio look good again.

I don't care about metro, or whatever your calling it these days. I figure it'll take 3 years for you to figure out what a mistake that is and fix it. In the meantime, let me keep the Win7 look.

Note, I wouldn't post anything if I didn't care. I do. I want to use the best. This, well, isn't. It's not even a "good effort". Instead, it looks like something that was slapped together at the last minute.

Hi Rangers,

HandsOnVisualStudio.com is a website that we created based on Brian keller's Virtual Machine and HOLs. My idea is to take this web site to the next level by:

- Translating the 20 available HOLs to other languages and creating videos and DemoMates to explain them (So far, we have the English and Arabic ones only)
- Creating more HOLs to address extra topics and scenarios like Source Control Features, Team Build, SSDT, GIT Integration, Team Explorer Everywhere, Building Java Projects, Customizing TFS Work Items and Workflows and more)

I'm sure that by teaming up on this we can create 100+ HOLs :)

Please vote :)

If you're a C# developer, I bet you've used something like this before:

***** SomeType DoSomething(params AnotherType[] array){...}

It is a lot easier to use the 'params' modifier than to create a new array with all the paremeters of the same type you want to insert in a method, specially when it comes to small test projects.

However, using this comes with a disadvantage: you MUST use the array type. No IList, List<T>, Dictionary<TKey, TValue>, etc.. I believe there is no such reason not to allow these list-like types to use the params keyword. Example:

***** SomeType DoSomething(params ListType list){...}

Of course you may wonder how is the compiler going to know witch types to accept. Well, for that I have several suggestions: there may be an obligation to derive it from IList<T> or to have at least one indexer... I don't know. What I do know is that this would be a good feature.

Make Reporting in TFS Fast and Fluid

Using Analysis Services and Reporting Services may have seemed like a good idea back in 2003 when you first started designing TFS 2005, however in 2012 these technologies are archaic and difficult to use.

Throw out SSRS and SSAS, heck in TFS 2012 in the new Web Access the team already created a new reporting system for burndowns and for the kanban reports.

Now for TFS 2015 it's time to make reporting EASY for non developers, EASY for managers, and fast and fluid for general end users to design and change.

Look at things like power pivot and rally. There are much BETTER, EASIER, and more powerful ways to do reporting than SSRS and SSAS.

The 'Metro' codename is a great name for the style and type of applications that appear in the Windows App Store. Its confusing to refer to these as 'Modern' apps or 'Windows 8' apps... while developers and phone users are already accustomed to the 'Metro' naming scheme.

Why choose to call these 'Urban'? It's a direct reference to the 'Metro' style. It continues to refer to this active, and accessible environment that we are now familiar with.

The 'Modern' name can refer to anything on any programming environment, and it does NOT differentiate from the competition. In fact, it only helps to confuse with the competition.

Please reconsider the naming of these apps and design styling.

In my opinion the biggest adoption barrier in performance testing on smaller projects is not the tooling but the high infrastructure and administration cost that comes with this phase of testing. Only if a reusable solution was possible and infrastructure management wasn’t as expensive, adoption would certainly spike. It certainly is possible if you bring Visual Studio and Windows Azure into the equation.

But there is hardly any guidance around how windows azure could be leveraged to performance test applications. For example, today its possible to set up the test rig in the cloud, its also possible to have the test rig running in the cloud but registered with a team foundation server on premise, these and several other scenarios require great deal of configuration and customization. If only a document could help define all the possible scenarios, set up possibilities, pros - cons and limitations. This could result in a great spike in performance test adoption ...

I have a few blog post and a video which discusses some of the more common scenarios, http://geekswithblogs.net/TarunArora/category/13291.aspx AND http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfpXBU5M9mM&feature=plcp

Submitted by Visual Studio ALM Ranger