Microsoft Relents On Metro-Only Visual Studio Express

snydeq writes "After hearing objections from developers, Microsoft will offer a version of its Visual Studio Express 2012 package for desktop application development after all. The company had previously announced that Express 2012 editions, which are free, platform-specific versions of the Visual Studio 2012 IDE, would be limited to Windows 8 Metro-style development as well as development for the Windows Azure cloud platform, Windows Phone, and Web applications. 'We heard from our community that developers want to have for Windows desktop development the same great experience and access to the latest Visual Studio 2012 features at the Express level. ... And it will enable developers working on open source applications to target existing and previous versions of Windows.'"

Comments

Well, it's a beginning

[JDG1980]

Good start.

Now, if only they'd relent on the Start button, Start menu, and letting users opt-out of Metro altogether...

Re:Well, it's a beginning

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem isn't the lack of start menu so much as the fact that to access the "super bar" you have to go to the full-screen Metro interface. It is a jarring experience, and funny on a multi-screen setup where one of your monitors just becomes this giant, monotone search field. It is not at all conducive to the rest of the experience *on a desktop* (I'm sure if fits fine on a tablet).

Re:Well, it's a beginning

[Missing.Matter]

I don't mind the transition between desktop and start screen at all, but if you do, you can just put a shortcut do desktop in your startup folder and it'll take you right there on startup.

Re:Well, it's a beginning

[cpu6502]

>>>people largely launch apps from the super bar

The what? (looks round). I don't see that on my Win7 desktop.
And yeah I still use the start button since it gives me a nice list of all my programs in one quick spot.

Re:Well, it's a beginning

[epyT-R]

Those of us that have more than three or four pieces of software installed do. Scrolling a huge fullscreen pile of tiles is a lot more time consuming than scrolling through a well organized start menu or using a quicklaunch link. The fact I can start a new application from it without losing sight of my desktop is something I"ve come to expect from computer use over the last FIFTEEN years..

Re:Well, it's a beginning

[arkhan_jg]

Yes. relenting to a bunch of bastards who don't want to buy the full version sure is a start.

Because open-source developers who don't make any money from their software were going be to effectively blocked from supporting their existing apps on windows 8?
With windows 7, you got the compiler in the SDK, so you could at least compile your own apps written in another IDE. Windows 8 doesn't have that any more, the only compiler and standard header libraries are part of Visual Studio 2012; so unless the non-profit making open source dev wanted to cough up $500 for the full version of VS2012 pro out of their own pocket (that included a bunch of crap they didn't need), they couldn't support windows 8.

Never mind that VS 2012 has a much faster compiler than the older version, microsoft tend to tweak APIs and such - and when they release a new OS, only the new VS gets it integrated.

And how were new students going to learn to code for windows? Most people start with CLI coding, not fully blown graphical UI versions, ala metro.

Plenty of people need Visual Studio Express to write code for windows, because it is so tightly integrated and designed to go together. Nerfing the express version wouldn't force developers to write more metro apps - it would just kill off existing apps for Windows 7 from 8, cut down on new people learning to write software for windows, and kill off future open source apps on windows.

I'm amazed they thought that making the free compiler for windows metro-only was a good idea in the first place. At least they've overturned what would have been a big self-inflicted foot wound.

Re:Well, it's a beginning

[X0563511]

And it was not for a few years after that that Vista became somewhat useable.

AKA the release of Windows 7.

Skip 8, you know how it is with Microsoft. Whatever comes out after 8 will rock, but 8 itself will be a pile of shit.

Re:Well, it's a beginning

[bertok]

Toms Hardware knows exactly what they are doing, because their experience precisely matches mine, and I've been a Windows developer since 3.1, so I think by now I've learned how to use the operating system.

There is no way to make Metro usable for a power user. If you find it better than the current UI in Windows 7, then I'm sorry, but you're just not a power user. Yes, you heard me right, you're just not. You're not like me, the kind of person that runs five virtual machines at once, with ten RDP sessions open, Visual Studio in the background, and fifty tabs across three browsers. You're just a consumer -- a casual user.

The first thing I did was install the Remote Server Admin Tools for Windows Server 8, so I can see what new admin features there. The problem is that the icons are mostly the same, and the dumbass fixed-size tile design doesn't provide enough room for the text. The result looks like an endless array of tiles that say things like:

[ICON] Active Director...
[ICON] Active Director...
[ICON] Active Director...
[ICON] Active Director...

Guess which one was actually "Active Directory Sites and Services"! It's idiotic beyond belief, isn't it?

And don't you dare tell me about the "search" keyboard shortcuts, which can only possibly help users that have memorized the precise spelling of the distinguishing part of the text of each and every shortcut in the Start Menu. Tell me, right now, quickly and from memory, what keyword would you use to find the shortcut in the start menu for the Active Directory integrated Certificate Authority configuration admin console . Hint: It doesn't contain "Active", "Directory", "Certificate", or "Authority". Looking for "Acrobat Reader" by typing "Acro" in the search box? Bzzt! It's now called "Adobe Reader". Try again.

You paid Microsoft shills can go fuck off. I like Windows, I do. I run it on my laptop, I install it on servers for a living, and I write software for it. Despite this, it's obvious to me that Metro is an objectively, demonstrably bad user interface for a PC. If you disagree, post with a user account that's been around for more than a week, and try to use, you know... facts, like the screenshots in the Toms Hardware article.

Re:Well, it's a beginning

[hairyfeet]

How about answering a few questions for me? What advantages does metro give you that weren't already present in desktop gadgets? How has metro improved your workflow over Win 7? How is the current design better on a NON touch screen desktop or laptop (which is over 90% of the PCs sold ATM) than Win 7? what benefits has Win 8 given you?

Because frankly i could find nice things about every previous release of the last decade, even Vista. with Vista you had a better memory model, better support for 64 bit, and with UAC, ASLR, and DEP you had MSFT finally allowing users to run as users and not admins and still have programs function, even if UAC bugged the crap out of people too often.

But after using Win 8 at the shop for a month the ONLY nice thing I can come up to say about it is "It'll probably be decent on a cell phone or a tablet" which would be fine IF you were talking about a company that had significant share in cell phones and tablets but we're not, we're talking about a company that threw hundreds of million after WinPhone and it went absolutely nowhere fast.

So if you think win 8 is good? Fine happy for you but at least EXPLAIN why you think its good, what benefits you have seen, and please don't do like Sinofsky and pretend that the world is gonna embrace PCs as "supergigantic smartphones" and rush out to buy touchscreens! Did anybody see his last Win 8 talk? i think he said touchscreen something like 30 damned times! less than 4% of the X86 market is touchscreens but watching him talk he has honestly deluded himself into thinking folks are gonna give up those 27in monitors for some $300 17in touchscreen! I got news for ya, Sinofsky? your shit ain't THAT good, in fact my customers all think it blows.

so please don't give us esoteric workaround crap just to get back what we've lost, sell it to us, tell us what we have gained. Because other than feeling like my desktop monitor ought to have a slider keyboard like a giant cell phone i'm just not seeing any benefits where i'm sitting. hell if you are the type addicted to twitter and FB and need 24/7/365 updates there are already gadgets that do that, so even that isn't a gain.

I love the marketing speak

[MobyDisk]

This is a great marketing tactic here:

And it will enable developers working on open source applications to target existing and previous versions of Windows.

Translation: It will not forbid developers working on open source applications to target existing and previous versions of Windows.

developers want to have for Windows desktop development the same great experience and access to the latest Visual Studio 2012 features

Translation: developers want to have what they already had.

Re:I love the marketing speak

[gstrickler]

developers want to have for Windows desktop development the same great experience and access to the latest Visual Studio 2012 features

I translate it a bit differently: Despite our efforts to force Metro down everyone's throats, developers have told in no uncertain terms that they would prefer to continue developing for a traditional windows interface.

Re:It's a free tool!

[epyT-R]

This reads like astroturf. People are actually complaining because the free new version is less capable than the old free versions to date.

Well what do you know

[ArhcAngel]

I was all ready to post a snarky comment about not needing Visual Studio because I could do everything I needed in Delphi. So I quickly look it up since I haven't touched it in over 10 years and much to my surprise Delphi is not only still around but looks like it's thriving. Who knew?

Re:It's a free tool!

[pympdaddyc]

Okay, wanking about whether or not people have entitlement issues is missing the core of the situation.

There are developers that will be new to .NET development, and there will be developers that have already been developing desktop applications against the Express versions of the software. If we have learned nothing from the gaming console or phone platform wars, it is that you want to encourage application development. Any barrier to entry or project sustainability, even one that is merely perceived, will cause some number of people to pick a different platform to learn and grow on, and the .NET ecosystem will shrink. There are plenty of other languages and IDEs to turn to that are free, easy, and reliably maintained without having to worry about version-ed crippleware.

I am a full-time .NET developer. I'm an MSDN subscriber and so am utterly independent of the Express versions. Yet I feel very strongly that incidents like this hurt me and hurt .NET development on the whole. As a developer community we're already hamstrung by the lackluster (or totally absent, depending on how you look at it) cross-platform availability for the .NET framework and culture that leans more corporate/enterprise. The least we can do is provide a basic, sustainable development tools for learners and free/open projects.