As you may be able to discern from the contents of this weblog, I'm the Program Manager who is responsible for a lot of the overall look-and-feel of the Visual Studio product line. Specifically, I drive User Experience, Shell UI, and Accessibility across Visual Studio.

You've all probably had a chance to work with Visual Studio 2005 a fair amount now that it's been generally available for a few months. I've been spending a great deal of time lately thinking about how we can improve Visual Studio's user experience in a number of areas, and I wanted to get feedback from everyone in the community on this.

Feel free to post a comment on any thoughts you may have, but here's a rough framework you can work from if you feel inclined:

  1. Do you use Windows XP, 2003, or Vista with visual styles (themes) enabled?
  2. If so, which OS and theme do you use?
  3. If not, why not?
  4. Regardless of your answers to questions 1-3, do you think Visual Studio 2005 looks better than VS 2002 or 2003? Why, or why not?
  5. Do you think VS 2005 is easier to use than VS 2002 or 2003? Why or why not?
  6. What is your least favorite part of VS 2005's UI?
  7. What is your favorite part of VS 2005's UI?

Thanks, everyone! I look forward to reading your comments on this :-)