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Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1 The Good the Bad and the Ugly
published on 6/3/2009 11:25:35 AM

I just downloaded and installed Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1! It is an exiciting new product by Microsoft. The VS 2010 editor is built using Windows Presentation Framework which reflects a distinct look and feel from the traditional VS products. In this post I will describe my first experience with VS 2010 Beta 1.

THE GOOD:

Welcome Screen:

I love the welcome screen! It is very crisp and clean. VS 2010 also gives you the option to customize the welcome screen which I think is a big bonus.

Here is a screenshot of the welcome screen:

Nice Default Font:

I love the default font style of "Consolas". I think the Consolas font selection is the main reason why the editor looks very clean.

Searching the Templates:

One of the frustations I had with the previous versions of VS was when adding a new item and you had to look for the item template you wish to add. VS 2010 Beta 1 introduces the search installed templates option which let's you search by typing the name of the template. Check out the screenshot below where I am searching for the StyleSheet template.

Built in JQuery Intellisense Support:

This is super sweet! With VS 2010 Beta 1 you get built in JQuery intellisense support. This is a great new feature since now you don't need to look up the documentation for every little method you are trying to fire.

Although the JQuery intellisense support is awesome but it lacks the parameter intellisense support as the method parameters ends up like E,K, L etc.

Rich Publishing Options:

VS 2010 Beta 1 comes with many different publishing options. VS team has done a good job in putting all the options on a single popup window. The publishing also allows you to save the options as a profile which can later be used for a different application.

Built in Support for F# in VS 2010 Beta 1 IDE:

VS 2010 Beta 1 gives you the ability to open the F# interactive IDE directly from the VS editor. This gives a lightening speed access to the F# console. Take a look at the screenshot below:

Enhanced Debugging Visualizers:

One of the really cool features of VS 2010 Beta 1 is the enhanced debugging visualizers. The visualizers can be dragged across the screen and not only that but you can change the value of the objects at runtime. Check out the simple code below which is used to display "hello world" on the screen.

As, you can see I am changing the strA variable from "hello" to "bye" using the debugging visualizer. The final output will be "bye world" instead of "hello world". This is a handy feature when you want to change the variables at runtime and see a different output but I found this feature to be little buggy as most of the time it did not allow me to change the variable and always reset to the previous value.

Hopefully, it will be fixed in the final release!

THE BAD:

Themes in VS 2010 Beta 1:

When I first started my VS 2010 Beta 1 for the first time my editor looked like the following:

I encountered this problem as I was using a different theme (black) for my VS 2008. It seems like VS 2010 Beta 1 was having difficulty importing that theme. Once, I resetted the settings it was fixed and the default white theme was loaded.

Later I tried to import a new theme to VS 2010 Beta 1 and it simply refuse to load the theme. I am now stuck using the white default theme for VS 2010 Beta 1.

Design View Out of Sync:

The design view is still out of sync. You will encounter this problem if you are looking at the document in the split view. The problem is that if you are editing HTML by hand you will have to save the document to see the changes. This is a big problem since now you have to constantly save the document to see the changes.

Font Styling Disable in HTML View:

When working in the Source view or HTML view the styling features like bold, italic, font family is disabled. These features are only enabled when working in the design mode. In my opinion these features should be available no matter which view you are working on. The screenshow below shows that when working in source view I cannot click on bold, italic or any of the styling features.

Unfinished Brackets:

I think I have been spoiled by Resharper since it finishes my work. VS 2010 Beta 1 does not finish your brackets, curly brackets etc.

THE UGLY:

Add Reference Hell:

The "Add Reference" option still takes too long to wait. It takes so long that I can go and do my grocery and come back and still it is busy loading the assemblies.

ToolBox Hell:

The ToolBox takes too long to load even if the page is empty.

Design View Hell:

The design view takes too long to load even if the page is empty.

Apart from being the good, the bad or the ugly I think this is a big step forward by Microsoft. The WPF editor is fun to work with and hopefully we will see more improvements in the final product.

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by Ben Scheirman on 6/3/2009 12:14:26 PM
For the background color bug, try this out: http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/d53e0db3-6c41-4cf5-8ca1-339aeef1ac30
by Mohammad Azam on 6/4/2009 7:55:37 PM
Hi Ben,

I downloaded and install the above patch but still I am not able to use my old themes in VS 2010 Beta 1.
by derans on 7/1/2009 8:30:25 PM
I wonder if this would work with beta 2010.

http://devlicio.us/blogs/tuna_toksoz/archive/2009/06/18/vs-addin-fast-add-reference-dialog-no-more-coffee-break.aspx

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