Why doesn't MS apply a tape interface to Visual Studio?

Question

We saw that the office has a tape interface since 2007. Now is the year 2010, and we all feel the great productivity that the tape brought us.

My question is: why is Visual Studio, now 2010, still not using tape? What do you think? Please share.

Answer 1

Ribbon is a great user interface for organizing tools such as buttons and some small items. But this does not work well (or at least it is very difficult to achieve) when the user interface must be very personalized, like Visual Studio. And there is also the problem of many windows that are not toolbars, such as solution explorer or many different designers, they cannot be placed very easily.

Whili I'm not saying this is impossible. There are many features that would need to be rebuilt to accommodate the tape.

From the User Guide for MSDN Ribbon Users

Team scale

• Are there a large number of teams? Does the ribbon use more than seven main tabs? Can users constantly change tabs to perform common tasks? If so, using toolbars (which do not require changing tabs) and palettes (which may require changing tabs, but may be slightly open at the same time) may be a more effective choice.

• For efficiency and flexibility, do users need to make significant changes to the content of the presentation, its location or size? If so, customizable and extensible toolbars and palette windows are the best choice. Note that some types of toolbars can be detached to become palette windows, and palette windows can be moved, resized, and customized.

Due to some of these reasons, I find that Visual Studio works better in the toolbar interface

PS: Although I don't think Visual Studio will use tape, Autodesk products like AutoCAD are very good examples of a very sophisticated tape application.

Answer 2

I seem to think that the ribbon will be just as bad for Visual Studio as those silly buttons. Quick work in the visual studio is a good navigation shortcut, not a mouse click.

Answer 3

I have been using Office 2007 for over a year now. The answer is simple, the ribbon interface is an almost purely cosmetic addition that actually still slows me down a lot.

It looks cool and I like that it has more “text” and larger icons in terms of “learning”. But after you “learned” the interface, the tape gets in the way. I find that overly “detailed” text is distracting and makes me spend more time looking for the team I want.

Effectively it's just a menu turned inside out and sideways, which is why you need to click repeatedly to complete the actions. In addition, the layout is very unnatural, it starts from the top, then switches to the lower "pieces", then goes into random sections from left to right and from top to bottom with possible submenus.

This statement in the original post is completely inaccurate for me.

... Now is 2010, and we all feel the high performance of the tape brought us ...

In the end, I put ALL the commands that I usually use on the quick access toolbar and “hide” the tape to compensate for the screen real estate that it steals.

If it were placed in VS, I would have done the same, add all the common commands to the quick access toolbar and "Hide" the ribbon.

Answer 4

This is actually not an SO stream, but I think the reason for not transferring the VS interface to tape was that it was intended for end users who are usually not technical. Visual Studio users do not fall into this camp (usually;)), and it will definitely be necessary to conduct a lot of usability testing and allow developers to customize the interface to get to where they are convenient.

From this MSDN thread, a Microsoft employee noted this as an answer:

I also asked this question, and the answer was then that the audience for the feed is the end users. Since it uses a lot of space, and since the developer is an experienced user, there is no need for support for the ribbon in Visual Studio.

Answer 5

I agree that they should bring the VS tape because the laid out command line interface is outdated and ugly. I have to look at this trash for 8-12 hours a day. Don't even let me start with how frustrating this is when the contextual toolbar increases the height of the toolbar and pops the top of the text editor.

But you are unlikely to get anything more than an opinion here, which is actually not the right forum. I would post it on http://connect.microsoft.com .