<< TFS vs. Star Team comparison | Home | Installing TFS 2011 Beta in a Virtual Machine >>

vs2011 Monochromatic icons, where’s the color?

 

I think everyone who uses Visual Studio can agree that Microsoft has packed an amazing amount of functionality into one tool. One thing that makes that possible is the ability to quickly get to all of the functionality easily not spending a lot of time sitting around RTFM. I am not sure about the direction that the monochromatic icons in the VS 2011 are going.

Here is a snippet from the VS2011 tool bar

vs2011_toolbar

Here is a snippet from the same tool bar in VS2010

vs2010_Toolbar

I narrow down all of the little icons that I am looking at very quickly by color association. With that gone, I find I spend more time looking at the shape of each icon to understand what its function it.

I know that I am getting older, and as a result am fighting hard against the curmudgeon tendencies that go along with it, but it seems to me an important dimension is being removed to allow the quick association of icons based on color, in favor of style preferences.

Print | posted on Monday, April 23, 2012 2:26 PM

Comments on this post

# re: vs2011 Monochromatic icons, where’s the color?

Requesting Gravatar...
I agree. The VS11 toolbars feel dreary without the color. MS says the color icons drew attention away from the main editor window. I guess they've decided to dedicate this version to users with ADD. I am use to looking for a green arrow to run a program. In VS11, it is just one of many arrows in the toolbars that happens to be larger than the others. Hopefully they'll include an option to enable the color icons. With the corresponding launch of Win8 and the increased developer interest I thought MS would want VS11 to have a nice appearance to go with its great capabilities.
Left by Richard on Apr 24, 2012 4:04 AM

Your comment:

 (will show your gravatar)