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...

I want to thank everyone for all of the terrific feedback we received on our first pair of tool window tab designs for Visual Studio 2005. As of right now, we've gotten 124 comments, which is really outstanding! I've been working with our designer, Corrina, to modify the tab designs we showed before...

//Update 2 I have posted a new set of designs for this at http://blogs.msdn.com/aaronbrethorst/archive/2005/03/16/397107.aspx . Please leave feedback on there. Thanks! :) //End:Update 2 //Update Corrina, the designer I have been working with on our new tabs posted this in the comments below. I wanted...

If you've played with Visual Studio 2005 Beta 1, you've probably noticed a fair number of changes to the user interface of our setup application. It's become quite a bit easier to use, but we still have some changes planned for it. I was asked by Brian Strully and Jason Lee of the Setup/Release team...

Thanks to everyone who has logged bugs in the MSDN Product Feedback Center on inconsistencies in the use of dialog help buttons (those little '?' buttons) in Visual Studio 2005 Beta 1! I really appreciate all the help everyone has provided so far; you guys rock!

Let me be totally straightforward and honest: I need your help. For those of you who are just tuning in, I am the Program Manager responsible for User Experience and User Interface Consistency for Visual Studio. Visual Studio 2005 is becoming consistent with Office 2003 in how we display our help...

Let me tell a little story. Once upon a time (read: 2002-2003) while I was a senior in college I had to do an Advanced Project Laboratory , or, as the rest of the world refers to them, a senior design project. Somehow, I came upon the bright idea of porting a 12,000 LOC Turbo C application for DOS to...

Have you ever noticed how Office 2003, and a wide variety of modal dialogs throughout Windows XP and Windows 2003 Server use that little question mark button in the title bar to launch their F1 help system? It's rather neat, unobtrusive, and it allows you to get rid of a clunky-looking button on your...

I moderated a talk yesterday on accessibility at Microsoft. I think it went over pretty well. In any case, one of the central points I made during the talk bears repeating in a more public forum. Accessibility is not a feature. “Whoa, wait, what?” I hear you saying. So, let me clarify...

I've been thinking a lot lately about some best practices in making sure applications look and feel like 'real' Windows XP apps. This is one of those areas that is, in my opinion, undervalued at times, despite the fact that it really can make a huge difference in the overall perception of your work....

I just got to have dinner with a ton of our VSIP Partners in Bellevue this evening. To everyone I talked to tonight: thanks a lot for telling me about what you've been up to, and for offering your thoughts on what we can do better (and for those of you who have yet to, please do. I'd love to hear what...

Wow, Apple just completely redeemed themselves in my eyes with iTunes 4.2 on Windows. I've been trying to avoid reinstalling iTunes for a while now just because it makes me into a borderline psychotic to see a company that prides itself on design (Apple) violate another set of UX guidelines (Microsoft...

I got to hear a former Sony designer (also a veteran of Apple's HIG) talk at MS Research today. He had a lot of interesting things to say, and he had a few interesting anecdotes about verbal jousting with Ken Kutaragi, the guy who came up with PlayStation (and I'm sure most of you are familiar with that...

I just ran across a blog entry from David Hunter , who has been playing around with the PDC build of Whidbey. David was trying to create a web service after reading about Indigo, but discovered that his New Project menu item had completely disappeared! It was only after a lot of hunting and poking around...