The JPK Experience : Power Toys

Working with User Experience designers to improve Pack Installer 1.0

JeremyKelley — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 01:33:00 GMT

As part of making the transition from Beta to full Release status, we wanted to make sure that the Pack Installer was fitting in well with Visual Studio 2005 and other tools published by Microsoft. We really wanted to make sure that even if we weren't the flashiest UI around, we had a bit of polish that made it seem "designed" rather than "put together." To help accomplish that goal we took the Pack Installer through a semi-formal design review with some of the UX designers here in Developer Division.

This was the first time that we'd taken a Power Toy project through a UX review and I don't think either we, or the designers really knew what to expect. Their first reaction was "it's not as bad as I thought it would be." Which considering that I'm not a UX designer was about as much as I could have hoped for. The result of that meeting was a lot of great feedback on how to improve the Pack Installer User Experience. I'm going to walk through screen by screen to point out the little details that have been changed that, together, make what I think is a dramatic improvement.

Detecting Visual Studio

When Pack Installer first starts up you get a warning if Visual Studio is running. In Beta 2 of Pack Installer here's what you saw:

Obviously this dialog has some problems. By using the standard "MessageBox" to display information, I created a completely non-actionable dialog. There's nothing on this screen that can actually help the user to shut down Visual Studio. I hate it when other applications give me these kinds of messages, so I should have been much more aware that I was doing it myself. Here's the new and improved dialog:

You can see immediately that this dialog is much better. The icon on the left gives you an indication that the information conveyed isn't dangerous, it's informational. And the buttons along the bottom give you the choice of what you want to do, and are very clear about what will happen when you select them.

The Main Window

Here's what the Beta 2 UI looked like:

From a UX standpoint there are a bunch of things wrong with this dialog, and not all of them are visible. At the very top, the Tool Selection label really isn't serving any purpose; it's just kind of there. On the left side we have the Refresh List button, which is big, and has the only icon of all the buttons. Obviously the point of the application is not to "Refresh" the "List" over and over again, so that should be much less prominent. And the whole top band in general is just too tall, with too much wasted space.

As we move down the screen we can find more problems. The main list doesn't make very effective use of the horizontal space, and the "+/-", indicator on the left is really ugly for expanding descriptions. It would be much better if we could show a portion of the description all the time, and then expand it to show the whole thing. In the tagging and filtering area, there wasn't enough feedback being given as you moved the mouse over the tags.

So after all that, here's what the screen looks like now:

We now have better use of space, and the whole thing flows a lot better. Next to the "All" tag you can see the indicator that gets drawn when a tag is selected, a similar one is drawn when you hover.

The License Terms Window

Overall we're really happy with how the License Terms window came out. There were some small things we could do to make a difference though. The top area and bottom area don't have the same border styles. The suggested look is flat, so the bottom area already looks out of date. In addition all of the text should align at the left so it looks right (correct). The grid in the middle also needs to have its columns properly aligned. Finally, what may seem the smallest, but was one of the more frustrating things to fix, the text at the bottom uses *'s for emphasis around the word "each." The * character is not a proper formatting indicator in normal publishing. So it needed to be bolded.

Here's the original screen:

And the subtly changed, but greatly improved new screen:

Installation Progress Window

The main problem with this window was the amount of space it was taking up. The advertising to the right was huge, especially compared to the content. Even worse, the advertising was just taking up horizontal space and not vertical. Reformatting the advertising graphic makes the window much more tolerable. The installation complete message was also not especially prominent on the screen. Relocating that to its own area where the download progress bar used to be makes it much easier to see. That, along with blinking the toolbar, helps you know when things are done installing so you can tab away, and not wonder when it's done.

Original screen:

1.0 Release screen:

I (and others that I've talked to) think the changes we made were a significant improvement over what we released at Beta 2. There are lots of other little changes that I didn't call out that would be hard to visualize here, for instance making sure all windows pop up in the center of the screen by default. Working with the UX designers was great, and I'd encourage anyone who has an opportunity to work with one, to do so; they can make a big difference in the experience your users have with your application.

Pack Installer 1.0 Released!

JeremyKelley — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 23:38:00 GMT

I'm happy to announce that Pack Installer 1.0 is now ready to go! The changes from Beta 2 to 1.0 have not been huge, but there are some improvements I'd like to call out.

Tool descriptions are no longer truncated to 256 characters. In addition to getting a preview of the description all the time, you can expand the description to see the whole thing, not just the first chunk of it.
Files are now verified to be the correct download before running an installation. Using the MD5 hash of the files we target for download, the Pack Installer checks to see if the file received is the one specified in the feed file. This way you can be sure what you're installing is what you asked for.
The Specification and Test Plan are included in the source code. If you're curious about what the spec for Pack Installer looks like, it is now located in the "docs" subfolder in the source tree.

Pack Installer Beta 2 Released and Feed Update for 1/18/2007

JeremyKelley — Fri, 19 Jan 2007 04:17:00 GMT

Over on CodePlex I've just released Beta 2 of our Pack Installer project. This release has seen a lot of hard work go into it, especially by our primary developer Bertan Aygun. New features that we've added include tags on each of the tools in the list and the ability to filter by those tags, search, and support for VSI based content. I'm really excited about releasing this new version of the tool, the last Beta got over 9000 downloads!

Beta 2 also comes with an update to the feed file to add some new content. Since we had to update the schema file you'll need to download the new Beta in order to see further updates to the feed, but the existing Beta should continue to work just fine.

Updates in the feed file:

101 Samples Packs - These packs of samples for C# and VB contain a ton of sample code that any developer should find useful.
Visual C# 2005 Code Snippets - Visual Basic 2005 shipped with a lot of snippets in the box for all sorts of things, this pack lets you get C# up to the same level.
ILMerge 2.07.0112 - In Mike's own words about the release:

"This release contains some bug fixes related to marking merged assemblies as retargetable, which may fix some problems people are experiencing when trying to execute merged assemblies on the Compact Framework. If that has been an issue for you, then please try this new release and let me know if you still have a problem. (Compliments on it working are also acceptable…)"

Happy downloading!

Here's a screenshot of the UI for Pack Installer Beta 2:

Pack Installer Feed Update for January 10, 2007

JeremyKelley — Thu, 11 Jan 2007 07:39:00 GMT

This week's update brings a brand new tool to the Pack Installer! The Visual Basic team has released a new Power Pack called the Microsoft Printer Compatibility Library. In their own words:

"The Microsoft Visual Basic Printer Compatibility Library allows projects that used the Printer and Printers Collection in Visual Basic 6.0 to be upgraded without having to re-write your printing logic. By simply adding a reference to the library, declaring a Printer and making a few minor syntax changes, your project will be able to print using the Printers collection and Printer object as it did in Visual Basic 6.0."

So if this sounds like it will fill a hole you have in your development right now, or even if it just sounds like fun and you want to get your old school VB'ing on, boot up the Pack Installer and install away!

Note: I realize I just updated the feed at the end of last week, but I'm going to try real hard to keep to a weekly Wednesday release cadence for updates. Stay tuned for more tools!

Pack Installer Feed Update

JeremyKelley — Sat, 06 Jan 2007 03:09:00 GMT

The list of tools included by the Pack Installer has been updated this week to include some cool new updates to some popular tools. Now included are:

ILMerge 2.0.7.0102, this is an update from the 2.0.6 release
XML Notepad 2007, this is an updated version of the XML Notepad 2006 utility. This includes a couple of new features as well as a nice list of bug fixes. More details can be found here.
Resource Refactoring Tool Beta, moving up from our previous Alpha release, the Beta is a good step towards having a full 1.0 release.
TFS Administration Tool 1.2, this updated release includes the ability to administer TFS installations configured to use only SSL.

Source code released for Pack Installer on CodePlex

JeremyKelley — Thu, 09 Nov 2006 03:12:00 GMT

Despite taking me a lot longer than I anticipated, the source code for the Beta version of Pack Installer is now available on the CodePlex site. This lets us finally start to do what we've wanted to with this tool, which is collaborative development. So if you're interested in helping out, or just want to see how it works, head on over to CodePlex!

Problems reported with Pack Installer, I may have the answer

JeremyKelley — Tue, 07 Nov 2006 21:52:00 GMT

I've been getting reports from multiple sources indicating that there's a problem with the Pack Installer. The symptom seems to be an exception thrown at startup. If you see this message:

see the end of this message for details on invoking
just-in-time (JIT) debugging instead of this dialog box.

************** Exception Text **************
System.Data.ConstraintException: Failed to enable constraints. One or more rows contain values violating non-null, unique, or foreign-key constraints.
at System.Data.DataSet.FailedEnableConstraints()
at System.Data.DataSet.EnableConstraints()
at System.Data.DataSet.set_EnforceConstraints(Boolean value)
at System.Data.XmlDataLoader.LoadData(XmlReader reader)
at System.Data.DataSet.ReadXml(XmlReader reader, Boolean denyResolving)
at System.Data.DataSet.ReadXml(String fileName)
at Microsoft.VSPowerToys.PackInstaller.PackInstallerForm.LoadPackFeed()
at Microsoft.VSPowerToys.PackInstaller.PackInstallerForm.mgr_TaskCompleted(Object sender, TaskCompletedEventArgs e)

then you're getting the error. I believe the problem is that when I released the Beta of Pack Installer I broke the already released Alpha. The core technical issue is that I updated the schema for the Beta and changed the format of the feed file used to get the list of tools. Unfortunately I used the same forwarding link to point to the new file as pointed to the old one. Since the link is now updated anyone using the Alpha is broken. This was careless on my part and unfortunately all I can do at this point is apologize to anyone who tried to use the tool and had it break.

The solution to the problem should be to run the Beta version instead of the Alpha. If this problem persists, please let me know and I will look into it even further, but I am pretty sure this is the cause of the problem, at least it repro'ed on my machine this way, and I hope there isn't another bug in the software.

Thanks for your patience,

-Jeremy

One last thing!

JeremyKelley — Wed, 01 Nov 2006 19:54:00 GMT

I forgot to mention that there are new tools included in the listings as well!

New in the feed are:

ILMerge - This tool rocks! I actually use it when I put the release of Pack Installer together. It lets you merge assemblies together so you can have a low footprint deployment.

Microsoft Best Practices Analyzer 1.0 - A new Power Toy from our team, the shipping version comes with an ASP.NET configuration analyzer and a nifty plug-in model for enhancement.

XML Notepad 2006 - Because really, who DOESN'T need a good XML editor? I find this is very handy to have around.

Visual Basic Power Packs - 2 Packs released by the VB team to enhance your VB development experience.

Pack Installer Beta released!!!

JeremyKelley — Wed, 01 Nov 2006 19:46:00 GMT

On Friday I was able to get the Beta version of the Pack Installer released to CodePlex. Follow the link to get your hands on its goodness.

New features in the Beta include:

Basic sorting of the list of tools
Ability to run the uninstall of a tool from the UI
New and improved license agreement screen - This lets us be more flexible in bringing you a wider variety of tools.

As always please send me any feedback you might have on the tool. There are a few new features planned before the 1.0 release but the most important thing I can do at this point is incorporate any good feedback I get.

Oh, and for those that are interested I'll post a follow-up message when I get the source code uploaded to CodePlex.

A fork in the road, or “Help me create the roadmap for future Power Toys”

JeremyKelley — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 21:46:00 GMT

Now that I've gotten the Pack Installer project is well underway, my next major task is to create a roadmap for some of our future Power Toys developments in the Developer Solutions team. I've gone through some of our internal databases of suggestions and bugs from Visual Studio, and I've found a few good ideas, but I'm not sure that I really have enough. So as always I'd like to open things up to the community for suggestions about what we should do next.

I'm currently looking for ideas that fit into two categories. The first is "IDE Enhancements"; tools in this category make the Visual Studio 2005 IDE better in some way. The best example of an IDE Enhancement is our Visual Studio Command Shell. This tool adds a new window to Visual Studio that gives you the power of the command prompt from within the VS environment.

The second category is "Platform Tools"; tools in this category are a little harder to define. This category contains tools that help development on the Visual Studio platform. I don't really have a good example of one off the top of my head, but if I think of one I'll post it.

So, within those broad categories of tools what exactly are we looking to do? Well here's part of our team's description from our internal homepage:

"The Developer Solutions team is all about making developers more successful and satisfied with Microsoft's developer products. This means delivering great developer " Power Toys" that solve specific customer pain points with our developer products. It also means making sure there are healthy Microsoft support communities to answer broad questions. Lastly, it means providing best practices for user-created communities to share code samples, whitepapers, libraries, and tool development."

The two important points are that the tools we build need to make you, the user, more satisfied with our products, and two help eliminate pain points that you may be having. In practical terms this means that we're looking for tools that help resolve issues that are hard to work around, or fill gaps in functionality offered by Visual Studio. We aren't so much able to fix bugs with our tools, but we may be able to help provide tools that allow you to work around things.

Here are my questions to you my loyal readers:

What areas of Visual Studio give you the most trouble or could use more functionality to help you do your job?
Are there specific tools that you think Visual Studio should have that are maybe outside the mainstream of Visual Studio development?

Keep in mind that we like to have tools that can be Alpha'ed or Beta'ed within a month or two. I'm looking to fill out a roadmap going forward of about 6 months or so, so I will be scheduling more than one tool out of this.

If your suggestion gets picked as something we want to work on, I will make sure that we can include you in the process of specifying the solution as early and as frequently as possible.

How can you submit your suggestions to me? As always leaving a blog comment or using the contact link to send me mail directly are perfectly fine suggestions. Another great way is to use the Microsoft Connect website. From there you can log bugs about Visual Studio, or as is more appropriate in this case, suggestions about what we should do.

If you go to the Connect site, search for your suggestion first to make sure it hasn't already been entered. If it hasn't, go on ahead to the Suggestion Submission Form. On the form you'll need to enter some details. To make it easy to find in the database once its logged, prefix your problem title with Power Toy Suggestion, also set the "Version" and "Where did you encounter the problem?" drop downs to "Other".

It would also be handy to leave a comment here if you do use Connect, just so I can know when to start looking in the database for your suggestions.

I'm looking forward to all your great ideas!

-Jeremy

Pack Installer Alpha released to the wild!

JeremyKelley — Sat, 16 Sep 2006 02:26:00 GMT

I have some great news! Well great from my point of view anyway. The Alpha version of the Pack Installer I've been working on is now available for download on CodePlex! I'm pretty excited about this for a couple reasons.

First, I'm excited to find out what everyone thinks about it once they get to use it, instead of just seeing the screen shots I've posted.

Second, this is the first time I've really gotten to incorporate direct user feedback in a project I'm working on. The project is definitely better off because of the feedback we got and what we did in response. It still has a long way to go before its 1.0 worthy, but it will get there with more great feedback. In fact, now that it's posted you can submit feedback directly on CodePlex. Please log bugs and feature suggestions if you think this is a project that's worth making better.

Lastly, and this is the personal reason, this is my first set of actually shipping bits since I started here at Microsoft in June. So I'm stoked about it, and I think it's in a good state for Alpha release.

So here it is, the link to what I've been working on for the last two months... Pack Installer

Enjoy!

Pack Installer Screenshot Update!

JeremyKelley — Sat, 09 Sep 2006 02:47:00 GMT

Thanks to everyone who provided me feedback for the Pack Installer GUI. I took all the feedback into consideration and made some major changes to what will be released as Alpha very soon. I wanted to get a picture up ahead of the release just so people could start looking at it.

This is by no means the end of my requests for feedback so if you don't like something on this picture, feel free to comment! Everyone here thinks this new version is a major improvement and that's almost entirely because of the customer feedback on the posted images. Thanks again to everyone!

And as I just noticed posting this, the Edit Tools button won't be there in the release. :)

Help me design the Pack Installer GUI

JeremyKelley — Fri, 25 Aug 2006 23:49:00 GMT

Okay, its time to ellicit some more feedback from you, the loyal customers. I think I've got a decent handle on the UI for the Power Toys Pack Installer that I'm working on. Unfortunately I'm really not an artist, or even a spectacular GUI designer. I've shown the prototype around the team and overall I think people like it, however, there's no better judge than you the user. So I'm going to post a screenshot of the UI, and as you'd expect I'd love for you to tell me what's good and what's not. But I want you to go one step further. I'm also going to post a short description of the basic requirements and I'd love for you to design your own GUI.

The goal here would be that many of you are certainly as qualified as I am to be designing interfaces, and hopefully if I've really missed the mark, one of you can show me a better way. Keep in mind, this project will be released under the Microsoft Permissive License, so if I use your designs, and you don't like the way I did it, you'll be able to join the CodePlex project (once its posted) and help fix it. So here we go.

Basic Requirements:

1. The Pack Installer allows users to select single or multiple packages to be downloaded and installed together.

2. The user should be able to see basic information about each tool in the list, as well as have a way to get more detailed information (possibly through the tool's website).

3. Tools are categorized into Packs.

4. A Pack should be selectable. Selecting a Pack selects the tools underneath it.

5. The window should resize reasonably well.

Command Line... No seriously, its not dead yet

JeremyKelley — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 03:33:00 GMT

Something that I'd never really thought about till recently was command line interfaces for tools. I think I'd begun to take them for granted. They seem to be there when I need them, and when I don't, then I don't even think about them. Some of the questions I'm going to ask you all today may seem pretty trivial, but I really want to understand how you (the users) work as developers. I obviously already know how I work, but I also know that I'm usually an edge case, so its better to get your opinion when I'm designing software for you. Hopefully you feel its as valuable as I do.

Questions

1) As a developer do you use command line tools or do you stay inside the IDE?

2) What kinds of tools do you think benefit from having command line interfaces?

3) Under what scenarios do you choose to use a command line interface when a GUI one is available for the same tool?

That's all for this time, I'm anxiously awaiting your responses.

-Jeremy

If you were an installer what kind of installer would you be...

JeremyKelley — Tue, 18 Jul 2006 02:48:00 GMT

We here at Developer Solutions are intent on making your lives easier. When I say “your” I mean all the developers out there of course. One way we’re looking at doing this is to start packaging up our Power Toys in a Power Pack. Hopefully this will make things easier for you as we release more tools so you don’t have to install each one separately. We’ve got some pretty neat ideas on how we might theme different packs with different kinds of tools. But before we get to having something to release, we need to decide how to distribute these packs.

What that means is that this is your first chance to inundate me with feedback. Here are some things we’re looking at for installing one of these packs:

Option 1: You download a bootstrap installer that goes out and gets the latest tools to install. In this case you only download the pieces you actually want installed. This is the model that I’m leaning toward right now. This is actually a stretch for me personally, I normally don’t like it when I have to download a small installer, only to need an internet connection later on and have it download more files after it gets started. In this case though I think we can gain a lot of flexibility by doing this.

Option 2: You download an installer that contains everything. Here you’d have a larger install package to download up front but you wouldn’t need to connect to the net again to get things installed. This is a much more traditional model for installers; the downside is that with an ongoing development model we have no way of knowing if and when this package starts to feel too big.

Now here’s the interactive portion. You can call it a quiz but all questions are optional if you choose to give me feedback, and if you decide you want to write something that isn’t really an answer to one of these questions that’s perfectly okay too.

Question 1: Would either of these options turn you off from downloading the Power Pack?

Question 2: What bad experiences have you had with either of these scenarios?

Question 3: What good experiences have you had with either of these scenarios? (Come on you knew that one was coming. ;-) )

Question 4: What would you rather see in place of either of these options?

Please don’t be shy about sending your comments. The more community involvement we get in planning our Power Packs the better they’ll be.

-Jeremy