But it does suggest a good UI design principle, though not ones that techies like very much: When designing a UI, find the most popular application among your user community that's most like the one ...

Left: Visual Studio 17.6 menu UI; Right: Proposed menu UI (source: Microsoft). The toolbars have been updated to use lighter weight controls and more spacing, making it easier to distinguish different ...

Or not — Visual Studio 11’s biggest selling point is that it includes development tools for Windows 8, including the new, touch-centric Metro UI and its associated WinRT APIs.

With Visual Studio 2010, Microsoft has improved the environment’s editor. Also, plugins are featured to make it easier to work with source code, he said.