Express for Desktop allows for non-metro development in Visual Studio 2012

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/06/no-cost-windows-8-desktop-development-returns-with-express-for-desktop/

by ryanmolden • 14 years ago

67 43 14 years ago

arstechnica.com

asadotzler• 14 years ago

This is smart move by Microsoft. As much as they'd like the win32-land and the now legacy Desktop to disappear, it will not happen in one release.

bztzt2• 14 years ago

Or ever, IMO. It will be like C++ vs. C#.

aninteger3• 14 years ago

I'm not sure they want those to disappear. Some of Microsoft's own products are written using Win32, like Office, and Internet Explorer. I think this is more about providing a C++ compiler for developers that are unable to spend the $499 on Visual Studio Professional.

drivebyacct24• 14 years ago

Why, oh why, oh why do people think this when there is nothing to indicate that whatsoever?

nhebb• 14 years ago

Because they keep acting like it. As say this as someone who develops Windows desktop apps. You might have valid counterarguments to that, but that is the perception I have and I don't think I'm alone.

MichaelGG• 14 years ago

Well this restores my faith somewhat; glad to see the focus on Metro isn't non-negotiable. VS 2005 had a similar problem, when it just dropped support for the Web App (precompiled) style in favour of an ASP/PHP model. Right after shipping they released an update to restore the removed feature.

jlgreco3• 14 years ago

I wonder if this "Desktop" version will have the ALL CAPS menu titles. Their rational for that in the regular version iirc is that it fits with metro better for some reason.

It would be strange to make a non-metro version of Visual Studio have those menus with that rational, but it would also be weird to have two versions of Visual Studio, one with capped menus and the other without.

nlawalker• 14 years ago

VS is not a Metro app: All versions of Visual Studio run on the desktop - what this article is referring to is a free version of VS with the capability to create desktop apps, which was removed from the free version of VS2012 that was already announced.

The all-caps menus are part of the Metro "design language," which is related to but separate from actual Metro applications that run within the new non-desktop interface. Additionally, it's already been revealed that there will be a setting to return the menus to regular capitalization, and it can be done in the beta via a registry key.

ryanmolden10• 14 years ago

Not true (to my knowledge) it hasn't been stated there will be any such exposed setting (to my knowledge, if I am wrong feel free to cite sources). There is a reg key switch, but there are lots of reg key switches in VS.

Edit: As drivebyacct2 points out below I am wrong, it HAS in fact been officially stated. I don't see any attribution on the blog entry, but I suspect I know who wrote it and it is an official Microsoft blog, so that is a public announcement. Done and done.

jlgreco3• 14 years ago

"VS is not a Metro app: All versions of Visual Studio run on the desktop"

That was my understanding. I guess I expressed myself poorly. I was wondering why a piece of software that is apparently explicitly for 'Desktop' (as in creating things for it) would sacrifice sensibility for the sake of any Metro concepts.

I don't know, the entirety of it is weird to me, so maybe this makes more sense to somebody who understands the reasoning behind everything else about windows 8.

ryanmolden10• 14 years ago

As a member of the VS team (but not one who is in charge of making these decisions) I can't comment in any official capacity. I can say I am not a fan of the ALL CAPS menus, but, strangely enough, my personal opinion doesn't drive decisions in a multi-million dollar product unit :).

I will however just leave this here:

http://www.richard-banks.org/2012/06/how-to-prevent-visual-s....

This is of course not officially supported and my being a VS team member does not imply a contract for this registry key to exist for all time or on any specific SKU.

tseabrooks• 14 years ago

Wow, that all caps menu is ugly. I hadn't seen that before. As the only person I can talk to working on VS team.. I hold you personally responsible. "Fix It!"

pbz4• 14 years ago

What I find strange (not sure how true) is what I hear from random MS employees that customer feedback is more valuable, or weighs more, than the feedback from MS employees. To me, this shows a low level of trust from management in their own employees' ability to gauge the market.

Another thing I can't wrap my mind around is how can it be possible to have one thousand of your customers yelling at you they don't like something -- that can be easily changed -- and have the management respond with "Oh well, we're still going to do what we want. What ya gonna do about it?!"

CurtHagenlocher2• 14 years ago

Judging by the screenshots here (http://www.theverge.com/microsoft/2012/2/9/2787365/microsoft...), this is being done for "compatibility" with Office 15.

(I don't know anyone inside Microsoft who likes the all caps, but at least Office apps have only 5 to 7 top-level menus.)

aninteger3• 14 years ago

What's really really interesting to me is that they've removed the ribbon from the menu system. I'm happy about this, but I know a lot of people loved the ribbon UI.

Or at least it appears that way from the screenshots in your link.

aninteger3• 14 years ago

So, is Express for Desktop the only wait to get a free C++ compiler from Microsoft now? Last I read, they removed the C++ compiler and C runtime from the Windows SDK.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/hardware/hh852363.as...

As long as they continue to ship a C++ compiler freely, I'll be happy.

MatthewPhillips• 14 years ago

GCC?

chrisdevereux2• 14 years ago

So have they restored the ability to use Win32 in VS Express? Or just the ability to write .NET/WinRT apps that target the Windows 8 desktop environment? It's not clear from the announcement.

ryanmolden10• 14 years ago

>Visual Studio Express 2012 for Windows Desktop will provide a simple, end-to-end development experience for developing Windows desktop applications targeted to run on all versions of Windows supported by Visual Studio 2012.

From my reading of corporate speak this appears to say that you can use Express Desktop 2012 (VNext Ultimate Web Cloud Edition :)) to write apps that target Vista, Windows 7 or Windows 8. Since WinRT is Win8+ only that would seem to imply 'down level' apps would need to be written in something else. The primary candidates would seem to be WPF/Silverlight, MFC, Winforms or Win32. Since Winforms/MFC are just thin wrappers over the Win32 APIs I think it would be torturous to try and make an IDE that allowed writing WinForms/MFC but somehow prevented direct Win32 access (especially given the ability to simply use pInvoke from managed code).

chrisdevereux2• 14 years ago

Ah, good spot!

madrona• 14 years ago

What made them make that decision in the first place? Didn't they know it would lead to significant blowback? I bet the VS devs weren't the ones that made it.

WayneDB• 14 years ago

Maybe it's a marketing thing. Controversy breeds attention.

Express for Desktop allows for non-metro development in Visual Studio 2012

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