Lorenzo Barbieri, an MVP, pointed out the Orcas splash screen spec that’s been posted.  I’m guessing that’s one of those things that leads to people believing we have an infinite supply of people to develop products, leading to comments like, “I can’t believe you still can’t do X!”  X is everything from viewing labels in history to rolling back changes to assigning work items to groups of people to continuous integration (wait, we’ve got that in Orcas :-).  Here are some excerpts.

The Splash Screen typifies some of the worst aspects of the Visual Studio User Experience. It is flat, rectangular, and uninspiring. This can be seen in Figure 1, which displays Visual Studio 2005’s current Splash Screen. We will enhance its sense of polish and visual design, and make it feel like a consistent part of the Windows experience.

…

When Elvis first heard about Visual Studio Orcas being released, he wasn’t convinced that it was worth upgrading to, especially since he felt as though he had just purchased a copy of Visual Studio 2005.

So, like any frugal developer, Elvis went and downloaded a trial copy of Orcas to test drive.

Elvis could see that Visual Studio Orcas was new and different from the moment he started the application. The changes in the Splash Screen suggested to him immediately that this release was, indeed, different.

What impact does the splash screen have on your impression of the product?

tags: visual studio, orcas