Some examples of this presentation are:<\/p>\n
- \n
- Build Solution\u00a0– the status bar found along the bottom of the IDE is updated with the text: \u201cBuild started\u2026\u201d<\/li>\n
- Incorrect code syntax\u00a0– the red \u201csquiggles\u201d found in the editor identify code that is not syntactically correct.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
The second avenue is for E<\/strong>nvironment\/IDE specific notification presentation<\/strong>. Unlike contextual presentation, this type does not need to be surfaced immediately to you. In most cases, you can continue to work in Visual Studio and take action on these messages when it\u2019s convenient for you.<\/p>\n
Some examples of environment\/IDE specific presentation are:<\/p>\n
- \n
- Visual Studio Product Update is available<\/li>\n
- An update to an extension you have installed is available<\/li>\n
- Your trial of Visual Studio will expire soon<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
In Visual Studio 2012, we enhanced the Extension Updates notification mechanism to also notify you of our product updates (get the latest here<\/a>!). When an update is detected, we surface a message as a Windows Task Tray notification.<\/p>\n
![\"task](\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/visualstudio\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2013\/09\/8507.image_thumb_79614B28.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\nBecause of how tray notifications work, you may miss notifications if you happen to step away from your machine. If you dismissed it thinking you would handle it later, there was no way to see it again. We also heard a request from customers to make the text more descriptive of the kind of update that was detected.<\/p>\n
Notifications<\/h2>\n
In Visual Studio 2013, we have centralized the environment\/IDE specific notifications to accommodate the growing number of notifications in the IDE and you\u2019ll find it works similar to the way you work in Visual Studio.<\/p>\n
The new notifications experience will:<\/p>\n
- \n
- Surface notifications that are relevant and specific to your environment<\/li>\n
- Help you easily determine what\u2019s going on in your environment and display priority (based on the importance of the message)<\/li>\n
- Let you decide what you want to take action on and when<\/li>\n
- Stay out of your way; won\u2019t block your code or projects<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
![\"The](\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/visualstudio\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2013\/09\/5775.image_thumb_5FF947EE.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\nThere a two components to the new notifications experience:<\/p>\n
1. Notifications Badge<\/strong> \u2013 The badge has four unique states to provide insight into what the Notifications Hub currently contains and to help identify if new notifications have arrived since the last time you viewed the hub.<\/p>\n
![\"hubs\"](\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/visualstudio\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2013\/09\/6470.image_thumb_5F20E204.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\n2. Notifications Hub<\/strong> \u2013 The hub is where you can review all your notifications and take action on them. Notifications in the hub are sorted based on creation date and time. For example purposes, I have included a critical and informational notification below.<\/p>\n
![\"notification](\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/visualstudio\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2013\/09\/5807.image_thumb_709142DC.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\nWhat You\u2019ll Find in the Hub<\/h2>\n
In Visual Studio 2013 Preview and RC, you may notice one or more of the following types of notifications in your hub. Here\u2019s some additional details on why they are there:<\/p>\n
- \n
- Product Updates<\/strong> \u2013 Future updates for Visual Studio or newly available SDKs<\/li>\n
- Visual Studio Gallery<\/strong> \u2013 Any new update available for extensions you have installed from the gallery<\/li>\n
- Samples Gallery<\/strong> \u2013 Any new updates available for samples you have installed<\/li>\n
- Download Offline Help<\/strong> \u2013 First launch experience has been streamlined and the option to install offline help can now be found as a notification<\/li>\n
- Synchronized Settings Conflicts<\/strong> \u2013 Any conflicts at the time of settings synchronization, will be surfaced via a notification (read an MSDN Article about Resolving settings conflicts<\/a> for more info)<\/li>\n
- Licensing<\/strong> \u2013 Occasionally Visual Studio needs to communicate some information about your license that requires an action; one example is that your trial is expiring<\/li>\n
- Customer Improvement Experience Program<\/strong> \u2013 Join the Customer Experience Improvement Program; it\u2019s one of the easiest ways for you to give us feedback<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
If you\u2019re using the Preview, you might have already noticed a new notification surface in the hub letting you know that the Visual Studio 2013 RC release is available for download<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Prioritization<\/h2>\n
Notifications are prioritized into 3 levels each with a respective color to easily identify them: Informational (gray), Important (yellow) and Critical (red). You\u2019ll find a majority of notifications in your hub to be informational but sometimes when Visual Studio needs to surface something to you that you should take immediate action on, the notification will be marked with a higher priority.<\/p>\n
Taking Action on a Notification<\/h2>\n
You can take action on the notifications in your hub by simply clicking on the title<\/strong> of the notification. This action will bring you to the place where you can decide if you\u2019d like to take action. We won\u2019t auto-install a product or extension update for you, like in the case of a Product or Extension update.<\/p>\n
You\u2019ll see below that after selecting the \u201cWindows Azure SDK for .NET 1.8.1 is available\u201d that the Extensions and Updates manager is opened and focus is in the relevant category of the dialog (Product Updates). Once you have taken the noted action, the notification will automatically be removed from the hub.<\/p>\n
![\"Taking](\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/visualstudio\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2013\/09\/7776.image_thumb_5E487C1A.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\nIf you decide you want to ignore a specific notification, you can simply dismiss<\/strong> it by hovering over the notification and selecting the X in the upper right hand corner or select Dismiss All<\/strong> to remove and ignore all notifications from your hub.<\/p>\n
![\"noti\"](\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/visualstudio\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2013\/09\/8865.image_thumb_500A032A.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\nVisual Studio won\u2019t notify you again about that message unless there has been a change in the details of the notification; maybe you ignored the 1.2 update for an Extension and a week later the 1.3 version is released. You would then see the 1.3 update, but never see the 1.2 update again.<\/p>\n
To ensure the hub doesn\u2019t bloat over time, all notifications have an expiration date that is clearly shown under the notification. Once a notification expires, it will no longer be viewable in the hub. Expired notifications behave in the same way that dismissed notification do; they are removed from the list and will no longer be displayed in the hub. New versions or messages that become available will generate a new notification in the hub for example.<\/p>\n
What do you think?<\/h2>\n
As with most of the new experiences we\u2019ve introduced in Visual Studio 2013 Preview, we believe these are just the first steps for notifying you about relevant activities going on in the IDE. If there\u2019s functionality you\u2019d love to see in the hub or different messages that you\u2019d like to see surfaced, please let us know by creating a suggestion on User Voice<\/a> (in the IDE category) for the community to vote on. If you find a bug use the Connect site<\/a> to let us know.<\/p>\n
A special thanks to the Notifications feature crew for helping review and edit this post (thanks Filip, Andrew and Alana)!<\/p>\n
\n\n
\n ![\"cathy](\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/visualstudio\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2013\/09\/5238.image_thumb_0FD3E9B0.png\")
<\/a><\/td>\nShort Bio<\/strong> \u2013 Cathy Sullivan is a Program Manager on the Visual Studio platform team. Cathy joined Microsoft in 2006 and worked as a developer in Microsoft IT building enterprise applications. She joined the Visual Studio team in 2011 and has worked on a variety of areas including C#\/Visual Basic IDE, Visual Studio Shell and IDE Experiences. When she\u2019s not working on improving user experiences in the IDE, you can find her speaking on what\u2019s new in Visual Studio at conferences like DevConnections, VSLive! and BUILD.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" One of the benefits to having a connected IDE is that your environment can be kept up to date easily by presenting you with notifications of updates and relevant account information. Visual Studio will not only keep your environment up to date but also keep you in control of your preferred configurations. There are two […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":255385,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[155],"tags":[237,1383,653,12,126],"class_list":["post-753","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-visual-studio","tag-net","tag-c","tag-visual-basic","tag-visual-studio","tag-visual-studio-2013"],"acf":[],"blog_post_summary":"
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- Visual Studio Gallery<\/strong> \u2013 Any new update available for extensions you have installed from the gallery<\/li>\n
- Product Updates<\/strong> \u2013 Future updates for Visual Studio or newly available SDKs<\/li>\n