{"id":913,"date":"2013-07-02T09:30:00","date_gmt":"2013-07-02T09:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.msdn.microsoft.com\/visualstudio\/2013\/07\/02\/visual-studio-performance-providing-feedback\/"},"modified":"2022-10-07T10:57:35","modified_gmt":"2022-10-07T17:57:35","slug":"visual-studio-performance-providing-feedback","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/visualstudio\/visual-studio-performance-providing-feedback\/","title":{"rendered":"Visual Studio Performance \u2013 Providing Feedback"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>With <a href=\"http:\/\/go.microsoft.com\/fwlink\/?LinkId=306566\">VS 2013 Preview now available for download<\/a>, we\u2019re excited to share how we\u2019ve been using the feedback and data you\u2019ve shared with us to drive performance improvements to Visual Studio.\u00a0\u00a0 In this first post, we\u2019ll walk through how we\u2019re prioritizing and scheduling performance investments based on your feedback, and outline the best ways for you to provide additional feedback on performance.\u00a0 We\u2019ll also highlight a few product improvements available for you to try out today.\u00a0 Over the next few weeks, we\u2019ll follow-up with additional blog posts that walk through the details on how we\u2019ve evolved our performance telemetry systems (<a href=\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/visualstudio\/how-we-use-your-perfwatson-data-to-identify-unresponsive-areas\/\">including &#8220;PerfWatson<\/a>\u201d) to make it easier for you to help us find and fix product performance issues you encounter, and we will share with you a sampling of performance gains we\u2019ve made, including improvements to our C++, Web, and core IDE experiences.\u00a0\u00a0 If you are interested in understanding how we\u2019ve factored performance into our engineering plans for some of our newer experiences, there\u2019s some great content already available in <a href=\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/visualstudio\/whats-new-in-visual-studio-2013-preview-for-authoring-windows-store-xaml-apps\/\">Thursday\u2019s post on Windows Store XAML apps<\/a>, and in a few days we\u2019ll share more about how we built the Synchronized Settings capabilities into VS 2013 Preview, keeping performance at the forefront of that experience.<\/p>\n<p>As we share the work we\u2019ve done, we\u2019d especially love to hear back from you in the comments section below about your experiences with the product and the overall usefulness of these performance blog posts.\u00a0 We\u2019ll use this to improve the quality of the content for future blog posts.<\/p>\n<h2>Using your feedback to prioritize performance investments<\/h2>\n<p>With that out of the way \u2013 let\u2019s start by discussing where we look for feedback, and how we\u2019ve been incorporating your feedback into our performance plans.\u00a0 You\u2019ve been very clear that you\u2019d like us to invest further in Visual Studio performance.\u00a0 In fact, since launching our <a href=\"http:\/\/visualstudio.uservoice.com\/\">Visual Studio UserVoice site<\/a>, we received over 5,000 votes requesting that we \u201cImprove the performance of Visual Studio\u201d making it the 4<sup>th<\/sup> highest voted suggestion ever on our site (just under support for better Lambda expression debugging):<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/visualstudio\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2013\/07\/8015.clip_image001_07BA04D3.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-233844 aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/visualstudio\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2013\/07\/8015.clip_image001_07BA04D3.jpg\" alt=\"Image 8015 clip image001 07BA04D3\" width=\"675\" height=\"117\" srcset=\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/visualstudio\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2013\/07\/8015.clip_image001_07BA04D3.jpg 675w, https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/visualstudio\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2013\/07\/8015.clip_image001_07BA04D3-300x52.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 675px) 100vw, 675px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Performance also shows up as an area of particular interest in developer surveys, in <a href=\"http:\/\/connect.microsoft.com\/VisualStudio\">Connect<\/a> bugs, on <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/search?q=visual%20studio%20slow&amp;src=typd\">twitter<\/a>, in <a href=\"http:\/\/stackoverflow.com\/search?q=%5Bvisual-studio-2010%5D+slow\">forums<\/a>, in blog post comments, and most recently through VS 2013 Preview\u2019s Send a Smile feature:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/visualstudio\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2013\/07\/3718.clip_image002_2768DE9B.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-233842 aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/visualstudio\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2013\/07\/3718.clip_image002_2768DE9B.jpg\" alt=\"Image 3718 clip image002 2768DE9B\" width=\"432\" height=\"102\" srcset=\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/visualstudio\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2013\/07\/3718.clip_image002_2768DE9B.jpg 432w, https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/visualstudio\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2013\/07\/3718.clip_image002_2768DE9B-300x71.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 432px) 100vw, 432px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>We pay very close attention to feedback from all of these sources as we plan each release, and combine it with telemetry data from people who have opted into our Customer Experience Improvement Program via \u201cHelp -&gt; Customer Feedback Options\u201d to help us identify where we have the largest opportunity to make an impact on performance.\u00a0 Things that we factor into this decision when prioritizing and scheduling performance investments include:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>How much user feedback have we received about a scenario and how important is the scenario to those users?<\/li>\n<li>Based on performance telemetry, by how much would we have to improve a scenario to really make a <strong>perceptible<\/strong> difference?<\/li>\n<li>Based on feature usage telemetry, how many users would benefit from any given investment?<\/li>\n<li>Do we have enough information on where we need to make a change\/ can we accurately model product usage to ensure we\u2019ve had the intended impact?<\/li>\n<li>Will this be a breaking change, and who else do we need to work with before publishing? (Ex: Popular 3<sup>rd<\/sup> party extension vendors)<\/li>\n<li>What is the opportunity cost to other productivity enhancements we could be making instead?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>For example, one of the top areas of feedback for the past few releases has been about improving solution load times.\u00a0 While we made <a href=\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/visualstudio\/visual-studio-11-beta-performance-part-2\/\">significant improvements in VS 2012<\/a>, looking at performance telemetry (summarized below), there\u2019s still opportunity to further improve this experience in a very perceptible way.\u00a0 (We\u2019ll discuss the work we\u2019ve done to further improve this scenario in more detail in an upcoming blog post \u2013 stay tuned!)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/visualstudio\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2013\/07\/2235.clip_image004_7C244793.gif\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-233841 aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/visualstudio\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2013\/07\/2235.clip_image004_7C244793.gif\" alt=\"Image 2235 clip image004 7C244793\" width=\"649\" height=\"320\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The key thing to note here is that performance work is prioritized and scheduled based on a combination of direct feedback and actual product usage data.\u00a0\u00a0 By choosing to participate in the Customer Experience Improvement Program and trying out product pre-releases like the <a href=\"http:\/\/go.microsoft.com\/fwlink\/?LinkId=306566\">VS 2013 Preview<\/a>, you are influencing where we invest and helping us validate improvements, even if you don\u2019t have time to send us written feedback.<\/p>\n<h2>What about performance bugs?<\/h2>\n<p>Sometimes, performance issues are simply bugs that may not affect a large number of users, but can be very painful or completely blocking to someone who hits an issue.\u00a0 We take these issues very seriously and try to publish workarounds as soon as possible.\u00a0 When the complexity and risk associated with fixing these issues is small, we try to schedule fixes for delivery with our VS updates (like the <a href=\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/bharry\/visual-studio-2012-3-is-released\/\">recent VS 2012 Update 3 release<\/a>).\u00a0 The tools and techniques we use to discover and fix these issues are a little different than our aggregate feedback and telemetry systems.\u00a0 We still use systems like the \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/visualstudio\/how-we-use-your-perfwatson-data-to-identify-unresponsive-areas\/\">PerfWatson<\/a>\u201d system we blogged about last release to auto-detect classes of issues like UI hangs, but we augment this with bug reports filed through <a href=\"http:\/\/connect.microsoft.com\/VisualStudio\">Connect<\/a> &#8211; preferably using the <a href=\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/visualstudio\/the-visual-studio-2012-feedback-tool-a-better-way-to-submit-bugs\/\">Visual Studio Feedback Tool<\/a>\u00a0 [<a href=\"http:\/\/visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com\/f8a5aac8-0418-4f88-9d34-bdbe2c4cfe72\">VS 2012 Download<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com\/563d1003-f0ed-498f-8ef9-f8ee1aac39fe\">VS 2013 Preview Download<\/a>].<\/p>\n<p>While this list certainly isn\u2019t comprehensive, here is a sampling of some of the more notable of performance fixes that were published between VS 2012 RTM and VS 2012 Update 3:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Fixed issues causing a \u201cPlease wait for a background operation to complete\u201d dialog to show when copying code to the clipboard<\/li>\n<li>Fixed hangs on close when trying to access files on remote shares missing a specific Windows Update<\/li>\n<li>Reduced Symbol Loading from 30+ seconds to less than 3 seconds when symbol or source paths were not available [<a href=\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/devops\/vs2012-update-2-brings-symbol-improvements-to-profiler-and-intellitrace\/\">more info<\/a>]<\/li>\n<li>Improved IDE Start scenario when Team Explorer is left open and OS has not yet \u201cwarmed up\u201d by ~600 ms<\/li>\n<li>Reduced VS 2012 Virtual Memory consumption at startup by 95 MB<\/li>\n<li>~99% improvements to specific version control scenarios when working with extra-large TFS repositories (Ex: 600 MB \u2018tf add\u2019 reduced from 2 hours -&gt; 3 min)<\/li>\n<li>Page load times reduced from minutes to seconds when loading TFS work item web pages from deployments with hundreds of team projects<\/li>\n<li>Eliminated a common 6+ second UI hang when saving web application files<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>When fixes are larger in scope, or are likely to break 3<sup>rd<\/sup> party extensions or SDKs that have already shipped on top of the current VS release, we still try to publish workarounds quickly, but may defer a fix until our next VS Release.\u00a0 This gives our partners the time they need to try out the fixes and report any resulting issues, and lets us better coordinate with teams who may also be doing feature work in an impacted area.\u00a0 In addition to the items above, the <a href=\"http:\/\/go.microsoft.com\/fwlink\/?LinkId=306566\">VS 2013 preview<\/a> also includes targeted improvements in the following areas:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Fixed an extra-long hang when working with large numbers of Windows Phone project types and multiple build configurations<\/li>\n<li>Eliminated a common 3-5 second hang when using \u201cShow on Code Map\u201d or its Find all References features.<\/li>\n<li>Eliminated a 7 second hang when trying to bring up the Add Data Binding dialog in the XAML editor<\/li>\n<li>Numerous fixes to improve IDE start-up time<\/li>\n<li>~26% improvement when adding a new Lightswitch Client to a project<\/li>\n<li>Numerous fixes to eliminate delays when opening specific tool windows (Ex: Test Explorer opens up to 1.5 seconds faster)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>When these fixes are combined with new performance features and investments we\u2019ve made across the product, we hope that you\u2019ll find the <a href=\"http:\/\/go.microsoft.com\/fwlink\/?LinkId=306566\">VS 2013 Preview<\/a> to be notably faster than our previous releases.<\/p>\n<h2>Summary and Preview into Upcoming Performance Posts<\/h2>\n<p>I hope this post has been helpful to communicate how we think about and prioritize performance work for Visual Studio based on your feedback.\u00a0 If you\u2019d like to use any of the feedback systems noted above to share your performance suggestions or issues with us, here\u2019s a few quick links to get you started:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Download the <a href=\"http:\/\/go.microsoft.com\/fwlink\/?LinkId=306566\">VS 2013 Preview<\/a> or <a href=\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/bharry\/visual-studio-2012-3-is-released\/\">VS 2012 Update 3<\/a> and opt into the Customer Experience Improvement Program via \u201cHelp-&gt; Customer Feedback Options\u201d<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/visualstudio.uservoice.com\/\">Vote and comment<\/a> on the productivity scenarios you think we should prioritize next on the <a href=\"http:\/\/visualstudio.uservoice.com\/\">Visual Studio UserVoice site<\/a><\/li>\n<li>Download and use the Visual Studio Feedback Tool to report a new performance bug [<a href=\"http:\/\/visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com\/f8a5aac8-0418-4f88-9d34-bdbe2c4cfe72\">VS 2012 Download<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com\/563d1003-f0ed-498f-8ef9-f8ee1aac39fe\">VS 2013 Preview Download<\/a>]<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Over the next few weeks, we\u2019ll be having members of our engineering teams come share details on specific performance features investments we\u2019ve made in VS 2013 for C++ developers, Web Site developers, and to Core IDE experiences.\u00a0 We\u2019ll also share details on advancements we\u2019ve made to our performance telemetry systems to auto-detect and report on key product scenario performance.\u00a0\u00a0 As we do, we\u2019d love your feedback in the comments section below about how we can make performance-related blog posts even better for you.<\/p>\n<table style=\"width: 834px;\" border=\"0\" cellspacing=\"0\" cellpadding=\"2\">\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td valign=\"top\" width=\"142\"><a href=\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/visualstudio\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2013\/07\/5340.clip_image0015_thumb_538D17B4.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-233840 alignnone\" src=\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/visualstudio\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2013\/07\/5340.clip_image0015_thumb_538D17B4.jpg\" alt=\"Image 5340 clip image0015 thumb 538D17B4\" width=\"136\" height=\"149\" \/><\/a><\/td>\n<td valign=\"top\" width=\"690\"><strong>Nathan Halstead<\/strong> &#8211; Program Manager Lead \u2013 Visual Studio Fundamentals Team<\/p>\n<p><strong>Short Bio: <\/strong>Nathan Halstead has worked at Microsoft since 2004, and currently leads a team focused on continuous improvements to Visual Studio performance and reliability.\u00a0 He\u2019s an avid skier, plays in an adult recreational ice hockey league, and loves playing with new technology.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>With VS 2013 Preview now available for download, we\u2019re excited to share how we\u2019ve been using the feedback and data you\u2019ve shared with us to drive performance improvements to Visual Studio.\u00a0\u00a0 In this first post, we\u2019ll walk through how we\u2019re prioritizing and scheduling performance investments based on your feedback, and outline the best ways for [&hellip;]<\/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":[155,1029],"tags":[5,9,53,126,133],"class_list":["post-913","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-visual-studio","category-web","tag-csharp","tag-debug","tag-performance","tag-visual-studio-2013","tag-xaml"],"acf":[],"blog_post_summary":"<p>With VS 2013 Preview now available for download, we\u2019re excited to share how we\u2019ve been using the feedback and data you\u2019ve shared with us to drive performance improvements to Visual Studio.\u00a0\u00a0 In this first post, we\u2019ll walk through how we\u2019re prioritizing and scheduling performance investments based on your feedback, and outline the best ways for [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/visualstudio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/913","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/visualstudio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/visualstudio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/visualstudio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/visualstudio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=913"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/visualstudio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/913\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/visualstudio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/255385"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/visualstudio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=913"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/visualstudio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=913"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/visualstudio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=913"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}