If Monty Hammontree and his team continue to ignore the community feedback like so far, this is the macro that you need to fix the ALL CAPS of the main menu of VS 11:
Sub NoALLCAPS()
Dim commandBar As Microsoft.VisualStudio.CommandBars.CommandBar
commandBar = CType(DTE.CommandBars, Microsoft.VisualStudio.CommandBars.CommandBars).Item("MenuBar")
For Each control As Microsoft.VisualStudio.CommandBars.CommandBarControl In commandBar.Controls
control.Caption = StrConv(control.Caption, VbStrConv.ProperCase)
Next
End Sub
Disclaimer: I haven’t tested it in VS 11, I created a similar one to set ALL CAPS in VS 2010 just for fun and I got dismayed 😉
Oops! they removed the Macro IDE…
Hi Carlos,
Do you mean you still disagree about the UI change which will be done in the beta ? Could you elaborate about that ? I would like to hear your opinion on this matter.
Hello Laurent,
Yes, my personal opinion is that I still disagree (although I haven’t seen the RC yet, only the screenshots). I have read hundred of comments in the last weeks about the new UI of VS 11 Beta and what people were complaining and what Microsoft has responded is the following:
1. Complaint: The UI is too gray, too depressing, too boring. Microsoft answer: we will use a lighter gray in the RC.
2. Complaint: We want much more color. Microsoft answer: we have added some pixels of color to some most used buttons and icons, and a full colored statusbar (which nobody asked).
3. Complaint: We want the option of a VS 2010 theme. Microsoft answer: silence (that is, no)
4. Complaint: We don’t like Metro. Microsoft answer: more Metro, now the main window too.
5. Complaint: We much dislike the ALL CAPS in toolwindows captions. Microsoft answer: no problem, we move the ALL CAPS to the main menu (which is visible all the time!!! At least you could hide the toolwindows…)
The #5 is so huge that its feedback is now eclipsing all the other ones (one could even think that done on purpose with that intention, because it was clear in the feedback of VS 11 Beta that people hate ALL CAPS). I am almost sure that Microsoft will remove the ALL CAPS in the RTM (leaving Office 15 as the sponsor of that change) and it will seem that everybody is happy then with VS 11 RTM.
I understand that UI changes are a matter of taste, and that somebody will like them, others will hate them and others will get used to them at some point, but there is one fundamental problem here: Microsoft is enforcing a very controversial new UI to a tool that people use many hours per day and will not give the chance of using the old VS 2010 theme for whoever dislikes/hates the new dark/light themes. This lack of backwards customization is irritating for many people.
Apart from that, and specific only to developers of extensions, we have now to adapt ours add-ins, packages, etc. to the new UI style. This has nothing to do with my opinion (although it’s a lot of work) and happened also in the transition from VS.NET 2003 (8-bit color) to VS 2005 (24-bit color).