back to article Microsoft Visual Studio 2012 launch spreads desktop app love

As expected, Microsoft officially launched the latest iteration of its developer tools on Wednesday, including Visual Studio 2012, .Net 4.5, and the surprise debut of a new member of Redmond's Express family of free IDEs, this one for building Windows desktop applications. S. Somasegar, corporate VP of Microsoft's developer …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    Seems they made a mistake....

    If you check the download links for 'Express 2012 for Windows 8' and 'Express 2012 for desktop' you'll notice that both point to the same link (linkid 9816758 for the web installer and 9816768 for the ISO). It seems to me as if someone replaced one version with the other.

    I noticed after I first installed the desktop version and then wanted to install the Windows 8 version. Instead of a new installer I was greeted with the option to either repair or remove the desktop version.

    1. Steve 129

      Re: Seems they made a mistake....

      Doesn't work in Firefox either, so they have done a smack up job on quality control again!!!

      1. AndrueC Silver badge
        Unhappy

        Re: Seems they made a mistake....

        > so they have done a smack up job on quality control again!!!

        It's VS quality control is always patchy.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Launch website broken in Firefox!!

    Page text is displayed for me rather than the actual page.

    Way to go...

    Is this Microsoft doing their usual or is it Firefox introducing yet another minor but irritating bug?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Launch website broken in Firefox!!

      Perfectly fine in latest stable FF here. No problems whatsoever.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Shame it doesn't support Windows XP

    It will not install on Windows XP.

    It will not generate programs that will run on Windows XP, unless you already have the VS2010 version installed to support it and hold it's hand.

    It appears to be pretty superfluous then.

    1. dogged
      WTF?

      Re: Shame it doesn't support Windows XP

      It probably doesn't support Windows 3.1 either. Your point?

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Shame it doesn't support Windows XP

        Well, there are LOTS of people still using XP, so it is a pretty major point I think !!!

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Shame it doesn't support Windows XP

          They're not paying for it though, are they?

          1. Tom 7

            Re: Shame it doesn't support Windows XP

            they have already paid for it financially - and are still paying in more ways than one.

            Imagine if you couldn't get petrol for a seven year old car...

            1. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: Shame it doesn't support Windows XP

              That's retarded.

              A better analogy would be "imagine if you couldn't get the Internet on your seven-old TV".

              Which, in case you hadn't noticed, you can't. Not without buying something \a lot more expensive than a $40 Windows 8 upgrade, anyway. (XP->Win8 faals into the discount range).

    2. localzuk Silver badge
      Thumb Down

      Re: Shame it doesn't support Windows XP

      Why would a brand new development environment support development on a 11 year old OS?

      I'm pretty sure Xcode can't develop apps for the original OS X either... So kinda a pointless comment.

      1. Brangdon

        Re: Shame it doesn't support Windows XP

        According to browser stats, XP has around 42% of the market (Windows 7 only overtook it recently). The IDE doesn't need to run on XP itself, but if you want to sell your software to nearly half the market, you need a compiler that generates XP code.

        The good news is that Microsoft have promised XP-code generation in a patch later this year.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Shame it doesn't support Windows XP

          According to browser stats, XP has around 42% of the market

          But that's not how MS would like it to be.

          I'm currently doing a contract on a secured site (with the .gov.uk email address and everything!) where all the desktop clients are XP because it's been SC cleared for a million years and government doesn't have any money right now. However - and this is really important - nobody in the IT and Dev departments is doing any work on XP outside of Outlook.

          We all connect to Windows Server desktops via RDC to do any work. I spoke with the manager here yesterday and he says this will continue once Win8 is released with a change to Win7 virtualised instances because the licensing costs for that will drop as soon as MS is pushing the new shiny.

          MS don't want to support XP because they don't want people to run it. Even the slowest of the slow are moving away from it and taking advantage of virtualisation.

          And anyway, if you're determined to keep your 11 year old OS, you can just keep your 2 year old IDE to write code for it as well.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Hoisted upon me.

    I'm using this at work for WP8 development - don't like the interface as much as VS2010. For anyone else who has no choice but to use this, it looks much less crap in the dark theme.

  5. Dave 15

    Hope its not as bad as the steaming pile of crud called windows 7

    I mean I can't even do a find in files without adding a 3rd party application. Microsoft - I have been a long time fan but you have gone off the rails big time. Sort yourselves out or I am off to the horrible mess called linux.

  6. Charles Calthrop
    WTF?

    error installing on windows 8

    I tried the visual studio express web edition and it would not install on windows 8

    1. Captain Scarlet

      Re: error installing on windows 8

      Have you turned if off and on again?

      Is it plugged in?

  7. Nameless Faceless Computer User
    Devil

    Visual Studio used to be a great IDE. Now, it gets all entangled with the rest of the operating system, is constantly going out to the Net, and the off-line help pages have been destroyed. Want help with the syntax of an API? No longer can you simply click help. Now, asking for help brings you to the MSN Forums along with many others all asking the same question, "What is up with this?"

  8. Semaj
    Windows

    Desktop Apps?

    Those would be "programs" for us old late 20's people then?

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