It's not as easy to differentiate the toolbar icons from one another as it was in past editions. I find the UI too flat and too dark for my tastes. I have to say upfront that I'm not fan of the new UI changes. If you're used to any of the earlier editions of Visual Studio, one the first things about Visual Studio 2012 that will jump out at you is the new UI. For more information about the different editions of Visual Studio 2012, see the sidebars ' Visual Studio 2012 Editions' and ' Visual Studio Express 2012 Editions.' Now, let's dive into some of the major new features that you'll find in Visual Studio 2012. One of the most obvious changes is the fact that there's an all-new set of Visual Studio editions. Visual Studio 2012 is a huge release with more features than I can mention in a single article. Certainly, Windows 8 development is a big part of the new Visual Studio 2012 release - but that's not all. In the keynote address at the Visual Studio 2012 launch, Soma Somasegar, Microsoft's corporate vice president of the Developer Division, noted there were 600,000 downloads of Visual Studio 2012. With that said, there's no doubt that the big draw to Visual Studio 2012 is the ability to build Windows 8 applications. Team development capabilities make Visual Studio 2012 a unified Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) solution. Built-in test tools help you create high-quality applications and bridge the gap between IT and developers.

Microsoft's latest release of its flagship development product, Visual Studio 2012, addresses the need to build a wide range of applications as well as embraces agile development methodologies. They expect applications to be simpler and to run on a wide variety of devices. Users have changing expectations of applications. In the past couple of years, building modern applications has been substantially more difficult because of the growing consumerization of IT.

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