When was the last time you saw the word poor used to describe a feature of a Microsoft product? Wait. Before you answer that question let me elaborate a little. Sure the slash-dotters are constantly slamming Microsoft products and technologies but when was the last time you saw realistic assessments of Microsoft products on a official Microsoft website?
Kent Sharkey, over at MSDN Microsoft, is helping change the way information is shared from Microsoft. He has started a new VS 2005 blog and his latest post is a winner. Kent has started posting change logs and status reports from the various .NET teams on the MSDN website. You can check out what is going on in your favorite tool. Here is an excerpt from the Windows forms team:
| Designer Features |
| Document Outline |
Fair |
| Smart tags |
Fair |
| Snaplines |
Good |
| Edit Properties mode |
Poor |
Read the entire log for more information.
This is wonderful news! A great big step in the right direction. Sharing this kind of information is helpful when trying to understand what the current status is of a .NET product. If you trying the beta software it helps to know what's going on with the version that you currently have. So far it appears that it is only for .NET software - no sight of Longhorn information yet.
I'm hoping this flow of information continues unabated.