I have been using Visual Studio 2013 for a while now (Preview, RC and now RTM) and one thing that I believe can improve the development experience is the Team Explorer - Home window/hub. This is what it looks like now:
Figure: The Home hub in VS2013 Team Explorer
So these are static elements and not very informational. What I find when I'm using the Team Explorer window is that I'm usually in the My Work or Pending Changes hubs and that I rarely use the Home hub.
I don't see the home screen as being useful at all when I can also get to the hubs using the dropdown menu
Figure: Bypass the Home hub using the dropdown
What would make me use the Home hub more is if there was useful information presented on it:
Figure: Good example - The home dashboard provides useful information at a glance without the user needing to click into each hub
What I like about this mockup is that it makes the Home hub more useful for a developer with live information without needing to go into each hub.
So at a glance I can know:
- what I'm currently working on,
- what changes I have to commit,
- how the last build went and if it's safe to get latest
- who the last person to checkin code was
I understand that having this live information will impact on performance of this window (which is what the VS team spent a lot of time trying to optimize in VS2012 and VS2013), but I feel that the information is useful enough for this to be an opt in option that can be turned on in Settings
Agree? Disagree? I would love to know your thoughts...
EDIT: Added a user voice suggestion. If you agree please vote :)