I installed Visual Studio 2008 this week.* First thing I noticed? No status bar. Uwah??? Oh, it’s probably off by default, like most of the toolbars. I bet if I right click on the toolbar I can show it. No? Well then the View menu. No? Window? Team? Analyze? Debug? Build? No. No no no no no!

Tools >> Options >> Environment >> General – check “Show status bar”.

Whichever UX engineer decided that developers do not want the status bar to be shown as a defaulted option is either a sadist or someone that has never met a developer. Whoever authorized this as the default option needs to be dragged over a field of broken glass and dripped in alcohol. If it’s a missed bug, I’m appalled because it means that someone wasn’t running with either a clean machine or migrated their options from VS2005. If it’s a found bug, and Triage decided to simply release note it, they also get the field of broken glass but they get to get dipped in lemon juice and rolled in sugar. In case you couldn’t tell, you’re pretty much boned without a visible status bad: you don’t even know when a build is done, without it.

And I don’t care who it was – even if it was BillG himself – but whoever decided to hide the bloody “Show status bar” on the Options dialog [that has at least 500 set-able options] rather than making it available on the View menu or context-sensitive toolbar menu, well, they’re just wrong to put it there.
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