Dear Visual Studio development team,
Visual Studio 2012 is utter garbage. I cannot think of a single respect in which it is better than its predecessor. How many developer-hours were spent on this release? Visual Studio 2010 is simply a better product:
1) VS2012 is so ugly as to constitute a usability problem. In Solution Explorer, for example, I am having trouble visually distinguishing a folder from a file from a project etc. And I've actually removed all toolbars from under the main menu bar because I can't tell what's what anyway. I'll just learn the keyboard shortcuts for anything I needed those buttons for.
2) No more macros?!? In a product whose users are software developers?!? I'm absolutely shocked! Even amateur-developed, free, fringe text editors have macro support nowadays. And a product we pay thousands for does not.
3) In the age of Google, Visual Studio's search functionality hasn't been meaningfully enhanced in > 10 years. What if I know the string I'm looking for is, for example, in a comment? I still have to wade through 10,000 matches in variable names and string literals? VS throws away the information I bring to the situation and inundates me with noise, leaving it up to me to find the signal? Modern applications, guys, are now well into the thousands of source files.
4) You've given up all attempt to sync SE with the file I'm currently editing, making me click a button to do it?
5) We still can't apply settings changes without closing the "Options" window? Change font/color, close options window to see result, re-open options window to try another setting, ... ?
When I installed a CTP VS2012, and I saw all these problems, and the trouble to which MS was going to get feedback, I was absolutely sure the released product wouldn't have them. Sorry to say I was wrong. You've spent precious developer time making the UI significantly worse, and not much else.
I won't be moving any of my projects to this version. I can only hope you listen to the hue and cry and fix them in the next one.