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Available on Visual Studio 2017, Installer, and newer releases
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Disabled startpage is opened when project is closed
Steps to reproduce: - Disable the startpage to an empty environment - Open a project - Close the project -> Now the startpage is opened
@Visual Studio Team @Allison Buchholtz-Au The new behaviour is super annoying, like those other users I disable the start page for a reason.
Stop taking my away from my "Gated build" page when closing the project
Stop taking me away from Source Control Explorer.
Why, just why would you force the start page (useful or not) on us.
@Visual Studio Team, I agree with others here that the new Start Page behavior is super annoying! A start page should only show at startup. Close Solution should not show a start page because it's not the start of anything.
This behavior annoyed me so much that I added an "Auto-close Start Page" option to my (free) Menees VS Tools 2017 extension. The option is off by default because I don't want my extension to change VS behavior for everyone (since people primarily use it for other things), but this option is available now to those that want it. It's not perfect though because my extension has to wait for the Start Page to be displayed before I can close it, so it's still visible for an instant. But this option is better than nothing.
I'm still flabbergasted that Microsoft considers this new Start Page behavior a feature. Like others here, when I close a solution, I just want Source Control Explorer showing. If I've told VS to show an empty environment at startup (in lieu of the stupid Start Page), why on earth would I want the Start Page shown after I close a solution?
@Bill Menees (or anyone else expressing this sentiment) I'd like to understand better what annoys you so about the appearance of the start page. We do consider that if the user closes a solution, they are likely going to start something else, and the Start page is as applicable then as when VS is first launched. At least, for most users. But as you don't fit that mold, I'm curious about two things:
- Why you don't find Start useful. I get that everything it offers is either useless or available elsewhere. But why aren't you inclined to activate these features via the Start page? Is it less convenient for keyboard use, for example?
- Why would a "useless" Start page annoy you so as opposed to just being an ignorable feature like many other features in VS that you perhaps don't find useful? As the Start page also self-closes when you open your next solution (regardless of how you open it), doesn't it get out of your way before it actually gets in your way? I'd be very interested in any explanation you can offer as to why it's not a UI feature you can just ignore.
Thanks.
When I close a solution I'm preparing to do some "big" source control operation that I want (or sometimes need) to do outside of a solution. When I close a solution, I just want Source Control Explorer and Team Explorer visible. VS respects my environment settings for other tool windows. For example, the Properties window hides when I close a solution, and that's what I prefer. That way my Team Explorer tool window fills the whole right side of VS when I close a solution, and the Source Control Explorer fills the document area.
The most annoying thing about the new Start Page behavior is that it's just in the way for those of us that don't use it or want it. VS already has a setting for whether we want to see the Start Page, and when we set it to "Show Empty Environment" VS should respect that everywhere like it has for every prior version of VS that supports a Start Page. It's very annoying that VS now treats the Start Page like it's some super important window that everyone must have. I've been using VS since 2002 and various VC++ versions before that. I don't need or want the Start Page. I set my Recent list max items to 24 for files and solutions, so I get to those things via the File's recent menus.
The Start Page not only provides zero value to me, it's actually a drawback because it gets in my way when I'm trying to do an important source control operation. Before I updated my Menees VS Tools extension to auto-close the Start Page in VS 2017, I had to waste my time manually closing it to get it out of my way (because the Start Page acts like it's more important than Source Control Explorer). Maybe I'm just an old geezer, but I don't like having my development workflow forcibly changed just because Microsoft deems the "new and improved" Start Page so super awesome that I shouldn't live without it even after I've set an environment setting explicitly stating that I don't want to see it. I'm just grateful that VS is extensible enough that I can auto-close it and only have to see it for a few milliseconds.
I use both. When accessing the Recents List, I use the File menu. Everything I need is on the file menu - Recent, New, Open. I don't need the start page for that.
@Andrew Branoff can you elaborate on what you mean by "VS immediately closes that project right after opening it"? Do you mean the solution immediately closes when you open it from the Start Page Recents? This was a bug in an older build but if you're still experiencing this problem, I'd love to get more information to figure out if there's been a regression.
@Andrew Arnott the reason the start page is useless is what I want is source control explorer. I have it open and it remains open when I close an existing solution, before being covered by the newly opened start page. If I had the option to open that instead of start page on the close of a solution that would be actually wonderful.
As for why it is an annoyance, it comes up every time, it pops up, becomes the active tab, and needs to be closed or clicked away from, to get back to the source control explorer, which is the only other tab still open after I close the solution. It's like a popup ad, gets in the way and needs closing before I can actually do what I wanted to do in the first place. It may be there only a few seconds at a time, but time adds up, and it's extra steps that hinder productivity.
Thanks, @Andrew Branoff. That helps. We were speculating earlier today based on earlier comments that this might be what the issue is. We'll get a bug opened to track fixing this behavior, at least for the Source Control Explorer case. I can't promise when or if it will be fixed, but at least it'll have a shot. Thank you for your explanation.
@Andrew Arnott I think @Bill Menees and @Andrew Branoff both nailed it on the head. I don't use Source Control Explore as much as they do, but I do wish MS would respect the settings like they've done in the past. I personally like a clean environment when I close a solution and get ready to open another one. You may think it's the greatest thing since sliced bread, but Andrew is right, it's a pop up ad and an annoying one at that.
Thanks, everyone. I'm glad the reasoning for the sentiment is largely the same for all of you, as it maximizes the chance we can fix it for everyone.
For the record, the setting that several folks keep referring to isn't being ignored in VS2017. The setting has been and still is specifically for Startup. It's in the Tools->Options->Startup section, after all. It never controlled behavior other than Startup. But I take your request to mean that you'd like us to expand the scope of that setting to include other scenarios that involve the Start page.
We've talked internally about removing that setting altogether since it's unused by almost everyone and we're trying to simplify the UX. Please understand we're not pushing the Start page as if it were an ad. We enhanced it in VS 2017 specifically to be a one-click way to jump to your next task. For example, instead of File menu -> MRU list -> MRU item (at least 3 clicks), it's just one with the Start page. The presence of the Start page isn't meant to be intrusive (as the overlapping SCE is showing is a problem) but meant to offer greater efficiencies for you. Most folks like it. So it's unlikely we'll revert its presence, but we do want to alleviate the pain it creates for you.
BTW, some folks here have railed against the News column as useless. Are you aware in VS2017 we added the ability for you to hide the news on the start page?
I don't understand how removing the setting simplifies the user experience. Removing a setting from an options UI that I visit at best once a month makes almost no impact. Forcing an unwanted popup into the main UI path that I experience daily does the opposite. Removing this setting might simplify the UI code on your end but it certainly doesn't simplify UX for me.
There are well over 50 disparate projects and solutions in our organization. I'm not always working on the same couple day in and day out that the start page would hold as recent items. For these my quickest option is always to go right to Source Control Explorer, since I know where in our tree the project lives, and open the solution from there. The other major downside of the recent lists, either in the start page or in the file recent menu, is that it quickly gets polluted with branches. If I have two or more branches of the same project and launch each one, the other relevant solutions quickly get evicted from my recent list, rendering it useless for me.
Sure, there are a few projects I could keep pinned since I tend to frequent them, but for the rest that I need to pop in and out of the start page does not work for me. I've always had the habit of keeping Source Control Explorer as a pinned tab and I'd like it to stay that way and keep the focus when I close a solution.
This bug reminds me of the UPPERCASE MENUBARS and black-and-white icons in Visual Studio 2012.
The Visual Studio team came up with all sorts of arguments for why they were right and the users were wrong. They even said that only a tiny minority of users hated the fantastic new feature, and most users loved it.
They had to return to Mixed Case menubars and colored icons in a later version. It's true, very few people went into the registry to turn off the UPPERCASE MENUS. However, most people never change any options anyway. They just suffer quietly as their MENUS SHOUTED AT THEM.
Designing a program using this kind of "telemetry" is like driving your car into a river because the GPS said there was a bridge there. Here's some alternate telemetry that the Visual Studio team is ignoring.
There are 103 people following this bug right now!
For comparison, the third most upvoted bug on Developer Community right now is "High CPU usage in VS2017" and has 114 people following. This bug is so annoying that it has almost as many followers as a bug that spins your CPU fan at full speed!@Tao Yue We judge popularity of an issue based on vote count, not followers. A brand new issue immediately has at least 81 followers, for example, due to tooling that automatically "follows" issues. And another ten or so get added later and are internal Microsoft people who are watching for feedback like yours. By that measure, this issue currently has 3 votes and the CPU usage one you called out has 32 votes. So no, we're talking an order of magnitude difference between these two issues.
OK, so subtract 91 to get the true count of followers. That means this issue has 12 followers, and "High CPU usage in VS2017" has 23 followers. That's not an order of magnitude. That's a factor of 2.
If anything, this shows how misleading telemetry can be when you just look at the raw numbers. Whether it's 103 vs 114, or 12 vs 23, you can't make sense of the numbers without considering the context.
There are plenty of other complaints about the Start page:
- Closed months ago as Not a Bug: https://developercommunity.visualstudio.com/content/problem/3456/file-close-solution-always-shows-start-page.html
- Here's someone who hated the Start page so much that he wrote his own, only to be told that customization has been removed in VS 2017: https://developercommunity.visualstudio.com/content/problem/5501/custom-start-page-not-working-anymore-from-visual.html
- Users are even writing extensions to get rid of the Start page: https://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/vstudio/en-US/4f59de7c-715e-4f42-93d4-5e13efd626e3/visual-studio-2017-disable-start-page?forum=visualstudiogeneral
Now count how many times the word "annoying" has appeared in the comments of this bug and the other bugs.
This is not some complicated bug to fix, or something that is likely to cause a regression. The code to show the Start page simply has to be wrapped in an if statement.
@Andrew Arnott It doesn't make @Tao Yue wrong. Just because you don't get complaints from everyone doesn't mean that people like the feature. Even I don't put out complaints too much most of the time, I just suffer in silence through bad decisions and bad 'features' because I can't be bothered to go through processes. I found this page looking for a solution to the issue, and this is an issue, both the start page opening as the active tab no matter what when a project closes and the jump list opening then immediately closing the solution chosen are issues.
> the jump list opening then immediately closing the solution chosen are issues
This sounds like a (distinct) problem. I'm not aware of this one. Is there another issue filed for it? There was a problem (independent of the jump list) where solutions would close immediately after they were opened that was due to a bug in Team Explorer when the solution was in TFVC source control. Does what you're describing fit that?
This new behaviour in 2017 is very annoying. In ALL previous versions of Visual Studio, the Show Empty Environment option would prevent the start page from ever appearing in any scenario. I prefer a minimalist environment and simply don't want to see the start page ever. I think most people would be happy for this behaviour to be restored to the original way it worked in previous versions - no need to over complicate things with new settings.
All well and good, but why should we have to do this, why can't this be a setting in the software, rather than one we have to create with regedit?
@Andrew Branoff We'll need to review the usefulness of adding yet another option. There are people who do benefit from the behavior and we'll do our research as to what the next steps should be and share it in a future release.
For now, the workaround should be good enough we hope.
> There are people who do benefit from the behavior
Who are these people? I am genuinely curious what type of user does not want the Startup screen when VS first launches, but does want it to appear every time after closing a Solution.
I'm using VS2017 15.2 and I see multiple nodes under Microsoft\VisualStudio\15.0_{random} each with their own StartPage sub-key, and one was missing the key as well. I first added it to the one ending in "{random}_Config" but it didn't work - I needed to add the DisableOpenOnCloseSolution value to all the keys for it to work.
Thanks, this really is a helpful add-on (that shouldn't be needed.) However, I've now exchanged one annoying UX behaviour (the Start Page being opened uninvited every time you close a Solution) for another annoying "feature" of VS2017. Now, every single time I start VS there's a yellow pop up bar that says "Menees VS Tools is slowing down Visual Studio".
What is it with Microsoft devs? They seem to have an uncanny ability to do exactly the wrong thing without fail. They seem to have a constant, pathological need to push their latest, shiniest feature in your face. Repeatedly. Instead of just telling you about it once, providing a button that says "don't show this message again", or best of all letting you disable all such unsolicited advice in Settings.
Hi @Rachel Pierson, I'm sorry to hear about your experience. I don't know what "Menees VS Tools" is. I thought that information bar did actually have a "don't show me this again" link, as I agree with you it makes sense for it to not get in your face repeatedly. Can you use Report a Problem for that issue separate from this one so that it can be routed to the owning team and tracked to resolution independently?
I'm going to pretend you did not just say "I don't know what Menees VS Tools is" in a comment that is a response to a Solution that contains an actual link to it.
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