It's interesting to compare this against the JetBrains UI refresh.
From the images, it looks like the VS team just increased the spacing a bit and made some sensible adjustment to the chrome. That's not necessarily a bad decision as screens get larger, but the JetBrains team also reconsidered how elements should be arranged in the UI.
For example, the JetBrains team identified the project-switcher, branch-switcher and run-widget as the most important widgets for the title bar. Nobody still uses undo, redo, save and open buttons so why are they in the VS interface by default? They did the same for their toolbar, their icons [1], the gutter...
As a result, the new JetBrains UI looks significantly cleaner even in compact mode (old spacing + new ui).
Without these fundamental reconsiderations the new VS interface looks just as cluttered, but larger.
> that's not necessarily a bad decision as screens get larger
Maybe true for desktop monitors, but not laptops. They really need to add an optional compact mode if they go with this redesign. Visual Studio is already wasting too much vertical space as is.
Even on laptops it can work when you combine it with other adjustments. For example, in JetBrains, the distance from the top of the window to the first line of code has remained the exact same.
So their compact mode is now actually more compact than before.
From the images, it looks like the VS team just increased the spacing a bit and made some sensible adjustment to the chrome. That's not necessarily a bad decision as screens get larger, but the JetBrains team also reconsidered how elements should be arranged in the UI.
For example, the JetBrains team identified the project-switcher, branch-switcher and run-widget as the most important widgets for the title bar. Nobody still uses undo, redo, save and open buttons so why are they in the VS interface by default? They did the same for their toolbar, their icons [1], the gutter...
As a result, the new JetBrains UI looks significantly cleaner even in compact mode (old spacing + new ui).
Without these fundamental reconsiderations the new VS interface looks just as cluttered, but larger.
[1]: Although the VS icons still hold up well.