I have sympathy for ‘Softies who don’t like the controversial ‘Metro’ UI changes but are afraid to say so. After all, who wants to commit a CLM (Career-Limiting Move) by declaring that the Emperor has no clothes (or gradients) and that ALL CAPS IN MENUS ARE DUMB?

Talk about power! Here’s a higher-up (anyone got a name?) who has enforced a flat, monochrome, uninteresting user interface in Visual Studio 2012  that has been damned with faint praise by consumers. The pushback must have been enormous.

Some ‘Softies disengage from the raging debate with, “It’s not my decision” while others feebly point out that the addition of some colour pixels in the icons is a real improvement over the beta version. True, I guess.

With the UI pretty much locked, its down to repairing the damage. Fortunately, some Empire dissident has leaked the news to a blogger that  those SHOUTING CAPs aren’t hardcoded afterall:

How To Prevent Visual Studio 2012 ALL CAPS Menus

And so it goes. By RTM, I’m sure there will be many more add-ons to help us ‘de-Metro’ VS 2012 and recreate our favourite Visual Studio 2010 themes for it.