[nfbcs] FW: Come try VS2019 Preview 1! (Was Please hold off on VS2019 Preview 1)

[Rasmussen, Lloyd]

Dante Gagne from Microsoft has been working with folks on the Program-L listserv for several months now, and the results are starting to come in. So if you're interested in using Visual Studio, you should probably join program-l, which is on freelists.org.

Lloyd Rasmussen, Senior Staff Engineer
National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped, Library of Congress
Washington, DC 20542   202-707-0535
http://www.loc.gov/nls/
The preceding opinions are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Library of Congress, NLS.

From: program-l-bounce at freelists.org <program-l-bounce at freelists.org> On Behalf Of Dante Gagne
Sent: Tuesday, December 11, 2018 3:04 PM
To: program-l at freelists.org
Subject: [program-l] Come try VS2019 Preview 1! (Was Please hold off on VS2019 Preview 1)

Hey folks,

I was pretty upset when I sent the e-mail last week warning folks away from VS2019 Preview 1, mostly because we've been so proud of the release and we've all been excited to get it in the hands of our developers. To have such a blocking issue was downright heartbreaking.

HOWEVER...

I brought this up to my management chain, and yesterday we went live with a servicing update for the preview. To put that in context, this is the FIRST time in 16 years that I can remember that we've not just said "Oh, it can wait until the next preview sometime in the future", but instead took a servicing fix for a preview. Additionally, the ONLY fixes in the servicing patch were the accessibility fixes in the Visual Studio Search and the Initial "Get To Code" experience that Florian pointed out. This wasn't a "We're already servicing for X, Y and Z... let's add the accessibility fixes" but a genuine "This is important enough to service JUST for these issues."

I'm very, very happy to say that if folks are interested in VS2019 Preview 1, you can now go ahead and download it. As long as you get the V1.1 update, the accessibility issues should be fixed.

Anyone who is interested can download it from here: https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/vs/preview/

I'm not going to lie, I'm really happy and impressed that "We've got two serious bugs that ONLY impact screen reader users" got a genuine fire drill with folks working over the weekend to fix it and a service to a Preview release. My development team is also changing their thoughts here, actively thinking "Accessibility bugs can't just fly under the wire... fix them or get a panic later."

I understand folks are busy, and I certainly understand if folks aren't willing/able to grab a preview release... but if anyone WAS hearing about the new features in VS2019 and were interested in checking it out... you can NOW do so.

Thanks all...
--Dante

PS: I'm currently working on getting some additional folks here at Microsoft (representatives from VS Code, VS for Mac and Azure) onto this list to address specific concerns very soon. I'll send out introductions later in the week. I'm not sure they'll be quite as active as I am, but I'm sure they'll have more familiarity with those features than myself and can probably respond more quickly.

From: program-l-bounce at freelists.org<mailto:program-l-bounce at freelists.org> <program-l-bounce at freelists.org<mailto:program-l-bounce at freelists.org>> On Behalf Of Dante Gagne
Sent: Wednesday, December 5, 2018 2:55 PM
To: program-l at freelists.org<mailto:program-l at freelists.org>
Subject: [program-l] Please hold off on VS2019 Preview 1

Hey folks,

I can't begin to express how embarrassed I am to admit this, but I'd like to recommend that folks wait until Preview 2 of Visual Studio 2019 for evaluation. As Florian has pointed out, the new initial experience which is supposed to make it easier to open solutions and the like is completely broken from a screen reader perspective.

There's no pretty way to say it, but this entire experience got past us, and what we released is simply not compatible with screen readers. I'm actively following up with the dev team to fix this and make sure it doesn't happen again.

To repeat, please hold off on VS2019 Preview 1, and I sincerely hope that Preview 2 will fix these blocking issues.

--Dante