I’ve listened to tons of programmers and DBAs complain about the look of Windows Azure. But, I’m friends with several design people, work with some pretty darned good designers at Red Gate, and I live in sin with a graphic artist (AKA: Mrs. Scary). While the developers and DBAs complain, lots of the designers seem pretty happy with it. Microsoft has a pretty serious team working on it. You can see an interview with them that tells you a little bit about how they did it. I thought it was interesting.
And don’t forget, that little contest to win a car ends in just over a week. This is almost your last chance to connect your MSDN account to a zero-cost Azure account and enter for a chance. Or not. I’m entered too and I’d rather win than see one of you get it.
I’ve worked with the main Azure Dashboard a while and I like it. There were some issues early on that annoyed me, but those have since been fixed (I can’t blame weird org ig/live id conflicts on them, that’s a different group altogether). The documentation seems to be readable and follow the same design. I couldn’t speak to the main Azure website, even when I need a new version of the SDK that’s only a few seconds every 6 months or so.
Although it’s also possible they are talking about the separate Azure SQL dashboard (the silverlight one you get for managing the DB directly). It is a catastrophe. Whoever thought that a list of databases could best be represented by a set of tiles missed most of their design school classes. The interface is a mix of some of the new RT style guide (tiles, some text spacing/colors other places the padding is missing) combined with visual studio 2012 styling (grey, flat icons – inconsistently colored two different shades of grey), and a mishmash of other things.
The Silverlight portal is a nightmare. Although there are some really cool functional things within it. I do like the new execution plans. I was hoping to see some of that in 2014, but no luck.
Side point – if it’s “in sin”, wouldn’t it be “Ms. Scary” ?!?!?!?!
Ha! Nice one. We may or may not be legal.