Microsoft Overhauls Developer Portal

Microsoft has overhauled the portal designed for its developer community introducing a new look and feel to MSDN. The Microsoft Developer Network redesign is currently live, as all visitors to the website will be able to notice, be they actual MSDN subscribers, developers or just plain vanilla end users. In case you want to take a look at the old design of the portal, TechNet continues to offer users the possibility of a comparison. Traditionally, at least design-wise, Microsoft has always married MSDN and TechNet, but now there are no indications that an overhaul is also in the works for the company’s portal dedicated to IT professionals.

MSDN “has been refreshed! Please take a look and let us know what you think. Here are the three managed languages sites, where our team aggregates Visual Basic, Visual C#, and Visual F# content,” revealed Lisa Feigenbaum, Visual Studio Languages Community Program Manager.

The MSDN redesign involves a fixed size template, unlike the old elastic design, which tailored the widths of the content to that of the browser window. The new style of the Microsoft Developer Network is much cleaner than before, offering visitors less information, but with the feeling that there is now a stronger focus into the highlights that are presented up front. The overall structure of the webpage was kept, although the middle section was shrunk down in order to accommodate the much narrower template. The one thing that I’m missing is the submenus that adapted contextually to the item selected on the portal’s main menu, but it doesn’t appear to be something that I can’t do without.

Of course, the redesign does not stop with the main page. In fact, the Redmond company has made sure that various sections of the MSDN portal, built around specific products, also feature the new look and feel. “The MSDN Office, SharePoint, and VSTO Developer Center are blue now and match the super cool new MSDN branding and experience,” noted Erika Ehrli, site manager, ODC.