Someone over there has clearly been reading tufte although I think in some cases (the new all gray icons) they've gone overboard.
Overall the strategy of moving the interface into the background and the content you're building into the foreground is great. I want my eyes drawn to what I'm building not 50 other ui elements. The metro style icons IMO are a bit hard to distinguish from eachother but anything I used regularly I'd have a keyboard shortcut for anyway and the new command search handles the rest. I think they're on the right track.They're minimizing any mental activity that's taking focus away from actually coding and that's a good thing.
Overall the strategy of moving the interface into the background and the content you're building into the foreground is great. I want my eyes drawn to what I'm building not 50 other ui elements. The metro style icons IMO are a bit hard to distinguish from eachother but anything I used regularly I'd have a keyboard shortcut for anyway and the new command search handles the rest. I think they're on the right track.They're minimizing any mental activity that's taking focus away from actually coding and that's a good thing.