Suggestion: Please make a Visual Studio Solution Explorer that is similar to Windows 8 Start Screen

Question

We have monitors now that are enormous and it is now the norm to develop on three or more monitors.  Yet we still try to crowd project navigation info that pleads to be fully visualized into a tiny window as if expanding it is somehow a waste of space.
I mention Windows 8 start screen in the title of this post.  I have no particular love for the start screen except that it is a different spin on a strict hierarchical display of information.  I like that it has the objective of using all available
screen space to present information that would otherwise be shown in a tiny corner of the screen.  So my suggestion in its most general form is for you guys to find a way to use the entire screen to allow a developer to quickly and easily navigate a large
VS project.
For example, even if I fully expand the Solution Explorer to take up the space of an entire monitor the top level nodes of my project take up a tiny fraction of the available screen space - I have to drill down up to 12 levels to reach my files.  And when
I get to the point where I think I see the file I want, the higher level folders have scrolled off the screen so I loose my place in the project.
A couple of suggestions for a new Solution Explorer:
Edit: Make the Solution Explorer more like the Windows 8 Start screen or a file directory browser in the sense that Start Screen is a full-screen navigation screen versus a control that is primarily desigend to be docked.  If I maximize Solution Explorer
on my monitor the MOST screen space it will use is about 20% down the left edge of my screen.  Even with 80% of my screen left EMPTY, I am clicking and clicking and scrolling and clicking and scrolling in order to navigate to where I need to be. /Edit
Show an always-visible breadcrumb across the top of the window so the user can navigate up quickly and also maintain a sense of location within the project.
Show folders and files horizontally and vertically.  USE THE ENTIRE WINDOW! Allow different views just as we see in Windows file explorer.
Allow (large) user defined icons to be associated with projects, folders and files.  Instead of showing the same icon for every project in a solution, default to a unique icon.  Thats why we use icons, right?
Allow projects and folders to have foreground/background color properties.
"Scope to this" on the context menu is great... please add the root name on the tab.
It would also be very helpful to display the full directory and solution name on the VS title bar to avoid confusion when working with different versions of the same project.  There are a couple add-ons that do this... why has it become necessary for add-ons.

Answer 1

Hi SWheaties,
Thanks for posting in the MSDN forum.
You could submit this feature request: http://visualstudio.uservoice.com/forums/121579-visual-studio. The Visual Studio product
team is listening to user voice there. You can send your idea there and people can vote. If you submit this suggestion, I hope you could post that link here, so other community members who are interested in this issue will help you vote it. If
it gets more votes, the product team expert would think about adding it as a new feature in the future product. Thanks for your understanding.
Best Regards,
Jack
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