Today I tried to download a training kit for Visual Studio 2008 as it promised all sorts of things like labs, demos, and PowerPoint presentations that might come in handy for user group meetings later on. I was prompted to view the beta page for the new download center that uses Microsoft Silverlight.

I clicked around a little bit and I do have to say that I like the new interface. The download center provided a good search mechanism to find the download I wanted. I was thinking to myself that the least Microsoft could have done would have been to take me to the download I requested instead of the home page when I realized that my download had opened in the original page and that the beta was in a pop-up window. That resolved the one concern that I had while trying to find the training kit. I am sure if I spent more time on the site I could come up with a list of things I like and those that I don't like but for now I am pleased.

My favorite feature was the alphabetical list of downloads. One of my biggest complaints about the MSDN Subscriber download page is that you have to find products by their product family in the tree view. Some products (like SharePoint) have Office in the name but are in the servers branch of the tree. It isn't a big deal to look in a couple of places and I can search by name on that site as well but I really like being able to hover over a letter and see all the downloads that are available.