Today we made a new version of Cloud Storage Studio available for private beta. In this version we have focused mainly on the user experience improvements based on the feedback we have received for the last 3 versions. Essentially we got rid of Vista style pseudo windows and instead implemented tabs like Visual Studio. Watch out for a blog post from our development team about that as well.
This is how the new UI of Cloud Storage Studio look like:
A lot of emphasis has been given on improving the user experience. In our earlier versions, some of the functionality was kind of kept hidden and left for an end user to guess and figure out. We tried and made all the functionality available upfront. We did some work arounds our grids and made them function the same way we are used to work with data grids (like CTRL+A to select all rows, right mouse click for context menu etc.).
We significantly improved our blob upload/download functionality. Ability to pause/resume/cancel upload and download is included in this release. Multiple options of uploading blobs (files within a folder, complete folder, more than one folders) are also provided. In the next version we are planning to include drag/drop feature as well where you will be able to drag files from explorer and drop them in the upload queue.
Another important feature we released in this version is providing support for development storage. This has been on our to-do list for quite a while. I was dreading earlier about implementing this but once we get to it, it was actually very easy.
Yet another feature we implemented is auto refreshing of queues. Users will now have an option of auto refreshing their queues. They can specify the period after which a queue will auto refresh and will peek at a maximum of 32 messages.
Overall I think the product is maturing enough. At least now I can say that this is the most comprehensive product (as of now) for managing Windows Azure Storage which is kept up to date with the service enhancement provided by Windows Azure team.
If you are interested in trying it out, sign up sheet is available on http://www.cerebrata.com/products/cloud-storage-studio/introduction.
Looking forward to see you there!!!
Thanks
Gaurav