July 2010 - Posts
The new toolbar version for Internet Explorer and FireFox is available and includes one major feature - the option to Minimize Gadgets and maintain the state of the gadget. A "Minimize" button was added next to the "Close" button:
Click it and the gadget is minimized back to the toolbar (notice the Green arrow), and can be maximized again by clicking on its icon on the toolbar.
Another part of this feature is the "Preview" option - once hovering over the gadget icon on the toolbar, you can see a preview of the minimized gadget:
If you don't see the new features upgrade the toolbar. Click on the arrow next to the PowerShell logo and choose 'Upgrade'.
UPDATE: The Update option is not available in IE since IE updates automatically to newer version. The minimum IE version that support the new features is 5.6, for FireFox the minimum version is 2.7. To check the current toolbar version:
When you’re working with the PowerGUI script editor, writing new stuff or debugging your scripts, you have several options to run/debug your code:
As you can see there are two keyboard shortcuts to run code (F5 and CTRL+F5) and there’s one more to execute selected code (CTRL+F7). When I debug my scripts in the script editor I prefer to use just one shortcut, if there is some selected code run it (Execute Selection) otherwise run everything (Start Debugging). We can set the same shortcut for both actions in the editor ( Tools | Customize | Keyboard ) but that would change the default settings of the editor.
With the Add.on.Run module we can override the default shortcut keys and assign both actions (Start Debugging and Execute Selection) to the same keyboard shortcut. When you unload the module the default shortcut keys are operational again.
The Add.on.Run module creates a new menu item under the Tools menu, click it or just press F5.
Download the Add-on HERE.
In a previous post I wrote about the new PowerGUI Script Editor SDK and showed an example of creating a new Toolbar with one command to expand aliases in the code pane. The ExpandAlias command is now available as an Add-on.
The Add-on module creates a new menu item under the Tools menu and assign it a keyboard shortcut (Control+E).
Write some code that contain aliases in the script editor code pane
Click on the ExpandAlias menu item (or press CTRL+E) to expand aliases:
Download the Add-on HERE.
Earlier this evening I got a very special email from Microsoft:
Dear Shay Levy,
Congratulations! We are pleased to present you with the 2010 Microsoft® MVP Award! This award is given to exceptional technical community leaders who actively share their high quality, real world expertise with others. We appreciate your outstanding contributions in PowerShell technical communities during the past year.
I’m honored to get the award for the third time. Big thanks to the PowerShell community and the friends from Twitter land for your kind support.
PowerShell Rocks!!
In his PowerShell Editor Roundup: PowerGUI Pro blog post, Don mentions that PowerGUI's script editor lacks the ability to resolve 'alias-to-cmdlet'. Luckily we don't have to wait for next releases of PowerGUI or submit feature requests to have that functionality available. Starting with the latest product release, PowerGUI 2.1, we now have the option to extend the Script Editor with our own solutions using the new Script Editor SDK!
The Editor SDK allows us to create Add-Ons, add and remove menus and menu items, toolbar buttons, and a lot more. In this post I'm going to create a new toolbar, place a button in it and attach to it a code snippet (adapted from MVP Doug Finke) to make that missing feature available.
Download and expand Expand-Alias.zip, copy the icon file to your C drive and load the script (MyToolbar.ps1) into the script editor. Press F5 to execute it.
A new Toolbar is added with the Expand-Alias button in it.
Write some code with aliases in the Code pane
Now click the button or press CTRL+E to invoke the Expand-Alias command.
Awesome!
Some links to resources I've used:
PowerGUI 2.1 Quick tips on YouTube:
Create custom HTML pages inside your PowerPacks.
Create chart templates to graphically display your powershell results.