Tag: Add-on

Last week I had an absolutely incredible week at the 2011 MVP Summit.  It was without a doubt the best business trip I have ever taken, bar none.  What makes a conference great for me is not the sessions (although the sessions were awesome).  For me it’s all about the attendees.  Being able to interact every day for an entire week with PowerShell MVPs and Microsoft PowerShell team members was truly an incredible experience, something that you just don’t get day to day when you’re in the office dealing with so many distractions.

While at the Summit I was meeting with some PowerShell MVPs, chatting about PowerGUI and PowerGUI Pro, and getting feedback on the two products (and taking a lot of notes!).  Claus Nielsen, a fellow PowerShell MVP from Denmark was sharing some of his ideas with me and one feature he requested was scroll buttons for our tabbed document interface to allow you to scroll the view to other tabs.  This is useful when you have many tabs open and you want to reorganize them or just scroll through the ones you have open.

I get a lot of requests from the online community as well, some of which come via twitter.  These don’t necessarily come from MVPs, although the one I’m about to use as an example does.  Brian H. Madsen (@csharpzealot) tweeted about having issues when running PowerGUI and not realizing he was in the 32-bit version of the console on a 64-bit machine.  Since you can run PowerGUI in 32-bit or 64-bit, elevated or not, it can be very useful to know how you opened it when you are working with the product.

Other feedback comes in the form of direct email.  One of our internal support reps was trying to figure out how to tell what encoding was used when saving a ps1 file because he was working with another product that didn’t seem to support that encoding.

A lot of this feedback turns into enhancement requests for the core product, but there are also many ideas that turn into features I can quickly implement in an Add-on.  All of the ideas I just mentioned in this post fall into the latter case, and between early mornings in my hotel room in Bellevue last week and a little time yesterday afternoon, I have finished implementing these (and more) in version 2.0 of the PowerGUI Script Editor Essentials Add-on.  This Add-on is definitely one of my favorites, right up there with the Blue Console Add-on and the Script Signing Add-on.  It comes with an indispensible feature set and whenever I install PowerGUI on a new system I immediately notice that it is missing and have to install it right away.

PowerGUI Script Editor Essentials 2.0 includes the following enhancements:

• You can now view and change the current file encoding by using the File | Encoding submenu.  The menu items in this submenu will automatically save the current file and the checked item indicates the current encoding for the current file.
• You can now use scroll buttons to view all of the tabs that you have open.  These scroll buttons are enabled by default, but you can always hide them or bring them back by using the View | Tab Scroll Buttons menu item.
• You can now see more useful status information in the status bar.  This includes:
• the current file encoding for saved files;
• the current process architecture (64-bit or 32-bit) for 64-bit machines; and
• the current elevation status if you are running PowerGUI in an elevated process.
Here’s a screenshot showing you what the Script Editor looks like in an elevated process on a 64-bit system once you have this Add-on loaded:

I also fixed an issue preventing the shortcuts in this Add-on from working on some non-English operating systems, and I added icons that were missing for the Increase Indent and Decrease Indent menu items so that they show up as regular buttons if you add them to your toolbar.

These features are in addition to the features that came in the first version of this Add-on, which include support for :

• enabling Word Wrap in your documents;
• showing Whitespace in your documents;
• using Virtual Whitespace when editing documents;
• Zoom in and Zoom out while working with a document;
• opening multiple files at once from the File | Open dialog; and
• filtering for *.ps1xml, *.psc1, *.xml and *.txt files in the File | Open dialog.

You can see screenshots showing these features on the Script Editor Essentials Add-on page.

If you’d like to try this Add-on, follow these three steps:

1. Open the PowerGUI Script Editor and select Tools | Find Add-ons Online… in the menu.

2. In the dialog that appears, enter “Script Editor Essentials” into the text box and click on the Search button.

3. Once the Script Editor Essentials Add-on shows up in the results, click on the Add-on to select it and then click on the Install button to install the Add-on. This will download, unblock, install and load the Add-on in your Script Editor, and you’ll have these features in your favorite Script Editor in no time!

If you’re not connected to the web, you can also install this manually by following the steps outlined on the Script Editor Essentials Add-on page on PowerGUI.org.

Now that this update is released, what else do you think qualifies as a Script Editor Essential feature?  As you can see, community feedback drives what we do, so please share your ideas!  We are listening.

Kirk out.

I really like the native PowerShell console look and feel.  Something about the blue theme applied to the native console puts me in a comfort zone, and it just works for me.  For a long time I have wanted to have the exact same color theme to be applied to the embedded PowerShell console in PowerGUI, and with the release of PowerGUI 2.4 I can finally create that theme.

Here’s what the themed console looks like in PowerGUI now that we have full color support:

If you would like the same experience in your embedded console, all you need to do is install the Blue Console Add-on in PowerGUI by following these three steps:

1. Open the PowerGUI Script Editor and select Tools | Find Add-ons Online… in the menu.

2. In the dialog that appears, enter “Blue Console” into the text box and click on the Search button.

3. Once the Blue Console Add-on shows up in the results, click on the Add-on to select it and then click on the Install button to install the Add-on.  This will download, unblock, install and load the Add-on in your Script Editor, and you’ll have a native blue theme applied in no time!

If you’re not connected to the web, you can also install this manually by following the steps outlined on the Blue Console Add-on page on PowerGUI.org.

Now that the PowerGUI Script Editor SDK supports any color in the embedded console, you can even create your own themes.  The Add-on is just a PowerShell module and you can look at how it sets the colors internally to see how you could create your own theme.  If you’re feeling ambitious, you could even build a theme-chooser Add-on something like the Script Colors Add-on by Denniver Reining and allow people to import/export color themes so that they can share them with one another.  I think an Add-on like that would be fantastic for the Script Editor, and I can already think of a half dozen features I’d like to see in it.  If you’re going to create an Add-on, be sure to install the Authoring Toolkit Add-on that I blogged about yesterday so that you’re working with all of the tools available to make it easier for you.

Enjoy!

Kirk out.

Have you ever thought of a feature that you wished was included as part of the PowerGUI Script Editor?  When thinking about features you would like to see, did you realize that you can create many features yourself and share them with others?  The rich Add-on SDK that is included in the PowerGUI Script Editor allows you to do just that.  This SDK allows you to customize the Script Editor to your hearts content, adding, modifying or removing menus, submenus, menu items, toolbar, toolbar buttons, editor commands, or dockable windows.  It also allows you to work directly with the contents of documents that are open in the editor, or use events to control editor behaviour.

Today Add-on creation with the PowerGUI Script Editor SDK just got even easier.  I just published version 2.0 of the Authoring Toolkit Add-on on PowerGUI.org.  This Add-on adds a File | New | Add-on… menu item as well as a toolbar button to facilitate the creation of the Add-on itself, just like it did before.  What it also includes now though is a set of 49 snippets that facilitate working with the Script Editor SDK.  Want to create a new menu item?  There’s a snippet for that.  How about a toolbar button?  Or a dockable window?  There are snippets for those too.  There are even snippets for adding invoking and invoked events to commands included in the editor, allowing you to override or extend the behaviour of commands that are included in the Script Editor by default.  Some of these snippets were previously published as a separate download that you had to manually install on your system.  In the new 2.0 release, there are about 50% more snippets than in the past, the existing snippets have been updated to support new features added to PowerGUI 2.4, and these snippets are automatically installed with the Authoring Toolkit Add-on so that you can get started with your own Add-ons much more quickly.

To experiment with Add-on creation, all you need to do is follow four easy steps:

1. Open the PowerGUI Script Editor and select Tools | Find Add-ons Online… in the menu.

2. In the dialog that appears, enter “Authoring Toolkit” into the text box and click on the Search button.

3. Once the Authoring Toolkit Add-on shows up in the results, click on the Add-on to select it and then click on the Install button to install the Add-on.

4. Wait a moment while the Add-on downloads, unblocks, installs and loads in the Script Editor.  Now select File | New | Add-on… to start creating an Add-on and then with your Add-on psm1 file open, select Edit | Insert Snippet… to start inserting Add-on snippets in your Add-on.

Once you have the Authoring Toolkit Add-on installed, I recommend watching the “Create an Add-on in 10 Minutes” screencast to see how you can create your own Add-on.  Fast forward the parts that show you how to set-up the Add-on and the snippets because you just did that, and watch the rest of the demo showing how you can create your own Add-on in only 10 minutes.

At this point you should be pretty much ready to get started with your first Add-on, but extra documentation never hurts.  If you would like to read more about Add-on creation, I recommend the Add-on SDK documentation and the Building Your First PowerGUI Script Editor Add-on tutorial.  Both of these resources may come in handy as you experiment with the Add-on SDK.

Thanks for listening, and if you have any feedback or suggestions that you would like to share, or questions you would like to ask about Add-on creation or anything else PowerShell or PowerGUI related, I’m always listening.

Kirk out.

Have you ever thought to yourself that it would be great if the PowerGUI Script Editor would allow you to…

…select all of my files and open them at one time; or

…turn on line/word wrap?

How about if it would allow you to…

…view white space characters (tabs and spaces); or

…move the cursor through the whitespace outside of a document while you edit the same column in multiple lines in your script; or

…zoom in or out using Ctrl+Add or Ctrl+Subtract so that you can adjust the font as necessary during presentations?

Some of these features were requested by members of our community, and others are features that I have wished for at one point or another.  As of today you can get all of these features in the PowerGUI Script Editor by simply downloading and installing the Script Editor Essentials Add-on!

How do I do that you ask?  Simply visit the Script Editor Essentials Add-on page and follow the installation instructions.  It shouldn’t take more than a few minutes to set up.  Once you have it set up, you can start using the new features right away.  For example, to enable the new features that affect your open documents, take a look at the new menu items in the Edit | Advanced menu:

That menu allows you to enable the view white space, word wrap, or virtual white space features.  If you enable view white space, you’ll see tabs appear as arrows and spaces appear as dots, like in this screenshot:

You can also turn on word wrap, which is great when working with documents that contain long lines of PowerShell script (unless you like scrolling back and forth horizontally when reading script lines).  It even shows a small arrow at the end of any lines that are wrapped, making it easier to distinguish between lines that wrap and lines that don’t:

All of these features can be turned on at the same time, allowing you to customize your experience for your needs, and the configuration is saved so that it persists between sessions.  Here’s another screenshot showing the virtual white space feature, which allows you to place the cursor anywhere on any line (normally you cannot place the cursor beyond the end of a line):

This feature can come in quite handy when you are modifying script on multiple lines in a similar column position, and when those lines aren’t necessarily adjacent to one another (I’ve had this experience which made me wish for this feature myself).

Do you ever show PowerShell to others, either via the web using desktop sharing or LiveMeeting or perhaps during presentations?  Being able to zoom in and zoom out on the fly can be useful if you do, so you may like these new menu items:

They will increase or decrease the font size in the open documents as well as in the embedded PowerShell console by 1.  You can do this without this Add-on today by using Ctrl while moving your mouse wheel, but it is can be very difficult to control depending on your mouse sensitivity and it increases or decreases the font size by 10% instead of by a fixed value, plus it sets all fonts to the same font, which may not give you the results you are looking for (if you use the Blue Console Add-on, it applies a different font to the embedded console window).  The keyboard shortcuts for these menu items are very useful to learn if you ever show PowerShell to anyone while using the PowerGUI Script Editor.

And last, but not least, I have wanted to have multi-select support in the File Open dialog for a long time.  That support is now available, and while I was adding it I also flushed out the list of file extensions to include all PowerShell file extensions plus other extensions commonly used with PowerShell.  Here’s what that looks like once this Add-on is installed (you can click on the image to see it full size):

I would really appreciate any feedback that you would like to share on this (or any other) Script Editor Add-on.  I’ve called this Script Editor Essentials because it contains a variety of general editor features that I think are essential for anyone using the PowerGUI Script Editor without being tied to a specific need.  That doesn’t mean it contains everything that is essential though, and there are a lot of other Script Editor Add-ons available that you should take a look at to see the other options available to you to enhance your script editing experience.  What features would you consider essential to you as you work with PowerShell files in the Script Editor that are not yet available in the core product or as an Add-on?  Let me know in the comments or on the PowerGUI Forums so that we can make sure we’re meeting your needs.

Also, I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that this Add-on, as well as all other Add-ons, are created using PowerShell modules.  There’s even an Add-on Authoring Toolkit that makes it easier to create Script Editor Add-ons, along with a tutorial showing you how you can create your own Add-ons!  Creating an Add-on can be pretty easy to do, so don’t be afraid to give it a try and use the PowerGUI Forums to ask questions as needed.

Hopefully this will be a useful and welcome addition to your PowerGUI experience.  Enjoy!

Kirk out.

Share this post: