PowerShell and PowerGUI are totally extensible and benefit from the rich PowerShell ecosystem growing around the technologies. Let’s have a look at how PowerGadgets can make PowerGUI UI even better.
1. I already had PowerShell and PowerGUI installed, and the only component I had missing was PowerGadgets so I went to http://www.powergadgets.com/ and downloaded the trial version.
2. Installation was pretty straight-forward (although my attenpt to install in my Exchange 2007 lab failed because the setup required internet connection – I assume to verify the license key.)
3. Started PowerGUI and went to File/Snapins – magically PowerGadgets were there in the list:
4. I selected the snapin and restarted PowerGUI.
Now that PowerGadgets are added to PowerGUI I decided to check whether I could use them in my actions.
5. I clicked the PowerGUI/Local System/Processes node and clicked the Actions button on the toolbar to open the right-hand Actions pane:
6. In the right-hand pane, in the Actions: Common group (I picked common actions so I could use the gadgets for everything – not just for processes), clicked Add new item/Action.
7. In the New Actions dialog box I typed in the name of the new action (Chart) and searched for the cmdlet by just typing chart in the Search box – it worked! and found the command I needed.
8. I double-clicked the Out-Chart entry to select it and clicked OK. The new action got added to the pane.
9. That was actually it! I clicked the newly added Chart action, clicked OK to accept all default parameters and got the chart:
That was it! No command-line, no tweeking, no complex setup or configuration – everything just worked.
10. I decided to push harder and see how well will PowerGadgets work with my changes in PowerGUI. I closed the chart, right-clicked the grid header and only left Handles and ProcessName selected:
11. Then I draged the ProcessName to be the first column and clicked the Handels header to sort by the column.
12. Clicked the Chart action again and magic happened I got exactly what I expected – a chart with only Handles sorted by them in the same order as in PowerGUI:
I still feel like what I saw was a kind of magic. I just installed two products from different teams and they simply worked with one another providing great UI experience on top of PowerShell.
Great job by PowerGadgets, PowerGUI and PowerShell teams.
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