Releasing Script Browser & Script Analyzer for Windows PowerShell ISE

Here we'd like to share a piece of good news with everybody: today we have a new app released – Script Browser for Windows PowerShell ISE.

Script Browser for Windows PowerShell ISE was designed and developed in response to many IT Pros’ and MVPs’ feedback during the MVP Global Summit. It puts nearly 10K script examples at IT Pros fingertips when they write scripts to automate their IT tasks. Users can search, learn, download and manage scripts from within their scripting environment - PowerShell ISE - with just a few button clicks. It saves the time of switching back and forth between webpages and scripting environment, and also the trouble of countless download, copy, and paste operations. Bundled with Script Browser is another neat feature called ‘Script Analyzer’ that automatically analyzes user’s script against 7 PowerShell best practices, and suggests improvements. Click here to get it now and share the announcements from the Windows PowerShell product team with your IT friends to make their work easier.

Getting started with Script Browser 1.0

It is very essential that an app satisfies users’ requirements. Therefore, feedback is of prime importance. For Script Browser, MVPs are one of the key sources where we get constructive feedback. When the Script Browser was demoed at the 2013 MVP Global Summit in November, 2014 Japan MVP Open Day, and a Product Group Interaction event, the MVP community proposed insightful improvements. For instance, MVPs suggested showing a script preview before users can decide to download the complete script package. MVPs also wanted to be able to search for script samples offline. These were great suggestions, and the team immediately added the features to the release. We have collected a pool of great ideas (e.g. MVPs also suggested that the Best Practice rules checking feature in Script Analyzer should be extensible). We are committed to continuously improving the app based on your feedback.

We have an ambitious roadmap for Script Browser. For example, we plan to add more script repositories to the search scope. We are investigating integration with Bing Code Search. We are also trying to improve the extensibility of Script Analyzer rules. Some features, like script sample sharing and searching within an enterprise, are still in their infancy.

We sincerely suggest you give Script Browser a try (click here to download). If you love what you see in Script Browser, please recommend it to your friends and colleagues. If you encounter any problems or have any suggestions for us, please contact us at onescript@microsoft.com.  Your precious opinions and comments are more than welcome.

 

 

Acknowledgement

Individually, we are one drop. Together, we are an ocean. The v1 release of Script Browser is a big collaborative effort from many teams at Microsoft. Mei Liang, Dan Ruder, Jialiang Ge, Bill Grauer, Allen Ding, Allen Li, Huajun Gu (MVP), Qi Fu from Microsoft CSS worked with the PowerShell Product Group represented by John Slack (PM), Frederic Francois, Samuel Li, Susan Mings, Vlad Carpenco, and Kriti Jindal, and the TechNet Script Center team represented by Bryant Hawthorne. Pei Wang and Satoru Kitabata localized the app to 14 languages. Microsoft GARAGE (Ben Gilbert is the PM) provides a perfect platform to demonstrate the app and internally crowd-source ideas and effort to make it better. Nearly 20 Microsoft Garage volunteers, and even their wifes, contributed test and localization to the release: Michael Janelle-Montcalm, Tiago Damasceno, Leland Holmquest's wife Geylan Holmquest, Petr Rybak, Igor Rybak, Piotr Walaszek, Cale Teeter's wife, Jose Cardenas Salazar, Aldo Mendoza Saucedo, Damian Leibaschoff (PSS), Markus Jansen, Tim Sullivan, Jorge Aleman Rodriguez, Ronald Aigner, Roberto Aldaba Mendez, Raffaele Limosani, Christian Kuhtz, Eric Chang (MSR), Erik Millan Jimenez, Tino Morenz.