In this tutorial, you will be introduced to the Integrated Shell Environment, otherwise known as the ISE. You can run PSH in its CMD Shell form or by using the ISE.
Let's get started!
Click on your start button and type in Windows PowerShell ISE. Go ahead select and open Windows PowerShell ISE.
Analyze the environment. You will come to find that the command pane is much smaller, the output is in a separate window and you have your own script pane. The Command Pane is where you can enter commands just like the regular PSH command shell.
The Script pane is where you may view and edit your PSH scripts.
You can also create PSH scripts by choosing File ? New to display the editor pane above the output pane. When working on multiple scripts, a tabbed interface is displayed so you can easily switch back and forth between the different script windows.
You will also notice that much like most development environments, you can run a script simply by clicking the Run button (the right-pointing triangle) on the toolbar. The toolbar has syntax highlighting as well as other text-editing features and one of the best features has got to be the debugger being readily accessible in the Debug menu. After all, debugging tools are a programmer's best friend.
The ISE is an amazing tool to use for writing, running and debugging the scripts you make in one very useful environment. A good comparison would be Visual Studio is for Website and Applications, ISE is for PowerShell scripting. One more giant plus is that you can also use the ISE Script Pane to open or create plain text files and XML files.
See you next tutorial!