Powershell Studio Feedback
Posted: Mon Nov 02, 2015 3:34 pm
EDIT: It wouldn't let me post links, so I attached 3 of the 5 images to them post.
I was talking with @SAPIENDavid on twitter and told him I would come leave some feedback on a few things. My twitter handle is @BrandonPadgett if interested in contacting me there.
I am someone who is picky on the feel of my editors and usually heavily customize them to get the look and feel I am after. I have always preferred editors like Atom over bigger ones like Visual Studio. I have several themes and addons published to Atom that helped me personalize it even more. The bigger editors have always felt big, bloated and slow. I grew used to using command palette/powershell commands to get around in my editors and to work with them instead of lots of windowed Panes. However, I can see the benefits of GUI panes for many types of projects or tasks, but I would like to be able to get them out of view when not in use. I prefer being able to totally hide them but bring them back into view based on a command or keyboard shortcut.
I am adding some screenshots of my current editors. The first is ISE/ISEsteroids and the second is Atom. Currently, ISEsteroids is my default editor for day to day usage and Atom is for everything that isn't powershell. It is fast and gives me a very clean and uncluttered work environment. The console is great to work with and I like it just as much as a normal powershell console. I use the console constantly with ISE, and it is incredibly important for me. Not only am I using it to write my code, but I also have customized modules to work with ISE for building projects and working with my projects. I use it much in the same way I would use the command palette in sublime or atom to issue commands or work with addons/git.
## Console
The console is one of the big issues I have with Powershell Studio that keeps me from using it as my main editor. It feels slow and laggy to me. There is a definite latency between typing and the character showing up on the screen. There aren't as many customizations that I seem to be able to make with the Console in SPS. After doing some Googling it seems that I can set the background color to some limited colors in the registry, but it is still not ideal. I am still trying to use SPS more so I can better articulate my issues with the console. It is hard to accurately describe my issues other than it just does not have a good feel to it when needing to use it regularly like you would use a normal console or the console in ISE. The image below shows how it is just hard to get the console to feel like it is a part of the editor.
## Terrible Dark Theme Support
I personally do not like white themes and find them to mess with my eyes over time. The theme support in SPS is very limited and the dark themes often feel very lacking. As an example, I cannot figure out anyway to make the bright white panes dark. When moving back and forth between dark and white it about feels like it blinds me. You can see an example in the following Screenshot. If I move from the script pane to the designer pane you are unpleasantly presented with a jarring full white screen. There are also inconsitent panes that just give a poor, unfinished feel. On the right side panes, if you compare Snippets and Properties panes, Snippets has a black background, while Properties has a white background. The images below show the white panes that can be an annoyance.
In the dark image you can see where I have made some progress with the look and feel, but the console really detracts from the feel.
## Panes take up too much room
I know you can autohide the panes, but even with panes hidden, they take up a lot of room on smaller screen devices. I would like to see the option for autohide similar to how the Windows Taskbar handles it. The Pane docks/tabs at the top/bottom/left/right of the screen actially dock completely hidden until a keyboard shortcut or mouse hovers over them. This would really help with creating a more immersive and less distracting scripting environment for people like me. The screenshot of ISESteroids I am using the distraction free setting that hides the top/bottom controls until a mouse hovers over. Then it also has the other pane addons that are completely hidden when not in use. I would really like to see SPS adopt this same sort of layout or offer it as an option.
I am still trying to use SPS more and gather more feedback. If I am overlooking some settings or additional ways to customize SPS I would love the feedback. I really like some of SPS's capabilities, but currently it is just being used for specific purposes. An example would be when making a module. I might create the all of the fuctions and do all of my testing in ISESteroids, then at the very end I might open it up in SPS and finish the module and let it create the actual psd/psm files. I will also use SPS for anything related to a GUI typically. However, I know a lot of admins that use SPS as their default and love it, so I would like to see it get to a point where I can do the same.
I think part of it is that I feel like I have spent the last year trying to break myself from GUIs and try to do as much as I can from the CLI. So I try to use git and just as many things as I can from the console. SPS sort of feels like a distraction and a backwards step to this in many ways. There is a time and place when a GUI tool just makes sense, but I would like to be able to hide them from view and just get a clean, uncluttered view when I am not using them.
I was talking with @SAPIENDavid on twitter and told him I would come leave some feedback on a few things. My twitter handle is @BrandonPadgett if interested in contacting me there.
I am someone who is picky on the feel of my editors and usually heavily customize them to get the look and feel I am after. I have always preferred editors like Atom over bigger ones like Visual Studio. I have several themes and addons published to Atom that helped me personalize it even more. The bigger editors have always felt big, bloated and slow. I grew used to using command palette/powershell commands to get around in my editors and to work with them instead of lots of windowed Panes. However, I can see the benefits of GUI panes for many types of projects or tasks, but I would like to be able to get them out of view when not in use. I prefer being able to totally hide them but bring them back into view based on a command or keyboard shortcut.
I am adding some screenshots of my current editors. The first is ISE/ISEsteroids and the second is Atom. Currently, ISEsteroids is my default editor for day to day usage and Atom is for everything that isn't powershell. It is fast and gives me a very clean and uncluttered work environment. The console is great to work with and I like it just as much as a normal powershell console. I use the console constantly with ISE, and it is incredibly important for me. Not only am I using it to write my code, but I also have customized modules to work with ISE for building projects and working with my projects. I use it much in the same way I would use the command palette in sublime or atom to issue commands or work with addons/git.
## Console
The console is one of the big issues I have with Powershell Studio that keeps me from using it as my main editor. It feels slow and laggy to me. There is a definite latency between typing and the character showing up on the screen. There aren't as many customizations that I seem to be able to make with the Console in SPS. After doing some Googling it seems that I can set the background color to some limited colors in the registry, but it is still not ideal. I am still trying to use SPS more so I can better articulate my issues with the console. It is hard to accurately describe my issues other than it just does not have a good feel to it when needing to use it regularly like you would use a normal console or the console in ISE. The image below shows how it is just hard to get the console to feel like it is a part of the editor.
## Terrible Dark Theme Support
I personally do not like white themes and find them to mess with my eyes over time. The theme support in SPS is very limited and the dark themes often feel very lacking. As an example, I cannot figure out anyway to make the bright white panes dark. When moving back and forth between dark and white it about feels like it blinds me. You can see an example in the following Screenshot. If I move from the script pane to the designer pane you are unpleasantly presented with a jarring full white screen. There are also inconsitent panes that just give a poor, unfinished feel. On the right side panes, if you compare Snippets and Properties panes, Snippets has a black background, while Properties has a white background. The images below show the white panes that can be an annoyance.
In the dark image you can see where I have made some progress with the look and feel, but the console really detracts from the feel.
## Panes take up too much room
I know you can autohide the panes, but even with panes hidden, they take up a lot of room on smaller screen devices. I would like to see the option for autohide similar to how the Windows Taskbar handles it. The Pane docks/tabs at the top/bottom/left/right of the screen actially dock completely hidden until a keyboard shortcut or mouse hovers over them. This would really help with creating a more immersive and less distracting scripting environment for people like me. The screenshot of ISESteroids I am using the distraction free setting that hides the top/bottom controls until a mouse hovers over. Then it also has the other pane addons that are completely hidden when not in use. I would really like to see SPS adopt this same sort of layout or offer it as an option.
I am still trying to use SPS more and gather more feedback. If I am overlooking some settings or additional ways to customize SPS I would love the feedback. I really like some of SPS's capabilities, but currently it is just being used for specific purposes. An example would be when making a module. I might create the all of the fuctions and do all of my testing in ISESteroids, then at the very end I might open it up in SPS and finish the module and let it create the actual psd/psm files. I will also use SPS for anything related to a GUI typically. However, I know a lot of admins that use SPS as their default and love it, so I would like to see it get to a point where I can do the same.
I think part of it is that I feel like I have spent the last year trying to break myself from GUIs and try to do as much as I can from the CLI. So I try to use git and just as many things as I can from the console. SPS sort of feels like a distraction and a backwards step to this in many ways. There is a time and place when a GUI tool just makes sense, but I would like to be able to hide them from view and just get a clean, uncluttered view when I am not using them.