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PS> Dir –A D The Screencast

I decided to experiment with a screencast.  This is my first and I have no idea what I’m doing so please forgive me if it sucks.  I’d like to know whether you find this format useful or not and then specific feedback about how to make the screencast better (e.g. I recorded it at 1024x768  - is that good or too large?).

In my previous blog – I mentioned that Proxy cmdlets are super important and powerful and that they can look complex but are actually pretty simple if you follow the steps.  I decided that a video was worth a thousand words.  In this screencast (~ 5.5 minutes long), I show you how to create a function DIR.PS1 which proxies Get-ChildItem and adds a parameter –A which allows you to specify the “D” value which says you want just the directories.  In all other ways it works the same. 

After I completed the screencast I realized that I didn’t do a very good job highlighting what I did.  I have done the following to highlight the power:

PS> .\dir c:\ps,c:\temp,c:\jps -rec -a d

Give it a view and let me know what you think.

[1/5/09 UPDATE - I realize that the text is too hard to read during much of this and will be looking for either better settings or better software. -jps]

Jeffrey Snover [MSFT]
Windows Management Partner Architect
Visit the Windows PowerShell Team blog at:    http://blogs.msdn.com/PowerShell
Visit the Windows PowerShell ScriptCenter at:  http://www.microsoft.com/technet/scriptcenter/hubs/msh.mspx

Published Monday, January 05, 2009 2:32 AM by PowerShellTeam

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Comments

# re: PS> Dir –A D The Screencast

I personally love screencasts and think they are very helpful in demonstrations.

My only complaint for this is that the text was  a little hard to read. Other than that it was good.

Monday, January 05, 2009 12:22 AM by laux

# re: PS> Dir –A D The Screencast

Interesting... I think, because the text was far too samll to be readable. Needs to be at least twice the size... remember the guy at the back of the room when demoing on a projector.

Monday, January 05, 2009 4:02 AM by Richard

# re: PS> Dir –A D The Screencast

If someone will ask me "What superhero you want to be?" I will answer: " Jeffrey Snover!" - I love this video. For me it's very good idea. Now I understand previous post :)

On the other hand, few times I didn't see your commands so if it's possible to have it in better quality I vote for it.

Awesome - nice start of new week. Thanks,

David

Monday, January 05, 2009 4:04 AM by David Moravec

# re: PS> Dir –A D The Screencast

It's really cool Jeffrey ! But the text isn't readable.

Continue on this way, it's simpler to understand than just text.

Thanks,

Arnaud

Monday, January 05, 2009 6:18 PM by Arnaud PETITJEAN (PowerShell MVP)

# re: PS> Dir –A D The Screencast

Hi Jeffrey,

this is a very interesting example. I took your example, saved it as Get-ChildItem.ps1 in a directory in my path. Everything's fine as long as I invoke the script directly. My problem is the dir alias. I can't get this realiased. Do you know of a way to do so?

Thx for the example.

poetter

Wednesday, January 07, 2009 8:00 PM by poetter

# re: PS> Dir –A D The Screencast

@poetter

PS> Remove-Item alias:dir

That will do it for you.

jps

Wednesday, January 07, 2009 10:32 PM by PowerShellTeam

# re: PS> Dir –A D The Screencast

Very nice job on the screencast...like already mentioned, text is a bit hard to read.  The microphone is a bit to close, IMHO, so it can have some high spikes at the beginning of every sentence.

Nothing beats this microphone for screencasts for its price:

http://www.amazon.com/Logitech-ClearChat-Comfort-Headset-Black/dp/B000UXZQ42/ref=pd_bbs_5?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1236004074&sr=8-5

Thanks!

Monday, March 02, 2009 9:28 AM by Christian Saborio

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