PowerShell and GUI : Checkbox element

Checkbox

Checkbox are very useful element in GUI’s.

When you have to provide options to the user, like, if we want to enable “Active Directory” user account, or disable it, or option of creating email addresses while creating accounts etc.

Checkbox has two major properties, either they can be checked/ticked, or not checked/ticked.

If checkbox is checked / ticked that means it is True ($true).

If checkbox is not checked / ticked that meant it is False ($false).

We can write our logic based on these two properties. We can write that , if checkbox’s checked value is true then do this action and if the checkbox’s checked value is false do this.

Let’s see it in action

Open your favourite PowerShell GUI creator, in my case “PowerShell Studio 2012”.

Create a new form and add these three elements to the form.

1.       Label         

2.       Button       

3.       Checkbox  

You form should be look like this.

Now we are going to implement the following logic.

 If we ticked the checkbox and click on button, our label text will be changed to “Check box is checked.”, and when we un-tick the checkbox and press the button, our text of the label will say “Checkbox is not checked”.

Now double click on our button and it will create a “Mouse Click” event {which we have covered in my past blog post } and add the  below code there.

$checkbox1 is our Checkbox

$button1 is our Button

$label1 is our label

if ( $checkbox1.Checked -eq $true )               {                      $label1.Text = "Checkbox is checked."                      $label1.ForeColor = 'Green'                             }               else               {                                    $label1.Text = "Checkbox is not checked!"                      $label1.ForeColor = 'Red'               }

Now run the form, in PowerShell studio press Ctrl + 5

You form look like below first.

Now just press on “Button” without ticking on the checkbox. And you will see that our label is changed to the “Checkbox is not checked”.

Now tick on the check and press the button again.

You can see that text of our label is changed to “Checkbox is checked”.

Video

Video on using checkbox

That’s all of now.

See you in my next blog post.

Thanks

Regards

Aman Dhally

     

PowerShell and GUI : Working with GUI “Form” properties using PowerShell Studio 2012

 

In my previous post,Powershell Studio 2012 we had created a blank PowerShell GUI form, in this post, I am just sharing about few useful form properties.

Note: We are using Sapien PowerShell Studio 2012

Windows State of the form

If you want to run your GUI to me minimize, or maximize when they run, you are use the “WindowState” field property, to set it as per your needs, either, to stay, it Normal, Minimized or Maximized.

 

Customize Cursor.

Do you want to use a specific cursor for your PowerShell GUI applications, Yes! , you can, using the “Cursor” field property, just click on “Cursor” and choose the cursor which you like to use.

 

Setting Form Border Style

 

You, can also set the style of the form border, using “FormBorderStyle” field property. You can check the below table about the form border style vales and their effects on the form.

 

 

Value	Effect on the form
None	With No Border,
Fixed 3D	You, can’t resize the form, with ICON on the top, with Maximize, Minimize and cancel button  {not able to spot any big difference}
Fixed Single	You, can’t resize the form, with ICON on the top, with Maximize, Minimize and cancel button
Fixed Dialogue	You, can’t resize the form, with NO  ICON, with Maximize, Minimize and cancel button
Sizable	You, can resize form, with ICON on the top, with Maximize, Minimize and cancel button
FixedToolWindow	A form with a close button only. You, can’t resize the form.
SizableToolWindow	A form with a close button only. You, can resize the form.

That’s all for today, See you in my next post

 

Thanks

Regards

Aman Dhally

     

PowerShell and GUI : Creating a GUI form using PowerShell Studio

 

We all love PowerShell, because it is great tool for automation and creating scripts.

Sometimes GUI’s are useful too, sometime for fun and sometime it good to write our own tool for the company users.

Like creating a GUI toll about the information of users, disk space, or whatever you think of.

I use “PowerShell Studio 2012” for creating GUI’s. It is one of the best tool available out there for creating GUI’s, but unfortunate it is a paid one.

You can download the evaluation version of PowerShell Studio 2012 from this link : http://www.sapien.com/software/primalforms

I am writing these post by using “PowerShell Studio 2012”, but logic behind it is same.

As in GUI we are going to use Button, labels etc, and the functionality of these are same, in spite of how you are creating them.

Creating Form.

To create a new blank form,

1. Open PowerShell studio

2. Click on “New”

3. And click on “New Form”

4.

5. It will show you few templates, choose one as per you need.

6. I am selecting “Empty Form”. And Click on “Select”

7.

Form

Now, You, will see 3 screens, one is containing “Toolbox” which contain all graphic elements, in middle we have our new black form, and the third one the “Properties” windows. If you click any element, properties windows shows that element’s properties.

Customise form.

Now, let’s customize our form.

Changing form name.

To change the name of the form, click on the form, and in the property window , you see the “Text” field and in the front of it, you will see the value of the form, change is as per your need.

I am changing the value to “My First Form”.

You can see that the name of the form is changed.

Setting Transparency.

Sometime, you may want to look you form fancy, and a little bit transparent, to set the transparency of the form , we use the “Opacity” field of the form properties, by default it is set to 100%. You can set it you any values below 100% as per your needs.

I am changing the opacity of the form to 50%

Now run the file and you can see how transparent our form became.

Keep your form always to the top.

If you want to keep your GUI form, always on the top of the other windows, change the “Top Most” value to “false” to ”true”.

Changing form background.

Changing background colour.

To change the background colour for the form, click on “BackColor” under “Appearance” tab and and choose the colour which you like to have in you form.

Using image as background.

We can also use the image as background, , under “appearance” tab, click on “BackgroundImage”, and click on browse icon, and select the image which you want to use as background image.

Choose the image and click on “Open”

Now you can see that background image is set, and you can also set the “background image layout” to “Tile,Center,Stretch,zoom” by clicking on “BackgroundImageLayout” field properties.

That’s all for today. See you in next post.

Regards

Aman Dhally