{"id":3538,"date":"2013-11-01T11:30:40","date_gmt":"2013-11-01T15:30:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jdhitsolutions.com\/blog\/?p=3538"},"modified":"2015-11-20T13:35:50","modified_gmt":"2015-11-20T18:35:50","slug":"friday-fun-create-a-powershell-trace-window","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jdhitsolutions.com\/blog\/scripting\/3538\/friday-fun-create-a-powershell-trace-window\/","title":{"rendered":"Friday Fun: Create a PowerShell Trace Window"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"magnifying-glass\"<\/a>Way back in the day, it was all VBScript and HTAs for me. I built a number of HTA tools for other people to use. As you might expect they didn't always work and troubleshooting something I couldn't see was difficult. So I came up with a solution to use an Internet Explorer window as a sort of immediate or trace window. In my HTA I added code to use this trace window. The user could then copy and paste the contents of the window and I would have a much better idea about what went wrong. I always thought this was a cool trick and figured why not do it in PowerShell?<\/p>\n

Using the COM object you can create an instance of Internet Explorer and then use DOM methods and properties to configure the window and write text to it. Here's the PowerShell version of what I used to do in VBScript.<\/p>\n

#requires -version 2.0\r\n\r\nFunction Trace-Message {\r\n<#\r\n.Synopsis\r\nDisplay script trace messages\r\n.Description\r\nThis command will launch an instance of Internet Explorer and display user\r\ndefined trace messages. The trace message will automatically include a time\r\nstamp. After your script has completed, the window will remain open until you \r\nmanually close it. If you use this command in the PowerShell ISE, you can use \r\nthe -Terminate parameter to close it and clean up the COM object.\r\n\r\nThe function has parameters to adjust the positioning, size and format of the\r\nInternet Explorer window. You can't change the position or window size once the\r\nwindow is first created, although you can manually reposition and resize. But\r\nit is possible to specify different values for these settings on a per message\r\nbasis:\r\n\r\n    Title\r\n    Background Color\r\n    Font\r\n    FontSize\r\n\r\nThe beginning of every trace window will include information about the user and\r\ncomputer running the script. This can be useful when troubleshooting a script\r\nthat someone else is running.\r\n\r\nIMPORTANT: The trace window will only be created if the function detects a\r\nvariable in the current scope, usually the script, called TraceEnabled with a\r\nvalue of $True. This means your script can have trace commands but they won't\r\ndo anything unless $TraceEnabled is set to $True.\r\n\r\n.Notes\r\nLast Updated: October 30, 2013\r\nVersion     : 0.9\r\n\r\n.Link\r\n
Friday Fun: Create a PowerShell Trace Window<\/a><\/blockquote>