14 DAY TRIAL // The TechNet Script Center Gallery was introduced last week by Microsoft, in an attempt to help simplify the work of IT professionals. The Script Center Gallery, which went live on the TechNet portal on August 13th, 2009, offers an extensive collection of scripts for IT pros. The initiative represents TechNet’s first gallery application and can be accessed via the Scripts tab on the Script Center homepage. In total, the new Script Gallery brings to the table in excess of 4,000 scripts designed for Windows client and Windows Server, including Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista, Windows XP, and Windows 2000, but the number is bound to grow, especially because of contributions from the community.
” What’s new? You can now submit your own scripts on the site. Click Upload on the right side of the Script Gallery home page and follow the simple process. The Script Center Gallery has a dedicated search now. When you search for scripts in the Gallery, you won’t have to sift through a bunch of hits that are from our site but not specifically scripts,” revealed a member of the Microsoft Scripting blog.
The new TechNet Script Center Gallery allows users more flexibility when navigating scripts. In this regard, the app is designed to allow content to be sorted in accordance with a variety of criteria, including: Category, Affiliation (Microsoft or community), Script language, Supported platforms, Tags, Recently added, Highest ranked, Most active, Most active (last seven days), When published, Title (A-Z), Title (Z-A), Ranking, Ranking (last seven days), Author (A-Z), and Author (Z-A).
But, in addition to the improvements in discoverability, users will find that they have a social networking mechanism to actually rate script. On top of ratings, each script can be discussed by the members of the community, as long as the uploader chooses to allow discussions. TechNet Script Center Gallery will also discover that they will get their very own “My Contributions” page, which will be associated with a Windows Live ID. “We are very excited about the Script Center Gallery. It represents a big step forward both in terms of you being able to find scripts and easily being able to submit your own scripts,” the Microsoft Scripting blog representative added.