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Basic AppleScript Dialog:

display dialog "Your text here" with icon stop buttons {"OK"} default button {"OK"} giving up after 5

'giving up after 5' will automatically close the script after the indicated interval of time has elapsed.

HTML Anchor Code

Here is a sample of how to write code to link one part of your blog page to another:

<a name = "By Email">[optional text]</a> --place this where you want the link to go <a href = "#By Email">By Email</a> --this is the actual link

more HTML

HTML Code to Link to Other Web Pages

Here is a sample of code to link to another page. this is similar to the anchor code, except that the destination code is the url of the destination site:

<a href= "www.webSite.
com"> Website Name</a>

--just replace "www.webSite.
com"
with the actual url destination site and replace 'Website Name' with the prompt that the user will see.

My Links

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AppleScript Note:

It might be interesting to those of you who are AppleScript enthusiasts that the HyperCard (HyperTalk) project was the prototype back in the '80's of what became the system-wide Applescript language (akin to JavaScript) that is in use today.
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3d-iMac-Large

Trapping for List Dialog Errors

With 'List Dialog' type dialogs, since errors cannot be intercepted in an 'on error' handler, there is no 'normal' way to trap for 'Cancel' which, of course, would result in some sort of undesirable error dialog such as 'User cancelled. Error number -128'. Here is an example of one simple way I have found to trap for this type of error: set x to (choose from list {"Joe","Amy",
"Bill"} with prompt "Choose a record:")
if x is false then
else
set targetItem to (x as text)
show every record whose cell "Name" contains x
end if
When the user clicks on 'Cancel', the variable x is assigned the boolean value false. So all you have to do is set up a conditional to deal with that and to perform the usual statements otherwise.

Learning AppleScript

AppleScript-123-Book

Create Multiple Folders with Terminal

If you are more of a techy kind of person and are comfortable with using Terminal, here is a script you can use to easily create multiple folders:

First, for a single folder, type in: mkdir "Folder 1" --or whatever you want to name your folder, this creates a new directory, which, in effect is a new folder. To place multiple items in the 'Documents' folder: cd/Users/Administrator/Documents mkdir "Folder 1" "Folder 2" "Folder 3" To quickly create multiple folders, create a text file with the desired folder names (as many as you want) and name it something like 'folderList.txt'. Next type this in Terminal: cat folderList.txt |xargs mkdir Or you could create folders with the same prefix by entering: mkdir "Invoices " {"Corporate", "Individual", "Pro-Bono"}

Digg! Digg This!!

Mac LC III (1994), the first Mac that I ever owned, the CD-Rom and Zip drive were added much later.

Mac LC III (1994), the first Mac that I ever owned, the CD-Rom and Zip drive were added much later.

Basic HTML

Here is an example of a very simple HTML document:

<html>
<head>
<title>Basic HTML Document</title>
</head>
<body>
Your text goes here
</body>
</html>

more HTML

Choose File Name Command

Apple Apple I Diagram 300x225The ‘choose file name’ command is similar to the ‘choose file’ command. unlike the choose file command it returns a reference pointer to a file that does not yet exist without actually creating the file:

set theFile to choose file name with prompt "Set file name and location:"
Apple Choose File Name

With a result such as:file “Macintosh HD:Users:administrator:Desktop:Untitled”

Choose file name dialogs have 3 optional parameters: ‘with prompt’ , ‘default name’ and ‘default location’.

Here with the optional parameters:

set theFile to choose file name with prompt "Set file name and location:" default name "Document 1" default location (path to documents folder)

It is pretty simple to see that the last two parameters determine the name of the yet to be created document and its location.

Finally, a TextEdit example that actually creates a document:

set fileReference to choose file name with prompt ("Create new document:") default name "My Text Document" default location (path to desktop)
set newDocText to text returned of (display dialog "Enter initial text for document '" & fileReference & "':" default answer "" with icon note buttons "OK" default button "OK")
open for access fileReference
close access fileReference

tell application "TextEdit"
activate
open fileReference
set text of document 1 to newDocText
end tell

Where fileReference is the reference for the new document and newDocText is the initial text for the new document.

These lines create the new document and then close it:

open for access fileReference
close access fileReference


TextEdit reopens the document and inserts the text stored in the variable
newDocText. TextEdit refers to the document as document 1 because it is the front document.

If you haven’t already seen them, here are some related posts that you may want to look at:
Choose Folder | Choose File | Enhanced Choose from List | Choose Application |Choose Color

In the next post, I will backtrack a little bit to show you the enhanced parameters for ‘choose from list’ which are available in Tiger and Leopard.

If you have questions or would like to suggest a post on another AppleScript issue, contact me at: hyperscripter@gmail.com or http://twitter.com/hyperscripter or to subscribe, click the By Email link at the top of the page

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Create Multiple Folders with Terminal

If you are more of a techy kind of person and are comfortable with using Terminal, here is a script you can use to easily create multiple folders:

First, for a single folder, type in: mkdir "Folder 1" --or whatever you want to name your folder, this creates a new directory, which, in effect is a new folder. To place multiple items in the 'Documents' folder: cd/Users/Administrator/Documents mkdir "Folder 1" "Folder 2" "Folder 3" To quickly create multiple folders, create a text file with the desired folder names (as many as you want) and name it something like 'folderList.txt'. Next type this in Terminal: cat folderList.txt |xargs mkdir Or you could create folders with the same prefix by entering: mkdir "Invoices " {"Corporate", "Individual", "Pro-Bono"}

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Digg! Digg This!!

An AppleScript to Verify a Date

Run this in the Script Editor:

set dateRecord to (current date)
set defaultDate to (date string of dateRecord)
try
set apptDate to text returned of (display dialog "Enter appointment date:" default answer defaultDate buttons {"Set"} default button {"Set"})
set datetext to apptDate as text
date apptDate --if an invalid date is entered, the next dialog is aborted and it triggers the error alert below.
display dialog datetext & " is a valid date." with icon note buttons {"OK"} default button {"OK"}
on error
set alertText to "An error has occurred!"
set messageText to quote & datetext & quote & " is an invalid date."
display alert alertText message messageText as warning buttons {"OK"} default button "OK" giving up after 15
return
end try

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