Learning AppleScript for Beginners

Finding an Address with Google Maps

admin — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 18:33:35 +0000

A handy script that automates Google Maps. It can be enhanced with a ‘choose from list’ dialog for frequent address searches or (as you’ll see below) you can enhance the script with a database program such as FileMaker Pro, to search for an address from a specific record

Some notes below, but first the script:

try set [...]

Script to Open Gmail Inbox in Firefox

admin — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 14:30:12 +0000

This is a quick and easy way to go to your Gmail Inbox. If already logged in, it goes straight to Gmail and opens your inbox. If you want instant login (even if you aren’t already logged in), you can edit this script by placing your Gmail address and password into the appropriate dialog prompts [...]

AppleScript Droplet to Convert Text to HTML

admin — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 12:34:13 +0000

Sometimes it’s nice to just eliminate some typing when creating html documents, especially when you write your HTML by hand (as I do). Even if it is just for the sake of setting up the initial template so you can get down to the details more efficiently.

Copy this into your Script Editor and be [...]

Working with Dates and Using Math Operators

admin — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 13:01:54 +0000

One of the more curious aspects of AppleScript that inexperienced scripters are not aware of (and even more experienced scripters often overlook) is the fact that you can use the greater than [>] operator and the less than [<] operator with dates to determine, for instance, which of two given dates occurs first in the [...]

Working with Dates in AppleScript

admin — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 02:51:49 +0000

If you have ever worked with date coercions and manipulations in AppleScript, you know how frustrating it can be, from something as simple as trying to coerce it to text so that it can be displayed in a dialog, to trying to convert it to a different date format; you have one simple thing in [...]

Extracting Text Using Offset and Reverse vs Text Item Delimiters

admin — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 18:13:53 +0000

There are times when you want to extract part of a text string from another for some specific purpose. There are two basic methods and each has its advantages and disadvantages. We’ll start with a combination of offset and reverse to remove the suffix from “seattleSunset.jpg”:

set jpgFile to characters of "seattleSunset.jpg" –This gives us the characters [...]

New Drawing Document with AppleWorks 6

admin — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 18:13:50 +0000

The basics of creating a drawing document with AppleWorks 6 are similar to those for creating a text document.

The script below, appropriately named ‘Graphics Hodgepodge’, shows a variety of graphics objects that can be created and some of the properties that can be set with a script. There are a lot of details in [...]

Creating a Calendar in TextEdit with Shell Script

admin — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 10:58:41 +0000

This is sort of a fun script which gives you some idea of the power behind the UNIX side of Mac OS X. Impressive as this little bit of shell code is though, it only scratches the surface on what you can do combining the power of AppleScript with the shell.

display dialog "Choose a [...]

Formatting and Editing Text Objects with Word 2008

admin — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 21:08:14 +0000

While Microsoft has its own scripting language (Visual Basic for Applications or ‘VBA’) to do all (most) of the same things as presented here, it is rather clunky and difficult to use compared with the more natural syntax of AppleScript.

Here we will look at some of the most necessary scripting elements for Word 2008 through [...]

Enhanced – New Doc for AppleWorks 6

admin — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 21:14:19 +0000

It has become abundantly clear to me that there is still a lot of interest in AppleScripts for AppleWorks 6 and questions on implementation of scripts that my previous posts on this topic have not addressed to the satisfaction of those who use AppleWorks 6 and, since it is an application that is still fairly [...]