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AppleScript in a Nutshell: A Desktop Quick Reference (Nutshell Handbook)
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Author: Bruce W. Perry
List Price: $29.95
Our Price: Click to see the latest and low price
ISBN: 1565928415
Publisher: O'Reilly & Associates (01 June, 2001)
Edition: Paperback
Sales Rank: 27,231
Average Customer Rating: 2.46 out of 5
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Customer ReviewsRating: 2 out of 5
A difficult subject that's not made any easier
First, be warned that the book largely covers OS 9; what coverage of OS X there is, is now largely dated (pre-10.2).As other reviews have stated, it's hard to get anything done when using this book as a reference. AppleScript is a very unique technology, and the book makes an admirable start at explaining how it works. But any time I pick this book up, I'm goal oriented: I want to set the topmost window in Terminal to 100x50 and make the text yellow. How do I do that? I want to open a URL in Mozilla and execute some JavaScript via AppleScript. How do I do that? I want to show the Desktop by hiding all applications and making Finder minimize its windows. How do I do that? Again, as others have pointed out, finding scripts on the Net has been my best resource. This book has helped marginally at best. One good thing the book could have done: when I open an application's dictionary, how can I write loops and subroutines to manipulate the objects I see? How can I write code to discover what they do? The problem with any book on AppleScript is that every application has a different interface (sort of... they all have the standard suite (and the book doesn't seem to tell you how to even manipulate the standard suite, very frustrating)) but then any decent application will have lots of custom commands and objects you can manipulate. I'll give a tepid "yes" to buying this book, but it's certainly not the genre-breaker we are all still looking for.
Rating: 4 out of 5
Think of it as a dictionary...
This book is more like an expansion of the Apple downloadable resources for Applescript. It covers most everything regarding Finder scripting, and has some examples. I feel that the actual script examples in the book need more of the surrounding script for better context, but overall you can get the idea. This is more of a desk reference for me, since I can't fathom trying to read it straight through unless I've had waaaaay too much caffiene. Of all of the Applescript publications, this is the closest there is to a reference book, but it will not teach you to program in Applescript per se.
Rating: 1 out of 5
Rewrite it O'Reilly! Keep your good rep...
What happened here?O'Reilly usually has SUCH good books - this is not one of them. Looks like the author could have used some help on this subject matter... A rewrite is in order if O'Reilly really wants to prove to Mac users that it cares about the platform. I mean AppleScript is the only truly native language to the Mac.
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