Customer Reviews

AppleScript: The Comprehensive Guide to Scripting and Automation on Mac OS X

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Bought this book after having read the reviews for the first edition and have finally finished it after having given up a number of times in exasperation at the vast amount of errors in the text and the code (both in the book and downloadable). The author no doubt knows his subject and covers what you need to know to become proficient in AppleScript, but I am not sure who this book is aimed at. It is not suitable for anyone new to programming as concepts are introduced early but only explained later on in the text, the mistakes in the examples create confusion (AppleScript even being referred to as ActionScript), and the inane Dummies style humour and prose with "cool" and even "ultracool" examples insulting to the mature reader. To add to my dissatisfaction the binding started to fall apart after only 250 pages. This is both the first and last Apress book that will be in my library.

During my way through this I bought both Danny Goodman's book from SpiderWorks and Matt Neuberg's "Definitive Guide". My recommendation to anyone else looking to learn AppleScript would be to start with Goodman, and if you know a programming language to go straight to Neuberg. Both highly recommended.

Tue 4/24/2007 3:27 pm. I haven't finished the book but, for instance, there were two wrong captions in the first 32 pages. Numerous other errors in the text. I feel Rosenthal gives a good feel for how AppleScript works, not sugar-coated, and I didn't have much trouble with the errors, but someone new to programming might (I am a programmer without AppleScript -- or Apple for that matter -- experience).

Before reading this book, I had only run scripts with the occasional copy and paste. After this book, I feel I have a great understanding for what AppleScript actually is, when to use it, and how to use it. In short, it's a full featured language that is ideal for small automation tasks and larger tasks where the scripting takes place in applications. After reading the book, it's quite remarkable how much you can do with AppleScript.

At first, the book is pretty intimidating. At 808 pages, it's not a nutshell of AppleScript. Instead, it serves as a quite tutorial of how to get scripting (which you do pretty immediately) and then you have a mix of guides and reference material. Not being familiar with AppleScript before, this was actually a great way to learn it because I didn't need a whole slew of books nor had to search around for content the book left out.

The book is broken into three sections with an introduction, language syntax, and language usage. Those those who have some programming background, you probably want to skip around in the second section first and move on to the third section. If there is a concept that needs more detail, go back to section 2.

For those who are new to languages, you will want to read chapters 3-12 provides a prose walkthrough of handling values, doing math, and flow control in an easy way. After the basic language usage, the book gets into user interaction (and how easy it is to use the built in dialog boxes), file handling, interacting with the clipboard, and error handling. There may a few concepts that are tough to understand at first if you are new to languages in general but it's possible to go back to them.

The end of the chapters have wrap up sections. If you are learning the language for the first time, it maybe worthwhile to start with and then refer back to the chapter for places that you want to read more on.

Section 3 really digs into how to write practical scripts. It goes through how to find an application's scripting dictionary, how to debug AppleScript, and how to interact with data. There's also a best practices section, a how-to on scheduling applications, and running applications remotely.

One thing I disliked was the usage of analogies. AppleScript is a pretty complete language and covering some of the traditional language concepts like objects where done in a roundabout way. I thought that they got in the way of what was sometimes reference content. If you are familiar with any computer languages, the second chapter is a good overview of what the language looks like and you can leaf through section 2 of the book.

This book is well titled and aptly named a comprehensive guide. If you are on a Mac and you think there are actions you perform over and over again, this book will show you how to automate those tasks regardless of your scripting or programming level.

This book helped me achieve master guru status with Applescript. I reference it all the time. This book and Hanaan's explanations gave me power and understanding to write scripts that work. I run about 80 scripts per week at work. Can you imagine how much time and typing that saves me. I do television post production and name and rename files and folders all day long, and move files to 10 different servers. This book helped me achieve my goal to eliminate daily repetitive tasks.

It looks somewhat like a tome, but leaves nothing out. Other books slightly miss the point, assuming too much. If you really need to get a deep understanding of Applescript then this is the book for you!