Customer Reviews

AppleScript in a Nutshell: A Desktop Quick Reference (Nutshell Handbook)

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

 

 

This book is somewhat out of date, first of all; it covers only a fairly old version of OS X, doesn't mention AppleScript Studio at all, etc. This is somewhat understandable, and it is at least much more up-to-date than Danny Goodman's book.
But the writing -- my god! It has the feel of a book that was written in one draft and never edited. Every single page of the book (and I just finished reading it cover to cover) had errors, typos, bugs, and poorly worded or unclear passages. In many cases I re-read sections several times and was simply unable to decipher what they were trying to say at all. I am a very experienced programmer (worked at Apple for several years, in fact), and I couldn't make head or tail of some of the passages in the book. There are huge omissions (I can find no explicit description of what "get" does, for example, anywhere in the reference section of the book). Many subtle (but important) details are glossed over completely.
Just pathetic that this is the best book available on AppleScript. I wish I could get my money back, on this and on Danny Goodman's book. I give it two stars instead of one because at least it is reasonably up to date and occasionally helpful.

Save some money and read the real reviews of this book elsewhere online before buying. Why?
- The book contains nothing not already covered in Apple's own documentation - and THEY DO A BETTER JOB.
- No scripting of 3rd-party applications is included.
- It is not readable at all, beyond tedious.
- Other problems: it is verbose and dry.
- The only value the book has is providing syntax for the typical AppleScript core command set.

A co-worker gave me this book since I'm doing some Applescript work, and I must say, my frustration level just goes up every time I open it. I'm having more luck finding information on the web than I am in this book. The index is very poorly edited, and seems to be missing a lot of functionality.

The book feels like a rush job and just isn't ready for prime time.

A second nomination for worst O'Reilly book ever. Mistakes, confusion and just bad information are plentiful in this title by someone who knows nothing about AppleScript clearly. Why did O'Reilly pick this author to write the book when experts exist? Most all other of their titles are written by known authorities in their field - Bruce Perry is NOT an AppleScript authority.

This book is beyond dreadful. Admittedly, AS is a mess anyway, with no clearly defined central concepts and a syntax that makes Macromedia's Lingo look good. The book itself has no idea who its audience is. If it is for beginners, then comparisons with Perl, C++ etc, are useless.

For an example of the editing, look at Table 4-1. How quickly can you make sense of it ? Tip - ignore the columns.

O'Reilly books are generally great, and the Nutshell series are designed for quick access to information. There is room for a good O'Reilly AS book, but this isn't it.

I have a specific need. I tried to learn how to implement it via AppleScript with this book, and the other leading book in the field, and frankly you can't learn scripting from the books in existence now. I am really frustrated with the poor documentation available for Applescript. I gave two stars because there is SOME information here, but extracting it is very difficult.

I was hoping for an overview as complete as Apple's original docs, but updated and spiced with real-world observations. Bad luck! This book blithely glosses over (or completely omits) key concepts - presumably those perceived by the author to be "advanced". An example: Try looking up "file" and "alias" in the index. You'll discover that AS aliases are just like Finder aliases - this in direct contradiction to Apple's docs! Nowhere does this book explain how to use the file keyword correctly.

The few spicy, real-world observations are not reliable and are occasionally inaccurate. (To the author's credit, these are usually introduced as first-person experiences: "In my tests..." or some such.) Always do your own tests and don't rely on this book.

I can't imagine who this book would be good for - it's too shallow for the intermediate AppleScripter, and a novice would benefit from a tutorial, not a reference.

I feel I wasted my money. Back to printing out the old Apple guide and having Kinkos bind it.

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.

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.

As an experienced applescripter, I was really disappointed with this book. It's just a boring, uninformative rundown of the scripting dictionaries of some OS 9 applications, with a very weak introduction to scripting in OS 10. I learned nothing from this book, and if I were a beginner, I still would have learned nothing from it. Usually I love O'Reilly books, but this one is an exception.