AppleScript in a Nutshell

Working with Finder and Inspector Windows

The Finder uses Finder windows to graphically navigate the filesystem.

Tip

The Mac OS X release renamed the file-viewer windows of the Mac OS X Public Beta to Finder windows, but the Finder dictionary also refers to Finder windows as “file-viewer windows,” so we will also occasionally use the file-viewer term.

Figure 32-2 shows a Finder window in column view. With AppleScript, you can get references to any open Finder windows (these refs look like “Finder window id 2” in Script Editor), and you can make new file viewers and specify their target file or folder. The Finder application dictionary (which is called “The Finder”) includes a description of the new Finder window class. A Finder window object inherits some of the window’s properties (e.g., id, position, bounds) and has its own target attribute. The target is a reference to the deepest file or folder selected in a Finder window. For example, if you were examining the contents of your Documents directory in a Finder window, then its target property would be:

folder "Documents" of folder "brucep" of folder "Users" of startup disk¬ of Application "Finder"

If you want a less unwieldy form of reference than the latter target-return value, coerce the return value to a string (so it looks like "Mac OS X:Users:brucep:Documents"). Example 32-5 first gets a list of references to every open Finder window (if there are any). For each member of this list (i.e., a collection of Finder window objects), ...