Beginning AppleScript®

13.9. Recording Scripts

Mac OS X provides a couple of solutions to help you in the situations where an application has limited or no scriptability. One of these is the capability to record events inside Script Editor while you do work in the application that you want to script. In many ways, it's analogous to a macro record mode in a word processor like Microsoft Word. The actions you want to later repeat are recorded as you press keys, select menu items, and click buttons.

When you tell Script Editor to stop recording, you have a program you can run to duplicate the actions that you performed in the application. Well, that's the theory anyway. In practice, applications have to support recordability, and most offer very limited support, if any, for this feature. BBEdit, a text and HTML editing application, is one of the few applications that is fully recordable.

The Finder is also recordable, as you see in the next Try It Out.

13.9.1.

13.9.1.1. Try It Out: Recording Actions in the Finder

Follow these steps to practice recording actions in the Finder:

1. In the Finder, close all open Finder windows.

2. In Script Editor, choose file New to create a new window.

3. In the toolbar of your new window, click Record.

4. Click the Finder icon in the Dock to open a Finder window and carefully follow the next steps.

5. Resize the Finder window to any size you want.

6. Move the Finder window to some other place ...