General Approach and Mode of Attack for Newbies

Hello all,

I’m a newbie to AppleScript and would love to get some comments on a good approach to beginning the learning process:

  1. I’m thinking that whereas the future of all things Mac is OS X, might it make sense to confine myself to learning only OS X aspects of AS?
  2. Most books out there are simply lousy or too hard to understand. Is this a widespread impression or am I not being fair?
  3. A lot of so-called “newbie material” is nothing of the kind and assumes a lot more experience that should be assumed for one who is new to AS (and scripting in general).

Thanks.

-Sam

Welcome to the wonderful world AppleScript Sam. I’ll try to answer some of your questions…

  1. OS X is great, but it is somewhat limited if your trying to learn AppleScript.
    a. The recording function in the Script Editor is not (yet) available for the Finder
    b. There is a far greater number of AppleScript examples available for OS 9 <
    c. Check out our Script Builders section for OS X AppleScript examples

  2. Well, maybe you are not being fair
    a. Danny Goodman’s AppleScript Handbook helped me a lot. AppleScript for Dummies is good too
    b. O’Reilly has several titles out that you may like
    c. We have an AppleScript Books section with short reviews

  3. Start with a few simple AppleScripts. Try the recording function in OS 9, or earlier, and you’ll be surprised at your progress.

Keep us posted and let us know how we can help, and be sure to ask questions. This is a great place to get started. We all have questions and we all get stumped at times. The visitors and staff at this BBS are glad to help.

Happy Scripting

I found the VTConline tutorial useful for me (being new to AppleScript). I signed up for their monthly subscription at $25 a month and found it helpful (the CDML one was very good). It’s a bit basic, but that is exactly what you need when you are starting out.

A lot of the stuff I looked at either was too hard for beginners of too basic to do anything useful with - this forum is excellent!!